Engineered Floor Repair and Refinish- New Ipswich, NH

The floor in this home is a Kahrs engineered product and, as you can see, it has a really unique look to it.












Unfortunately, some areas of the floor had been damaged by water, so we were able to repair the damaged areas and then refinish the entire floor together.

We removed the damaged boards and patched those areas with new boards. Here, you can see that the newer boards installed near the tile are a bit lighter. After the entire floor is finished, all of the boards will look the same.

Bona Traffic polyurethane with a semi-gloss sheen was used to finish the floors. Here, we are in the process of applying the third and final coat of polyurethane. Bona Traffic is a commercial-grade finish, so these floors will withstand years of activity.

Below you can see a shot of the kitchen area before and then after it was refinished.

Resources referenced in this post:
Kahrs- http://www.kahrs.com/en-us/Consumer/floors/
Bona- https://www.bona.com/en-US/United-States1/BonaSystem/Coatings/Finishes/BonaTraffic/

Water Damage Repair with Bamboo Floating Floor- Andover, MA

We installed this prefinished bamboo product in the lower-level of this home to replace a water-damaged bonus room. 

The lower level of this home had pretty extensive water damage. When we pulled up the damaged floor we also found water-damaged cork beneath.

The cork was glued down to the concrete with a troweled wood glue. We removed the cork and then scraped the glue off of the concrete to prep the water-damaged areas of cork for replacement. 

Unfortunately, as every job has unexpected things arise, cork was not readily available for purchase that day at any of the local distributors. In the interest of keeping the job on track and finishing on time, we substituted with rubber underlayment in place of cork. The cork and rubber underlayment were the same thickness and are very similar products. 

Most flooring installers would stop there but we decided to also add layer of QuietWalk underlayment padding on top of the cork and rubber. This really took this installation to another level of quality. 

There are so many underlayment pads out there, and tend to be very expensive, although EverWood Flooring only uses QuietWalk Underlayment pad. 

You can read all about this product on their website (see the Resources section at the bottom of this profile), but here are a few:
- Sound absorption
- Moisture protection
- Smoothes out minor sub-floor imperfections
- Made from recycled materials

Then we installed Teragren Strand Bamboo floating flooring, glued at the seams. Teragren Bamboo is regarded as one of the highest end, best Bamboo products out there. 

This product can be installed a number of ways over a number of different subfloors. In this case, the customer mainly chose this product based on color to match the existing Exotic Wenge flooring in other areas of their home. 

It is most often installed being nailed down or glued to a subfloor, but Teragren has such a good milling system that the boards can be floated and glued at the seams. This is how we installed this bamboo over QuietWalk underlayment. 

This type of installation can be very difficult for a homeowner where the product is not nailed and has no locking mechanism. Relying on glue to keep each row bonded to the next, we used blue tape on top of the boards to keep everything from separating during installation. For a homeowner, I would recommend either nailing or hiring a professional to glue the product to the floor or at the seams. 

A few words about Teragren Strand Bamboo...
This product is certified by USDA BioPreferred as 94% biobased, meaning that most of it is "...derived from plants and other renewable agricultural, marine, and forestry materials..." Even still, the product has a Janka ball rating of 3271, which makes it harder than oak. 

Quick product facts:

• 160% harder than oak (3271 Janka ball rating)
• Sustainable product
• Durable 9-step UV Cured Polyurethane coating system with aluminum oxide wear layer for abrasion resistance

Resources

For more information on Bio Preferred program see: 

http://www.biopreferred.gov/BioPreferred/faces/pages/AboutBioPreferred.xhtml

For more information on Teragren products see:

http://www.teragren.com/p_portfolio_tg.html

For more information on QuietWalk products see:

http://www.mpglobalproducts.com/products/fiber-products/quietwalk/

Solid Ash Flooring Repair & Refinish- Hudson, NH

This project features the results of our repair and dustless refinishing services. The home owner had a random-width, white ash hardwood installed, which we refinished with Bona Woodline oil-modified polyurethane. The home owner already had ash flooring throughout the entire home, and water damage required the kitchen floor to be replaced in large sections. 

We were able to repair the flooring and remove the cupped boards, successfully weaving in new flooring. In the image below, you can see the newly patched area after it was installed and before it was finished. On the right, you can see the area blends in perfectly after the entire floor has been finished. 

 

Here we are preparing our dustless sanding
equipment to sand the entire floor using
our Atomic Dust Containment System

As I mentioned, this flooring project included a random-width pattern. For a unique look, a random-width (or mixed-width) installation uses a mixture of board widths throughout the space. In this case, the floors included 3", 4", 5", and 6" white ash hardwood and had to be matched perfectly.  

In case you aren't familiar with many wood species beyond say, oak, add Ash to your list because here are some interesting characteristics about the product. White ash is a domestic product and is currently available in plentiful supply. This makes ash hardwood an affordable wood flooring product option. Don't worry about durability with ash either because it falls right between red and white oak on a Janka Hardness Chart (more on this in a later post!). 

Another benefit to white ash is that it responds well to finishes (and stains too). As you can see, the wood offers a lot of character in its grains.  

In these photos, the floor looks shiny because the final coat of finish had just been applied. It appears that we applied a finish without stain, but actually used a natural Minwax stain. 

It was an excellent choice in this case, letting the wood's natural colors and character shine through while still having a slight stain to make the grains more noticeable.  

 

Here are some really good resources for more information on Ash and other wood species: http://woodfloors.org/ash-white-species.aspx, http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/white-ash/

You can learn more about Bona products here: http://www.bona.com/en-US/

You can learn more about Minwax products here: http://www.minwax.com/wood-products/