Author Archives: PFadmin

Commercial flooring takes a beating…at least the business owners hope they do. That means lots and lots of foot traffic moving through their storefronts, showrooms and office spaces daily. If you consider the old saying, “you only get one chance to make a first impression”, it’s imperative that your floors always look great.

There are many choices available when it comes to selecting a commercial floor covering. Regardless of your choice, the new floor must be attractive, durable and affordable. Luxury Vinyl Tile, or LVT, is becoming more popular with commercial applications for exactly these three reasons.

LVT is Attractive

LVP can be made to look like ceramic, stone or even wood floors, depending on what you’re looking for. The product looks incredibly natural featuring surface textures that even feel like the natural surface you might expect on the original product material. LVT provides a “warmth” previously unseen in commercial spaces.

Luxury Vinyl Tile is Durable

Using luxury vinyl products cuts down on your maintenance costs. These floors don’t scratch or experience water damage like real wood, while still giving the perception of authenticity associated with hardwood. It’s not uncommon to see vinyl floors now in major shopping centers, hospitals and office buildings.

And Don’t Forget About Affordable!

Nothing will ever look and feel like real hardwood. However, when considering the use in a commercial space, spending 2 to 3 times more for hardwood versus LVT is hard to ignore. The savings you realize by using a vinyl product can go toward other aspects of your business, or you can take that much needed vacation! Regardless how you use the savings, it’s undeniable that LVT is a far more cost-effective way to cover a large area of flooring.

Interested in LVT installation in Roswell or Alpharetta? Contact Ridgeline Floors today and we’ll provide you a free consultation and answer any questions you may have.

It’s no secret that rustic hardwood flooring is trending all over the world. Rustic looks are trending in more than just flooring as well. Homeowners are looking for different sources of inspiration for their floors. Wine cellars are providing the sort of inspiration that many homeowners are looking for. More specifically, old European cellar floors are the inspiration.

Old European Cellars

Wine and fruit cellars have been in use for hundreds of years; they predate refrigerators and other ways of preserving food. To preserve food and wine, Europeans would dig their cellars into the ground. The ground would act as the insulation to keep things cool. They had dirt floors though. As the homeowners expanded the cellars and made them more permanent, they would often lay down wooden floors. Businesses that received lots of wine and fruit would also make permanent cellars.

Instead of buying hardwood for use as the flooring, the dirt floor would be covered with the wood from the wine and fruit crates. The wine and fruit crates would be disassembled and then laid as wooden flooring. The wood was often unfinished. Also, it was stamped with shipping information and company information. Oftentimes, this information was burned into the wood.

So, the result was a rough sawn wooden floor with burned-in stamps. The look is very distinct, and many find it very attractive. Those cellars were also popular in New England and other colder parts of the United States. The look is still fairly distinctly European.

Recreating the Look

There are a couple of ways to recreate the look of the old European cellars. The most authentic method is to find wine and fruit crates. Fruit and wine are still shipped in wooden crates in many instances; thus, you can often find them secondhand. However, some of the newer crates are softwood. You definitely want hardwood to create the best possible floor.

If you want to make the process easier and more straightforward, you can buy hardwood designed to create the cellar look. The companies supply hardwood planks that are finished and stained to look rustic. They’re also burned with shipping information to fully recreate the look. These floors look great in kitchens and in homes with rustic decor. Also, many bars are utilizing the look to mimic European pubs of the era before refrigeration. Whether you choose authentic crate wood or a recreation, you will have a unique and interesting hardwood floor.

If you’ve just bought a new home or you’re simply curious, it can be difficult to figure out what kind of wood floor you have. There are dozens of different species of hardwood used for flooring, and many of them look similar. To find the type you have, you are going to need to some investigating. It’s advisable to start with the least-invasive process and move towards more invasive methods.

Start With an Internet Search

You should start with an internet search of the most common types of hardwood flooring. In the United States, they are going to be domestic woods such as hickory, oak, walnut, and maple. If you know when the flooring was installed, that could help you as well. Hardwood flooring goes through trends. So, there’s a good chance the floor in your home is one of the popular choices from the year it was installed.

Pull up high-resolution photos of the different types of wood and lay them on your floor. Compare the grain and focus less on the color. Focusing on the color could be misleading because many hardwood floors are stained. A white oak can easily be stained to look like cherry. The grain will be distinctive, though.

Ask For Advice

There are many experts who can identify a hardwood floor simply by looking at it. You should take high-resolution photos of your floor. Be sure to get a good representation of the color and the grain. Post those on some hardwood flooring forums or post them on social media and tag hardwood flooring experts. Many of them will be happy to identify it for you.

Don’t Forget Hardness

Hardness is a good way of ruling out different types of wood. For example, if you can dent it with your thumbnail, then you can rule out any hardwood; that’s a softwood. If your dog or cat scratches the floor with its claws, that will rule out any hardwood softer than oak.

Sand the Wood

If you absolutely have to, you can also sand the wood to get down to the bare wood. Some types of wood have similar grains, and you’ll need to see the color to know which wood they are. The color can only be determined by sanding past the finish and removing the top layer of stain. That will expose the raw wood and give you an idea of what you’re looking at.

When you are looking for hardwood floors, you’ll encounter several different phrases over and over. Sometimes, the manufacturers and retailers don’t properly explain the differences between the kinds of hardwood. Prefinished hardwood flooring, engineered hardwood flooring, and site-finished hardwood flooring are all different options.

