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Hardwood
beauty begins with sub-floor
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Homeowners who have
always longed for hardwood floors in their homes will be glad to
know such flooring can be installed in almost any house.
Bill Eva, owner of Headingley's Canoak Flooring Ltd., Wylie
Knight, general manager of Winnipeg's Bill Knight Flooring &
Carpets Ltd. and Ed Johner, manager of the Winnipeg Windsor Plywood
store on Century Street, all say that, in the vast majority of
cases, hardwood flooring can be installed in almost any home, even
in a house that hasn't had hardwood flooring installed in it before.
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All a room needs before a
solid-plank hardwood floor can be nailed down is a proper sub-floor,
Knight says.
"The sub-floor has to be of a minimum-required
thickness and strength as laid out by the National Wood Flooring
Association guidelines," Knight says. "And that would be 5/8-inch or
thicker plywood or 23/32-inch underlayment-grade oriented strand
board (OSB). Those figures would specifically be for solid hardwood
flooring, 3/4-inch thick, either for raw or pre-finished product."
 And certainly anyone who wants to
install hardwood flooring in their home would be making a great
flooring choice, Eva says.
"It's a great type of flooring to
have," Eva says. "It's easy to maintain, it lasts for the lifetime
of a house, it's beautiful, it's very friendly towards people with
allergies because it doesn't trap allergens (like carpets) and it
adds value to a house. It's generally thought that houses sell
faster and for more money when they have hardwood floors."
When a person goes shopping for hardwood flooring, the most
important thing that person should do is just to shop around, Johner
says.
"You should educate yourself, because there are so
many grades. People will phone up and ask me, 'How much is an oak
floor?' Well, that's like phoning up and asking me, 'How much is an
automobile?' It really is. Because there are so many different types
of hardwood flooring, and they have to be seen."
In terms of
what's the best type of solid-plank hardwood flooring to buy, Johner
says people can get into exotic imported woods like purple heart and
teak, but red oak and maple flooring are currently the most popular
types being sold at his store. Both types of hardwood are native to
Manitoba and are therefore relatively inexpensive, both are already
used as wood trim in many Manitoba homes and thus would match well
with much existing decor and both are very hard.
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