Wood Floors - Timeless, classic update

Everyone loves wood floors and why shouldn't they?  Wood floors have been around forever and will continue to be around for hundreds of years more.  According to Susan Baum of Briggs Freeman Sotheby's, "real hardwoods continue to be a request from buyers and a major selling point".

The process for wood floors is pretty straightforward and easy.  Whether you are replacing carpet, tile or another flooring surface, you must:

• Tear out the existing flooring.  This can be very easy or somewhat difficult depending on the material.  My professional wood installer does all of my demolition to insure that the foundation for the new surface will be perfect.  They also remove all of the debris and haul it off as to make this process as painless as possible.  I'm not going to lie, when removing tile, it can get pretty dusty but no pain no gain, right?

• Install plywood and felt paper.  The mess factor is down hill from here.  This stage goes relatively quick and without incidence.  I will point out at this point that depending on the original floor, adding the plywood and then the solid wood on top does raise your floor a bit.  My installer and I takes note of any exterior doors and raise the thresholds if necessary for this variance. True professionals will point out every detail!

• Install wood.  This is my favorite part as you can really start getting a sense of how beautiful the end product will look.  The wood floor instantly unifies spaces and makes them appear larger.

• To hand scrap or not?  This is a major detail to consider.  I always recommend a light scrap for active homes with a lot of traffic including the four legged ones.  You can do different degrees of scrapping and different processes depending on the ultimate look you are trying to achieve.

• Sand and finish.  The fun part...picking your custom stain on your floor in your space. When using solid wood flooring and not prefinished you have complete control of the outcome.  The installers will create samples on your floor for you to select from.  You can spend hours tweaking and getting the perfect combination of coffee brown and walnut.

Depending on your specific project, you can go from ugly dated tile to beautiful hardwood floors in just a few weeks weeks.

My installers are the very best and with my guidance it can be a seamless, beautiful update.  I would love to schedule time to explore your new home update.