What Is the Difference?

Prefinished hardwood flooring is flooring that is finished at the factory or by the retailer. When wood is milled and processed, it is considered unfinished. Wood can then be stained in order to deepen the color of the wood and the contrast of the grain. Alternately, wood can be stained to change its color. For example, a white oak can be stained to look reddish, like a cherry wood. Wood can also be stained to change its color in more drastic ways. A wood can be stained bright blue, true black, or any host of colors.

The wood is then finished with a sealant. Polyurethane is the most common sealant. It’s a liquid plastic that forms a protective shell over the wood. It protects the wood from moisture and scratches. Site-finished hardwood flooring has the stain and the finish applied after the wood has been installed in your home. Prefinished hardwood is stained and finished by the manufacturer. That’s the basic difference between prefinished and site-finished hardwood. Site-finished can also be called unfinished hardwood.

What About Engineered Hardwood?

Engineered hardwood refers to the process of actually creating the hardwood planks from different plies of wood; it doesn’t refer to the finish of the wood. Engineered hardwood can be prefinished or site-finished. However, most engineered hardwood is prefinished.

Is Prefinished Better?

Prefinished hardwood is not necessarily better or worse than site-finished hardwood. Prefinished hardwood is preferred by some people because it is much easier to install. With site-finished hardwood, you have to install it and then stain it. You must then wait for the stain to dry. After that, you’ll need to apply multiple layers of polyurethane. That could take several days to apply and several more days to fully set. Prefinished hardwood is ready to walk on as soon as you install it. Also, the finish on prefinished hardwood tends to be harder than site-finished polyurethane. The factory finish is a mixture of polyurethane and aluminum oxide that has been cured by UV light. It’s harder and more durable than polyurethane. That means it will likely last longer, but you will have a much harder time sanding and refinishing the wood.

Short answer…YES! Luxury vinyl products have changed over the years and are now suitable for just about any application. The products have become so durable that they can handle heavy traffic areas and water prone areas without a problem in most cases. Here are a few of the many advantages to using luxury vinyl in your home.

Luxury Vinyl is Low Maintenance

There’s never a need to refinish luxury vinyl flooring! Simply keep it clean and it performs well in nearly any situation. Real hardwood floors need regular maintenance to look their best. While hardwood will last decades, or even hundreds of years, it doesn’t come without a cost. Luxury vinyl may not have quite the lifespan, but you also won’t have the same maintenance concerns.

It’s Highly Versatile

Other popular flooring materials like hardwood, carpet and tile have their limitations. Tile can be cold and unwelcoming. Carpet wears easily and can be hard to keep clean. Wood floors can sometimes perform poorly when placed in areas of high humidity and extreme temperature changes. Luxury vinyl can be used in any environment to create a custom look while providing a durable surface for years to come.

Budget Friendly

While traditional hardwood floors look great and perform well in most scenarios, the cost can be somewhat prohibitive, especially if you have a very large space to cover. Luxury vinyl can be found in any number of styles, patterns, colors, etc., and will cost a fraction to purchase and install.

The bottom line is this…you have many options for flooring, luxury vinyl is one that fits just about any need and looks great while not breaking the bank!

Interested in luxury vinyl flooring in Roswell or Alpharetta? Contact Ridgeline Floors today and we’ll provide you a free in-home consultation and answer any questions you may have.

Wood is a porous material that absorbs heat, moisture, and dirt. Therefore, it has to be sealed against all of that; this process is called finishing. There are several different finishes that can be applied to a hardwood floor. Varnish and polyurethane sit on top of the wood to seal it against any damage. Oil penetrates the pores and protects the wood from moisture that way. There are many options for what finish to use but only two options for when to finish a hardwood floor; the floor can be prefinished or site-finished.

Prefinished or Site-Finished

Site-finished hardwood floors are the traditional method and still remain very popular, but prefinished floors are trending right now. Why is that?

Prefinished floors are those that are finished by the manufacturer. They are finished with a blend of chemicals that is unique to each manufacturer but is generally some combination of polyurethane and aluminum oxide. It’s treated with a UV-curing process that bakes the finish. A site-finished hardwood floor is finished once the wood has been laid. It can be a varnish, oil, polyurethane, or some other finish.

Why Prefinished?

Prefinished floors are trending for a few reasons. For short-term interests, they’re much quicker to install. A prefinished floor is also already stained. It arrives at your house ready to be installed; you just need to let it sit and acclimate to your home’s humidity for five to ten days. Once you’ve done that, you can lay the floor and be walking on it the same day. A site-finished floor will need hours for the stain to dry, and then possibly days for the polyurethane to fully cure.

Prefinished floors are also trending because many homeowners are thinking long-term. They might want to sell their house in the future, or they might just not want to have to sand and refinish their floors. A site-finished floor typically has a warranty for three to five years. A prefinished floor can have a warranty anywhere from five to 25 years.

How Long Will It Trend?

Prefinished hardwood does not seem like it will stop trending. That’s because prefinished hardwood floors can be in basically any style and kind of wood. Different trends ebb and flow, but the trend towards prefinished hardwood floor is just a trend towards being practical. That will never go out of style. Your hardwood floor will last for decades if you care for it according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

Questions about either of these flooring types? Need hardwood flooring installed in Roswell or Alpharetta? Call Ridgeline Floors today to schedule an in-home consultation!