January 11, 2012

A good floor is enjoyable to all of the senses. This statement reflects Quick Step Home & Home Sound laminate flooring perfectly. It looks, feels and even sounds like a true hardwood floor- without the price and problems of laying and maintaining hardwood. Quick Step floors are made in North Carolina and offer some of the best consumer warranties available in the market place today.

With the ScratchGard Surface Protection this floor is a perfect choice for your home or office.  Each flooring plank is more resistant to micro-abrasions than other leading laminate flooring brands. ScratchGard technology helps protect this floor against damage caused by everyday use and provides an extra layer of protection against scuffs from foot traffic and everyday wear.

Brazilian Cherry

Quick-Step Home and Sound offers authentic looking traditional planks in 2-Strip and 3-Strip designs. The square edges create a seamless transition from plank to plank. The authentic surface texture gives a truly realistic wood look! The quality look and construction of this floor makes it one of the BEST values in the laminate flooring market today.

The Quick-Step H&S line has planks that are 47 1/4”long and 7 1/2” wide.  As with all of Quick-Step flooring, the H&S line is AC4 rated and suitable for heavy residential or commercial usage. The flooring includes a 20 year manufacturer’s warranty against wear, fade and stain. Quick-Step has simply provided a outstanding floor and leaves you to decide which color, style or design works best for your residential or commercial space.

The Home and Sound family includes a large selection of wood grains from which to choose.  The surface finishes vary from textured authentic to natural authentic; each giving the planks a unique natural wood look. The ten styels in the offering are: Blonde Maple, Terra Merbau, Panga Panga, Dark Acacia, Russet Cherry, Ginger Oak, Spice Oak, Sunset Oak, Brazilian Cherry, and Butterscotch Oak. 

The patented, innovative Uniclic locking system helps prevent water damage and warping and guarantees no height differences between boards. Installation of all Quick-Step floors is very user friendly. There are two easy installations methods from which to choose. Boards can be joined by angling planks and clicking them together or you can slide boards together horizontally and tap them into place.

Be sure to check out Abundance Flooring’s entire collection of quality Quick-Step Laminate Flooring right HERE!

Wood Look Vinyl Tile

The cherry wood flooring in your living and dining room looks fabulous. Problem is, the floor in the kitchen is looking a little sad. What to do?

More wood is one answer. But there’s an asterisk on this one. Do you want to expose your wood floor to spilled milk, water leakage from problem plumbing, and the sand, grime and other offenders so frequently tracked in from outside? And what about bathrooms and your front and back entries? Even woods toughened with hard finishes are vulnerable to everyday assaults at these spots.

Fake it. Pick a wood-look material that has a track record of durability in high-traffic and wet areas. Consider the options:

• Vinyl. With the sophisticated technologies of today, the graining patterns in wood-look vinyl are strikingly real. There is great variety in species and finish colors, and seamless sheet goods put up a strong defense against moisture. Kitchens and bathrooms are safe with this flooring. Go with a fiberglass-backed vinyl and you may even be able to put the floor down as a DIY project.

• LVT  Tile. Step up in style and durability with Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT). Vinyl tiles that mimic plank wood, parquet, stone, marble, granite and other looks are available. For a front entry, rich, woody tiles create a luxurious feeling while handling water, snow, and most other things tracked in during inclement weather.

• Laminate. Get the color and finish you want in a wood look, and also handle installation yourself. This material is good for the kitchen and entries. If installing in a bathroom, make sure the flooring is specified for wet areas. Stick with major brands, which offer consistent quality and better warranties than most off-brand imports.  Abundance Flooring recommends Quick-Step as a great starting place.

There are many reasons why you should consider buying laminate flooring for your home. Firstly it comes in a wide variety of wood and stone finishes which are very realistic to look at. Also it is easy to look after and maintain and is both moisture and scratch resistant. Because of the technology it is able to create the most realistic types of clear and vibrant laminate flooring designs available anywhere in the world today.

One company, Classen, has a patented installation system known as MegaLock Laminate Flooring System which makes it much easier to install and there is no need for the use of glue (so no mess). Plus they also have a very capable website where you can obtain information and advice on any flooring project that you may be carrying out.

Why Choose Laminate Flooring Instead of Hardwoods?

Consumers have been discovering that there are a lot of advantages to having laminate floors installed in their homes instead of the more traditional hardwood flooring. For starters, laminate flooring is made of anywhere from three to seven layers of materials making it very durable. One of the layers of the laminate flooring controls the look of the floor. It is made by using photographic images that cause the floors to look like authentic hardwoods with grain, color, and even knots.

Since laminate technology relies on photographic images, many more designs can be used than are available in solid hardwoods. Even when using a standard wood image, such as an oak grain, the two looks will be somewhat different.

Laminate Flooring Construction

No two boards of solid hardwoods will ever be exactly the same due to the natural graining and flaws in the wood, but the patterns in laminates are repeated over and over. Rather than being a disadvantage in laminate floors, this is actually a plus in that if you need to replace a damaged plank in your laminate floor, it will be much easier to find a new one that will match your floor exactly.

One of the most appealing features of laminate floors is that they can be purchased about twenty five to fifty percent cheaper than comparable hardwoods. What this means for you as the consumer is that you can give your home the look you are trying to achieve without the high cost.

Laminate flooring is glueless and made using a tongue-and-groove design, so it is far easier to install than hardwood flooring and can save you the cost of a professional installer. Laminate floors are called floating floors just for this very reason. Without having to use nails or glue to install your flooring makes it an easy task to do on your own, and you’ll be able to accomplish the job quickly. Without the mess of using glue, clean up is a breeze. After you install your floor you can start living on it immediately which certainly beats having to wait for the glue to dry on a hardwood floor.

