Wood flooring advice

There Will Be Flood!

(Cover: 2013 Jamestown, CO flood. Photo by: Steve Zumwalt/FEMA,from the FEMA Photo Library)

Add flood insurance to your Colorado homeowner’s policy

With warmer spring weather right around the corner we’re saying goodbye to frost and snow, and hello to the potential for flooding. For many Mountain Communities, as well as the Front Range taking precautionary measures to avoid damage in the event of a flood should be at the forefront of every homeowner’s mind.

We’re entering a season of heavy rains and hailstorms. This is great for all of our river rafting sports enthusiasts as our rivers will quickly fill up and come alive, showing off our world renowned rapids, but when the rivers overflow and the fast melting snow comes rushing down from the Rocky Mountains, it’s time to start thinking about flood insurance.

Water damage is the biggest enemy of hardwood floors

Of course, we are mostly concerned for your hardwood floors. There aren’t many enemies of hardwood flooring – as long as they are installed correctly – but a flood is probably hardwood flooring enemy number one! Flood damage can cause millions of dollars in damage, so make sure that your homeowner’s insurance policy will cover you in the case of a flood.

Your standard homeowner’s insurance policy will not automatically cover flood damage. You need to talk to your broker about adding this to your policy. Not having flood insurance is too risky for any Colorado homeowner. Your hardwood floors alone could break the bank if you need to completely redo your floors due to water damage.

Of course, you may never see a flood in your lifetime, but there’s always the danger of a burst water pipe or a broken washing machine or dishwasher that can wreak enough havoc on your floors to make flood insurance worth your money.

Protect your hardwood floors and get flood insurance

If you are already staring at the rotten side of water damage to your hardwood floors, schedule a free consultation, or stop by our showrooms in Denver and Evergreen, Colorado, and talk to the experts about the best way to move forward and repair (or replace) your damaged hardwood floors.

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What’s the Story Behind Your Reclaimed Floors?

Reclaimed hardwood floors are popular for many reasons. First, it is environmentally responsible. Second, they look cool. And third, they have a rich history that you can’t get with new hardwood floors. This is also true for our reclaimed mixed species hardwood floors.

Historic buildings often become beautiful reclaimed hardwood floors

When old commercial buildings come down, the wood is often recycled into hardwood floors. Your reclaimed wood could have been an old town hall or a candy factory. The vintage, eclectic look of reclaimed floors are just the surface of why they are so cool. For antique and history buffs, learning where your reclaimed wood come from is as much fun as designing your new floors. The modern day home is all about incorporating environmental responsibility and history with modern design.

Reclaimed wood can come from anywhere, from land or sea. Wood from ships lost at sea have been recovered and salvaged to use as hardwood flooring in a new home. Maybe they were in search of new undiscovered territories; maybe they were taking down by pirates. Maybe they were pirates. You just never know what stories your salvaged wood has to tell.

Share the history of your reclaimed hardwood floors

Candy factories, airplane hangars, sports stadiums, and other historic buildings all have a chance to end up in your home. Now you have a story to tell your guests, and you can feel good knowing that they didn’t end up in our already overflowing landfills.

install reclaimed hardwood floors in your Colorado home or business, talk to us about the best options for a great hardwood flooring experience. We want you to feel good about the wood – whether it’s reclaimed or engineered. We want you to have a great experience when installing new hardwood floors, and that includes knowing the history of your wood.

Reclaimed hardwood floor installation and repair services in Denver, CO

Stop by our hardwood flooring show and design rooms in Denver and Evergreen, CO, for inspiration or schedule a free consultation with our experts!

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Wooden Wall Decor for Your Super Bowl Baby

According to the NFL’s “Super Bowl Babies” spot during Super Bowl 50 – you know, the one where the Broncos kicked the Panther’s…ehum, you know the one – a lot of you Bronco fans went on to have a fun, sexy time. So, if the ad rings true, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to decorate the nursery for your little Super Bowl Broncos’ baby that is due in about nine months time.

Wood wall treatments create stimulating art for your Super Bowl baby nursery

Nothing says Colorado and Broncos like the rustic, cabin, mountain, cowboy feel. Since most babies need a soft landing during the first part of their lives, hardwood floors are probably not ideal for your nursery. To create a little country charm, look to decorative wooden wall paneling to create something fun for your baby, and you, to look at!

With reclaimed pallets, you can create a collage of different colors and shapes, making a decorative piece of art that the adults will appreciate, and something fun and stimulating for your baby. You can treat your walls much like your floors and use different installation patterns.

Wood wall and ceiling treatments are perfect for the next generation of Broncos fans

Since your baby spends much of his or her time laying on their back staring at the ceiling, there’s nothing you can do about that. But, you can, at least, make it interesting for your baby by using wood ceiling treatments. You can stain the wood in a variety of colors, or you can go for a more classic rustic look with gray stained, sandblasted cedar for a broad range of home designs.

Congratulations to all of you who are about to have a little Broncos baby. You’ve got nine months to get ready!

If you’re looking for hardwood inspiration for your cowboy or cowgirls nursery, stop by one of our showrooms in Denver or Evergreen and one of our hardwood flooring craftsmen will be happy to give you a free consultation on the best hardwood flooring, and wall and ceiling treatments.

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Installing Solid Wood Flooring

Which direction you lay your solid hardwood floors can have just as much to do with the shape of your room or the direction of your subfloor joists. Since we’re talking about installing solid hardwood flooring, you are going to need a wooden subfloor to support the wood boards, so we’re going to assume, for the sake of argument, that you have the right subfloor for the hardwood floors you want.

