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We’re going to talk tonight about discovering at your home wood flooring tonight. So, what we’re going to kind of talk about is a little bit about what’s available to you. What are the varieties of materials that are out there, where to install them, where not to install them, why I recommend certain things or certain floorings in areas, what really what may be best for you. So, we’re going to go through about I think I got about four samples I want to kind of talk to you about and show you what’s going on here. And also, got a couple of folks that are joining us. I can’t read their thing but thank you for joining us.
How do you feel about cork floors? I’m not as familiar with cork floors to be quite honest with you. We have not come across them yet I hear that they are kind of trending so I’ll have to get back to you on that but thank you for the question and sure appreciate it. Let’s talk about what we’re seeing in the Midwest, what we see most of the time, what we see trending and flooring that’s going to work in the area for you. So, let’s start off tonight with going to start out with probably something that most of you have seen or you have in your home.
This is 2 ¼ unfinished red oak tongue and groove. This fits together. So, for a do-it-yourselfer, this is probably not the most ideal product to have because it requires a lot of tools and a lot of skill set because you’ve got your installation, then you’ve got to sand the product and then you have to finish the product. So, you’re going to probably be renting a lot of heavy machinery that you’re not probably comfortable with I’m not saying you can’t.
if you’re an adventurous individual, yeah give it a shot. Where we find using this flooring is where there’s existing 2 ¼ inch oak. For me, I just looked at a project last night and the majority of the floor is two and a quarter red oak. And they were talking about tearing it up and talking about the cost and I said, well why don’t we, just in the one area, the family room, why don’t we kind of tooth it in and match your existing floor and we can make that happen because they want to change the color of it. So, nice product, solid but does require if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, it does require a lot of skill and knowledge.
So, if you’re going to do this, be patient, take some time, have a professional do it. It looks fantastic. It really is a beautiful look to your home And a lot of times, where we see this used is cases of kind of taking your existing and trying to make this work with what your existing floor is. So, that is 2 ¼ red oak.
Our next product, give you a sample here. This is 3/4 thick prefinished. This is an oak.
These look like these are 3 ¼ in size. So, what’s the difference between say this and this? Well number one thing is, obviously it’s prefinished. What I like about prefinished is you get a real consistent look and a really durable finish because when they finish this product, it’s in a controlled environment. When you have a team coming out doing the work in your home and they got to sand the floor, it’s not as a controlled environment. So, you’ve got dust issues, the product you can use this, a little different one versus the other, so there’s some different things that are going on.
So, when it’s put together, you can run your finger through it, so if you need to finish it, say 10, 20 years down the road. So, you got a solid wood floor here. It’s durable, it goes in easy. The nice thing is you don’t have to be out of your home for any given time. Oh, we’re losing our camera here Hopefully my media team will give me a hand here.
Paying a lot of money to do this sort of stuff. This isn’t something I usually handle. We’re all over the place here. Right, I think we got it. So, going back to our product here.
I’ll tell you what, laminate flooring has come a long way. Pergo was I think the original product that was out on the marketplace. I’m going to say probably 20, even 25 years ago. Nice product but I’ll tell you what, they’ve come a long way in styles and designs and things like that. So, really the look of it is quite stunning, that’s probably the biggest difference.
So, let me finish with this and we’ll get to the laminate flooring. So, what I really like about the pre finished and I’m seeing more of it is because the fact the downtime. Moving furniture, having to live with a floor that’s if you had to finish, you’re going to be out, so you’re going to be kind of out of your element a little bit. So, the bottom line is with this, it’s a little easier to install, you don’t have to finish it and do it yourself. There’s a myriad of products out there.
This is an oak. You can get hickory, cherry it’s all over the place. So, we’re going to move on from this here. So, these are different colors here. This one is a Gunstock.
This is called Grizzly Very durable, hard, very even finish. So, we’re going to move on from here. That’s our prefinished ¾ inch hardwood. Yes, wide planks are definitely in and I’ll tell you what.
It seems like the wider the better I don’t know, I personally like the wider look. And we’re going to go to our next product. Okay, here we go. This is a laminate flooring. This is a 7-inch-wide plank.
This is a Shaw product 7-inch I forgot the name of the color but it’s supposed to look like natural cherry. We did this in a larger room for a customer of ours and that’s why I like laminate. Laminates can be more cost effective.
They’re easy for do-it-yourselfers. They’re click and lock, floating, pretty simple, and I’ll tell you what. The finish when you lay it down at a quick glance, I’ll tell you it looks pretty true to what cherry looks like, and this is not one of the higher-end floors. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice floor, and laminate is well they used to just do it, it was real smooth but now it’s even got a texture to it. You can’t see it on there, it’s probably hard to see.
And what a laminate is, this is a basically MDF board, it’s a fiber board and there is a laminate that is adhered to the top of it. And it basically floats on your existing floor. So, let’s say you have a vinyl floor in the laundry room and where I recommend this a lot is laundry rooms, basement areas. If you’ve got something that holds up well and you’ve got a lot of kids, dogs, running around and you don’t want to spend a a ton of money, this is a great product Durable, holds up for a long period of time, not I think a very cost-effective item.
So, the look of it is really nice, very affordable, very easy to install. And we can talk about installation at a later time with some other videos and stuff we’re going to talk about. But I really like the product and as you go up the scale as far as the level of quality, the overall look is even that much better. It really starts to look like natural wood It’s pretty impressive on how the technology in the last say 25 years has come around.
So, laminate flooring It’s funny because I wasn’t a big fan of it at first but after installing it on several projects, I’ll tell you what, this is a great product for the right situation.
We try to keep our segments not too long. We want to keep you interested and if you have questions or whatever. Please reach out to us. Our last flooring or something that’s kind of come around that we’ve really kind of see, in the last say five or six years and this is engineered flooring. Now, let me explain to you what engineered flooring, the difference between that and a solid and the laminate.
So, what you have here is very similar to laminate. This layer here is a wood veneer and then you may have it on a base of plywood. So, it’s glued together, fastened together. What I like about it is there’s a lot of different places you can put this. You can put this where they call the low grade, which means in your basement like on the concrete floor.
We did a hickory in a project about a year ago, looks fabulous. We did also another hickory in another project about the width of these planks but not this dark. So, this is kind of right here, what I’m showing you, is really what’s trending It’s easy to install, it’s price-wise, there again, you can find low, medium, and high on the scale on the price scale I find it to be kind of priced between the, on average, between the solid oak and the solid prefinished oak, depending upon the species.
It doesn’t feel like it’s a standard beveled edge it’s contoured really nice, the finish is even It looks beautiful and it’s fairly easy to install. You can float it, you can glue it, you can nail, there’s several different ways, depending upon the manufacturer. So, these are a couple of things that I’m going to show. I wanted to make sure that you see a good wide array of what is out there.