What Type of Hardwood Floor?

Hardwood floors are environmentally friendly and they add to the value of a home. A recent survey of real estate agents estimates that hardwood flooring can add as much as $7,000 to $10,000 to a home's resale value.

Solid Wood Floors

Solid Wood flooring comes in three basic types:

• STRIP flooring accounts for the majority of installations. Strips usually are 2-1/4 inches wide, but also come in widths ranging from 1-1/2 inches to 3-1/4 inches. They are installed by nailing to the subfloor.
• PLANK flooring boards are at least 3 inches wide. They may be screwed to the subfloor as well as nailed. Screw holes can be covered with wooden plugs.
• PARQUET flooring comes in standard patterns of 6" x 6" blocks. Specialty patterns may range up to 36" square units. Parquet often achieves dramatic geometric effects of special design patterns.

A solid hardwood floor can be installed on a concrete slab as long as the floor is on or above ground level. They can be sanded and refinished over several generations of use.

Solid wood flooring expands and contracts with changes in your home's relative humidity. Normally, installers compensate for this movement by leaving an expansion gap between the floor and the wall. Base moulding is the traditional "cover-up" for this gap.

Engineered Wood

Made of several layers of different woods or different grades of the same wood stacked and glued together under heat and pressure. Engineered wood flooring is less likely to be affected by changes in humidity and can be installed above, on, or below ground level. Some engineered wood floors with thicker top layers can be sanded many times.

Wood Laminates

A plywood base topped with a layer of veneer. Plies and thicknesses vary, but three-ply, 3/8 inch flooring is most common. (Remember that solid hardwood floors, at 3/4 inch, are twice as thick as wood laminates.) The veneer topping of wood laminate floors (commonly 1/8 inch thick) can be sanded and refinished three times, at most. Most manufacturer warranties cover the finish for five years.

Synthetic Plastic Laminates

Usually 1/2 inch thick, plastic laminate flooring consists of a fiberboard center wrapped in top and bottom layers of high-pressure laminate -- a tougher version of the same material used in many kitchen countertops. These floors cannot be sanded or refinished and must be removed when they wear out. They usually come with 10- or 15-year manufacturer warranties against fading, stains and wear.

Look closely at an entire laminate floor, and you'll see that the faux "wood grain" pattern repeats itself. That's because laminate flooring is actually a photograph of real wood stuck to a wood composite. Laminates don't sound like real wood either.