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Keeping your hardwood floors clean and beautiful is as simple as vacuuming with protective pads on your wand.

Always use manufacturers’ recommended cleaning products, which won’t leave a contaminating residue on the floor.

NEVER use Murphy’s Oil, Pledge, Mop & Glow, or similar products that contain wax and/or oils. These products can cause severe reactions, then maintenance coats will not be possible. Most warranties from finish manufacturers and factory-finished wood flooring manufacturers are voided by use of oil soap cleaners.

At Select Wood Floors we can give you advice on cleaning any kind of hardwood floor and supply you with the correct products.

At Select Hardwood Floors we are proud to employ journeymen installers and we list this as one of the reasons you should choose us as the installer of your new hardwood floors.

But what exactly does that mean – journeymen? It comes from a tradition in the middle ages when a young man aspiring to become a craftsman as a carpenter or bricklayer or whatever was assigned to a master of the craft for seven years to learn the trade. If the young man was successful and learned his craft, he became a journeyman after seven years and was allowed to seek employment with any master of the craft (in other words he could journey elsewhere, no longer being bound as an apprentice and living with the master’s family).

After many years as a journeyman he might become a master and be admitted to the guild of that craft.

Floor installers are no longer bound to a master, but they do complete study and 3 years of on the job apprenticeship before they can be designated a journeyman.

So when we tell you that journeymen will be installing your floor, that means these installers have experience in all types of installations, and they know what they are doing and can do it right.

Often houses with hardwood floors have stairs. If you are thinking of having hardwood floors installed, you will also want the stairs to match. Carpeted stairs will ruin the appearance.

Stairs are one of the most difficult areas to install hardwood. Some fly-by-night installers just put the wood down without regards to how it looks against the wall of the stairway.

But a real professional will do a net fit to the dry wall. That means the finished product looks like it was built over the wood and appears to belong there. It is a very professional presentation and is something that a lot of companies just don’t take the time to do right.

At Select Hardwood Floors we hire experienced journeymen who will get the job done right. You will be able to see the difference.

Cork flooring comes in a wide range of colors. It doesn’t look like wood – some of it almost looks like stone. But cork comes from the bark of a type of oak tree. It is a natural floor.

Many different patterns are available, and more than one pattern or color can be used to form tiles or inlay a border or make a pattern on the floor. Cork can be sanded and finished like any other hardwood floor. All surface type finishes are used on cork, even oil and wax.

Cork is very sensitive to moisture, so when we install it, we pay particular attention to the sub-floor – the floor that the cork rests on. Moisture coming up from the slab can damage a cork floor.

Most cork flooring comes from Spain and Portugal. Cork makes a very unique type of floor.

Most people just think of hardwood floors as just – well – hard wood. But different types of wood are harder or softer than others. So someone invented the Janka scale that measures how hard a hardwood is.

The test measures the force required to embed a .444 inch steel ball to have its diameter in the wood. It is the best measure of the ability of a wood species to withstand denting and wear. It is also an indicator of how hard or easy a species of wood is to saw or nail. Northern red oak, for example, has a Janka hardness rating of 1290. Spotted gum tree wood has a rating of 24 73, so it is nearly twice as hard.

This is something for you to consider when you decide to install hardwood floors. The installer will deal with the difficulties in sawing and nailing the wood. You have to consider the use of the floor – will it have to endure heavy daily traffic as in a school gym or dance hall or will it be in a bedroom where the traffic is light?

At Select Hardwood Floors it’s our job to advise you in such matters. We know hardwoods. And we can help.

There’s no simple answer to that question, because there are so many kinds of hardwood floors. But basically it comes down to how thick the wood of the floor is. If there is enough wood that a layer can be sanded off, then it can be refinished.

Perhaps you’ve moved into an old house that has wood floors, but they are scratched and dented and some areas have stains. If it is an old house, there is probably plenty of wood there so that it can be sanded and refinished a dozen times. Sanding will take off all the old finish and stain, and leave only the bare wood. Then you can choose a new stain and whatever finish suits your style.

