Seriously, who knew there were so many types of “wood” floors out there?! I started my research and shopping for wood floors about 3 months ago. The wood floors were somewhere I wanted to spend money, time, and energy because quite frankly I don’t plan on changing them any time soon. Paint color and tile even seem a little more disposable. Since this was going to be such a big investment I thought I would dive in and try to learn as much as I can so I can be an educated consumer at the time of purchase. Aren’t I so mature? Don’t worry, I still laugh when someone falls and find little kids cursing hilarious.
When I ventured over to lumberliquidators.com, I was hit with 4 different tab options- Solid Hardwood, Engineered Hardwoods, Bamboo & Cork and lastly Laminate and Vinyl. I knew I didn’t want Laminate & Vinyl so I went to Solid Hardwoods first because that seemed most logical. Then when I started doing different search options “between this price and that price”, “this wide”, “this color” a ton of Engineered Hardwood floors came up. I actually liked the engineered hardwood floors BETTER than the solid hardwood floors… aesthetically. This is when it got complicated. When we physically went to the stores I asked a few different sales reps which one they recommended and everyone told me something different. The basic idea of an engineered hardwood floor is that a thinner piece of real wood is glued on top of ply wood instead of a solid thick piece of hardwood for “solid hardwood”.
There are a few benefits to Engineered Hardwood floors, they’re usually a little cheaper, they say they’re easier to install, they adapt easier to different climates and are less sensitive to humidity and temperate changes. The down side is that you can only refinish the floors a certain amount of times before you hit the ply wood layer, ya know since you only have that thin layer of real wood on top? Since we have a 75 bowling ball with legs running around our house we decided that having the option to sand, stain and re-sand and re-stain as many times as we want wood (ß hah see what I did there?!) be the way to go.
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Then, solid wood floors are obviously made of all wood and you can buy them in many different types of wood- oak, pine, cherry and then you can stain all of those woods different colors then you can buy them in different widths. See it gets overwhelming for a girl? I prefer wider boards, if I could take an old barn floor with 6 inch planks, I would, in a New York minute but since that is wayyyy out of my PDiddy budget I needed to reconsider that. THAT’S when I came across something known as Handscraped Hardwood floors. The only words I can use to describe it is.. tangible heaven. They look rustic, beat up, warm, worn but perfect all at the same time. I remember in high school I really wanted a pair of distressed Abercrombie jeans and my dad didn’t understand why I (he) should spend $90 on a pair of jeans that looked like I had owned them for 10 years, dragged them through paint and then took a pair of scissors to them with a blindfold on. He then told me to give him a pair of jeans and he would only charge $20 to do that to them. I feel like this is the same situation and if only my dad knew how much I spend on distressed jeans now he would understand why I feel okay with spending money on distressed looking floors. So, the tangible heaven, “Handscraped” is really just a finish on the floors, it looks like this:
My thought it this, when that 75 bowling ball does start to scratch the floor it won’t stick out like a sore thumb. Or maybe I should just not cut his nails for a few weeks and let him loose in the house with Britney Spears (Jenny's cat, not the singer… geez people) and get distressed floors that way?! That would probably be the economical way to do it.
Besides hardwood and engineered hardwoods you have the environmentally friendly option, Bamboo. This is a natural fiber that comes from bamboo grass in Asia. I read that bamboo can grow up to 3ft A DAY, I wish my hair grew at half that rate.. or maybe a ¼ of that rate. And since Bamboo is a grass instead of tree wood it’s naturally resistant to moisture. Downside, it’s expensive and colors are limited but you really can’t put a price on saving the earth and not contributing to deforestation like we are. Now can ya? I mean we can because we have a budget.. but you can’t, right?!
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