Another reason that it’s faster to install laminate flooring than it is hardwoods is because certain laminate planks are made somewhat wider than hardwood planks. This means that you’ll have fewer boards to cut and install which will mean you can finish the process in a much shorter time.

You’ll like the awesome durability of laminate flooring. It is designed to be about fifteen times as strong as the best natural hardwood flooring. Because of its strength, it’s much more difficult to damage a laminate floor, and it will stand up to high traffic much better than the solid wood does. Many laminate flooring products come with a fifteen to twenty year warranty which is considerably longer than the warranties offered for hardwoods. This shows that the manufacturers of laminates have more confidence in the durability of their products, and you can, too.

Another of the great qualities of laminate flooring is that it can block the ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun and prevent them from fading the color of the floor. Hardwood floors can’t boast this quality which is another reason why they need a lot more maintenance than laminates do. You won’t need to refinish a laminate floor due to fading, even if you could, but you will have to take that into consideration with a hardwood floor.

You’ll enjoy the ease with which you can maintain your laminate floors. Designed so that they don’t trap any dirt, day-to-day care will only involve running over the floors with a brush or dust mop. Spills can easily be wiped up with a sponge or paper towel and will cause no damage to the floor. A lot more care is required to keep hardwood floors looking their best.

Reviewing the pros of using laminate flooring.

1. Laminate flooring is available in a number of realistic designs both in wood, tile or stone effect.

2. The cost of buying this type of flooring compared to the purchase of real solid or engineered flooring is much cheaper.

3. Laminate flooring has been designed to last and is extremely durable as well as being much less likely to scratch compared to wood.

4. Most manufacturers warranty their products against wear, fade and staining for 15 to 20 years or more.  Casa brand by Classen carries a lifetime warranty!

5. It is easy to install because of its special interlocking installation system.   This makes laminate floors DIY friendly as it only floats over rather than it needing to be attached to the sub-floor.

6. It can easily be adjoined to other floors.  A simple transition accomplishes this because most laminate flooring is between 7-12mm in thickness.

7. Not only is laminate flooring environmentally friendly as it is made with recycled materials,  but it is also child and pet friendly.

Since its introduction into the US in the early 80′s, laminate flooring has experienced an unprecedented 20% annual growth at the expense of other floor types. This has made laminate the fastest growing flooring segment in the country. The appeal lies not only in the aesthetic value of its representation of real hardwood, but also due to its incredible durability and ease of maintenance. So, what is laminate flooring?

Although laminate flooring is made to look like real wood flooring, there is actually no solid wood used in its construction.  Laminate floors are made up of several materials bonded together under high pressure. Most laminate flooring consists of a moisture resistant layer under a layer of HDF (high density fiberboard). This is topped with a high resolution photographic image of natural wood.

Laminate Flooring Construction

The process is then finished with an extremely hard, clear coating made from special resin-coated cellulose to protect the laminate flooring.Laminate flooring is perfect for anyone wanting a durable floor for a fraction of the price and installation time of a hardwood floor, but with the attractiveness of real hardwood.  Recent years have seen the addition of tile, stone or other natural surfaces looks manufactured into laminate planking.

Unlike hardwood, laminate floors will not stain, fade, dent and are far more scratch and water resistant. Laminate floors come with cores ranging from 6mm up to 12mm. A thicker core is more stable, less vulnerable to buckling and will sound more like real hardwood when walked on. Good quality cores are treated with water repellent chemicals, and resist swelling due to excessive moisture.

Use of Laminate in Kitchen

This is very important when considering placing laminate wood flooring in bathrooms and kitchen.  For these applications also consider a floor that has Paraffin wax impregnated joints. The Paraffin wax acts as a water repellent and will prevent topical water spills from penetrating down to the core.  Laminate wood flooring offers the best combination of quality and value in a wide range of colors, styles and designs and are also constructed for exceptional strength and durability and will last for years.

I have had many customers ask me this question, “What is Floating Flooring”?  Here is the easiest explanation:

A floating floor is a floor that is installed over a layer of underlayment.  This allows flooring systems to be connected or glued together without the individual planks being nailed or glued into the permanent floor. Instead, the “floats” on the layer of foam, felt or rubber underlay. The underlayment itself can be installed on the permanent sub-flooring surface.

There are many reasons why a customer would chose a floating flooring system, the most common being the sub-floor is a material upon which the finished flooring cannot be nailed, for example, concrete.  The two most common types of floating floors are Laminate and Engineered Hardwood floors.  For more information on the difference between Laminate and Engineered floors, see my blog on those two systems.

Many customers have asked how the wear rating system for Laminate Flooring is determined.  Here is the simplest definition:

The common term used to denote the durability level of laminate flooring is its “AC” rating. AC ratings are an abbreviated representation of a laminate’s resistance to abrasion, impact, stains and cigarette burns. The ratings also indicate that the product has been tested for the effects of furniture legs, casters, and swelling along its edges. If a laminate flooring product has a rating, then it has passed all of the test criteria. Failing just one test will disqualify a product.

The following is a breakdown of the AC ratings, their associated symbols and some suitable uses:

	AC 1 Light Residential House, One Person (Residential, Moderate Traffic: Suitable for bedrooms or guest rooms)
	AC 2 General Residential Residential, General Traffic: Suitable for living rooms or dining rooms
	AC 3   Heavy Residential Residential, Heavy Traffic: Suitable for all areas
	AC 3  Light Commercial Commercial, Moderate Traffic: Hotel rooms, small offices
	AC 4  General Commercial Commercial, General Traffic: Office, boutiques, cafés
	AC 5  Heavy Commercial Commercial, Heavy Traffic: Public buildings, department stores.