Pre-finished or traditional wood floors?

Solid wood floors currently come in two broad types: newer, prefinished versions; and the old-time, site-finished types. Each has pros and cons that become easier to understand when you consider your situation and values.

True quality transcends the ebb and flow of fashion cycles, and this is one indication that solid wood flooring is a premium home feature. While it's doubtful that orange shag carpet will ever enjoy a meaningful resurgence, wood floors are different. They're the real thing and people always come back to what's genuine. That's why wood floors are so popular.

It also happens that the depths of winter is an excellent time to install a new wood floor in your home. That's because indoor moisture levels are at their lowest annual levels right now. If you take advantage of this fact, and insist that your new wood flooring be handled correctly before installation, dry air yields the best, most reliably gap-free real wood floor available. But before you get that far, you've got some decisions to make.

Solid wood floors currently come in two broad types: newer, prefinished versions; and the old-time, site-finished types. Each has pros and cons that become easier to understand when you consider your situation and values.

Site-finished wood flooring arrives at your home as strips of interlocking bare lumber. These strips vary in width and are fastened to an underlying subfloor with hidden nails driven into the edge of each board. After installation the floor is sanded in place, to level and smooth it before application of a protective finish. Installed correctly, site-finished flooring is smooth and flat, with no-board-to-board grooves. It can also be stained to match existing trim and furnishings.

But to get these advantages you've got to endure the noise, dust, smell and confusion of coexisting alongside an industrial process. You can minimize this Dickensian hassle with the installation of temporary dust curtains and whole-house dust filters, but none of these work 100 per cent. Be sure to reschedule dinner parties for international dignitaries until the job is done.

Factory-finished wood flooring comes ready to install and requires no sanding or protection. The wood is precision-milled to minimize board-to-board mismatch in height, since leveling the joints between neighbouring boards with a sander isn't an option. A small (and sometimes not-so-small) angle is machined into each edge to hide any differences in board-to-board height that do slip in.

Freedom from sanding and finishing means that prefinished wood flooring is the ideal do-it-yourself option. You can pick away at the installation job yourself on evenings and weekends, without the need to hermetically seal your work area and don hearing protection. Another plus is the bulletproof factory-applied finish. In most cases it carries a substantial warranty and is tougher than anything that can be applied in the field. This is one advantage of the unique finishes and drying conditions possible in an industrial plant.

So why doesn't everyone install a factory-finished product when they want a new wood floor? The answer is appearance. Those small beveled edges, necessary as they are to camouflage board-to-board mismatch, impart a kind of jigsaw puzzle-look to the installation. This fact, coupled with the usually-short length of prefinished floor boards, creates a less unified appearance than some people find attractive.

Regardless of the type of solid wood flooring you choose, there are two things you need to do with it (or make sure gets done) before installation. Thing#1 involves stacking the flooring with strips of wood separating the horizontal layers. This promotes air circulation between each board and takes full advantage of dry, wintertime air. Thing#2 is easy. Let the wood sit in this pile for a week or two. It's less likely that prefinished flooring will need as much time to dry as bare wood could, but time is cheap insurance against one of the worst, and completely irreparable solid wood floor faults: board-to-board gaps opening up after installation. Given time, winter is the season of year that wood gets as dry and narrow as it'll be all year long. And when it comes to genuine wood flooring, that's exactly where you want to start nailing it down.

Softwood is good

All through this article I've avoided the term "hardwood floor". That's because this limits the scope of solid wood flooring options more than necessary. The fact is, softwoods like pine and spruce make excellent floors if you know how to deal with the material and know what to expect afterwards. In fact, softwood flooring is a great option for homes designed around a casual, rustic country look.

Pine, for instance, is less expensive than hardwoods, and its soft consistency makes it easier to install and finish. Yes, it will dent and scratch more than oak or maple, but with care and a reasonable dent-tolerance on your part, the distressed look is one of the advantages of softwood. Keep a can of stain handy to touchup areas that get damaged and show through with a light colour. Rub some stain into the area and what originally looked bad takes on an aged, antique kind of appearance. It doesn't suit all homes and people, but it definitely has a place.

You won't find lots of approval for softwood floors in the industry because it goes against traditions that have built-up around the business. But rest assured, softwood floors do work well enough to deserve the respectable reputation that still eludes this option.