The floors you have to be more careful with are newer floors made of engineered wood or an old floor that has already been re-sanded and refinished dozens of times. Engineered wood has only a thin veneer of hardwood on top, and if you sand it off, the less desirable wood below will show through. With an old floor that has been refinished many times, you just need to make sure that sanding it once again will not result in so much wood coming off that the tongues and grooves of the planks no longer lock together.

A professional hardwood floor installer can certainly help you determine what would be needed to make your hardwood floors look like new. We recognize what types of wood have been used, and know how to refinish it.

Have you been remodeling your house and moved some walls? And where walls once stood are now gaps in your beautiful hardwood floors? It seemed like a good idea to move the walls, but fixing those gaps is not an easy fix.

Your best bet is to hire a reliable company with journeyman installers who can come in and do the job right and make it look like the seamless original floor. The key is to make it not look like a repair.

They will remove the planks of wood back to the first joint, then cut wood that matches to fill in the spaces that are blank. Then it will all look like original flooring when finished.

We do this sort of repair. We can help with your project and give you a free estimate. Check us out – Select Hardwood Floors.

Hardwood floor professionals speak of grades of wood. It sounds to the layman as if the grade determines the quality of the wood, although this is not strictly true. But the appearance is very different.

There are four grades of wood. Clear, Select, and Common #1 and Common #2. Clear grade wood has a very uniform appearance with almost no marks on it. It makes a very uniform dance floor or gymnasium.

Select grade wood has some knots and streaks in the wood and shows a natural heartwood color. It provides a wood floor that looks like wood.

Common grade wood comes in two grades actually. Common #1 has a lot of variation in color from light to dark, and has streaks and knots and wormholes. It has more imperfections than Select.

Common #2 is the most rustic looking of all the grades. It’s got a lot of knots and wormholes, and streaks and knots and color variations. This grade is mostly used where the style of the building or room is rustic.

All of the different types of wood – ash, maple, oak, pine, etc. – can come in each of the four grades.

Normally when people consider hardwood floors, bamboo and cork are not what comes to mind immediately. They are considered exotics in the industry.

But bamboo comes in about 20 different styles and colors and makes a beautiful wood floor. Most of the colors are from medium light to very light blonde wood. Some show the joints that make bamboo distinctive, but in the very light choices, the joints are barely visible. This is the same bamboo that grandpa made into a cane fishing pole, but it’s grown huge when used for flooring, not just a little half inch round pole.

If you’ve ever seen bamboo growing, you’ll know why it is a very green solution to flooring – it grows like weeds and is easily and quickly replaced. In fact, in some areas it is considered a weed – bamboo can cover an area very quickly and need cutting.

Cork is also a green solution for flooring and is considered an exotic. But it isn’t like putting the corks out of your wine bottles on the floor. It comes in huge tough and durable sheets or it comes in tile size sheets and when laid on the floor it can look almost like stone, but feel gentle (like the hardwood floor it is) on your feet.

Cork also comes in various shades, which can even be used together to create borders or other designs in the floor.

How exciting it is to get a new hardwood floor!  You have picked the color (no easy task) and have planned the wall colors to go with it.  Now it is time to decide between a glossy or matte finish on your floor.

There are some opinions which differ drastically in regards to the finish of your hardwood floor.  Maybe you like a refined matte look and feel that doesn’t call attention to itself, and then there are those who love a high shine, mirror like flooring.

Here are some factors to take a look at:

A Satin Finish has a soft, non-reflective look.  It is used often in contemporary settings as well as traditional decorating. 

Semi-Gloss is a little shinier in appearance and can work in both settings as well. 

High-gloss is very reflective and gives a mirror like gym floor look.  It is very contemporary.

High-gloss works better on a lighter stained floor because on dark stained floors scratches and dirt will show easily.  The shinier your floor is the more it will show scratches. 

Satin and semi-gloss work very well in most areas of your home.  A dark high-gloss floor while looking elegant is also a high maintenance floor.

Professional hardwood workers can give you more information on which finish to choose for your home!