Solid wood flooring should be laid perpendicular to subfloor joists

For maximum support, and to avoid your floors sagging and separating creating unsightly gaps and distorted floors, you need to run the floor perpendicular to the subfloor joists. Typically, in more modern homes, the subfloor will also be installed so that when you lay your floors, they will be running front to back in any room, starting from the main point of entrance. As you enter a room, you should be walking with the floor boards, not across them. Typically, this would be your front door, but if you have an open space and the most commonly used entryway is a side door or even the back door, then you would start your installation from there.

No, you may have an odd shaped room where laying the boards parallel to the joist system will flow better with the shape of the room. If you have a rectangular room or a shallow room and the entryway is on the long side of the rectangle, then laying the boards perpendicular can seem to cut off the room or make it look and feel smaller. If this is the case, you’ll need to talk to your flooring contractor about

Schedule a free consultation with a hardwood flooring contractor in Denver or Evergreen, CO

Fixing up the subfloor to allow for a parallel installation over the subfloor joists is a simple process, but an important one. In most cases, all you need to do is to install a layer of plywood over the joists to give your solid wood floors even support.

Your floors are only as good as your subfloor, so make sure you haven’t hired a contractor who thinks they can skip this step of strengthening your subfloor. If you’re not sure what your subfloor can handle, or what direction your floors should run to make your home feel and look it’s best, stop by one of our showrooms or schedule a free consultation.

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Installing Diagonal Hardwood Flooring

There’s no limit to what you can do with hardwood floors. We’ve gone over several attractive installation patterns, but one that is not getting the attention it deserves is the diagonal hardwood floor. Most contractors will try to avoid this type of installation as it requires extreme precision and a lot of patience, but a true hardwood flooring craftsman will not shy away from this challenge.

Schedule a free hardwood flooring design consultation in Denver or Evergreen, CO

Diagonal flooring gives a bold statement in any home, and it’s a great way to make your hardwood floors stand out. For an open floor plan or just a large room, diagonal floors can give your floors that extra “wow” factor that will make all visitors take notice.

If you want your floors to stand out, give them some personality, as well as stretch and open up a room, then talk to a flooring craftsman about installing diagonal solid hardwood floors. Depending on the size and shape of your room, you and your contractor can figure out what the best angle for the diagonals should be, either the classic 45 degrees or less. If you are choosing the diagonal flooring for more than one room, we recommend sticking with the same diagonal angle for all rooms, so your home doesn’t start to look too busy and dysfunctional.

Because of the extra labor and time that it usually takes to install your floors at a diagonal, one thing that you should consider is that this type of installation does come with a bit of extra waste due to the extra cutting that is required. For those of you looking to make the least environmental impact with your floors, this extra waste should be taken into consideration. Or you need to start thinking of some arts and craft project you can use the extra wood that you are left with at the end of the installation process.

Hardwood flooring installation experts in Denver and Evergreen, Colorado

However, you want to lay your hardwood flooring, finding a contractor who can help guide you in the right direction (see what we did there!), and help you find the best pattern for your space. Before you begin any hardwood flooring project, do some research, consult with some experts and find inspiration from your a local flooring contractor.

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Kids, Toys, and Hardwood Flooring

Many parents see hardwood floors as “one more thing my child can fall and hurt themselves.” But, before you move your whole family into a bouncy castle where there’s nothing hard to hit your head or glue foam mattresses to every surface of the home, let’s dispel some myths about kids, their toys, and your hardwood floors.

The perfect hardwood floors for families with active and imaginative kids

First of all, if you do end up living in a bouncy castle, can we come and visit? Second of all, there’s no reason you can’t be a great parent, have a lot of kids running around, and have beautiful hardwood floors. And you don’t have to keep the two separate. You just need to know what type of wood species to pick.

Kids and toy friendly grass flooring

The most durable “wood” of them all is not wood at all; it’s a grass. Bamboo flooring had it’s heyday about 5 or 6 years ago, and we’ve dabbled in the debate about the environmental impacts of bamboo flooring, but regardless of whether it’s trending or not, bamboo is one of the strongest, most durable types of flooring you can find.

Kids and toy friendly solid wood flooring

Pine, walnut, and cherry are very durable. However, when it comes to the finish of your solid wood flooring, the softer finishes will work much better for the purpose of kids. When your kids forget to take off their roller skates, or it’s raining so the big wheel races have to take place inside a softer finish will have more give under this extra pressure. Instead of cracking through a hard finish, the soft finish will merely (if at all) dent, and a dent is a lot less noticeable to the naked eye than a crack.

You can also go for the ultra trendy, environmentally friendly reclaimed wood. Besides being the responsible thing to do, part of the draw is that reclaimed wood floors come with the quirks and imperfections of a wood floor that have been around for ages. A few more imperfections created by your family won’t matter. It will only add to the charm.

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Preparing Your Subfloors for New Wood Floors

When it comes to your subfloor, the three magic words any hardwood flooring contractor wants to hear is “clean, dry, and flat!” Before any hardwood flooring installation project, make sure you talk to your contractor about the subfloor and give it a good inspection before you do anything else.

Common subfloor problems

Your floors are only going to be as good as the subfloor on which they lay. It’s like trying to make soup with a flavorless stock. You can add all the flair and fancy ingredients that you want, but if your base is weak, the result is going to be awful. Think of your subfloors as the stock (Woodstock? Sorry, couldn’t help myself) of the installation process. Okay, so now that we’ve mentioned soup you’re probably all getting hungry, so let’s quickly go over the some of the biggest problems that we’ve encountered when it comes to your subfloors.

The three subfloors your are likely to encounter are plywood, particle board, and concrete

Each type of subfloor may have an impact on your choice of flooring, but they all have one thing in common: if they aren’t installed correctly, they will affect your wood floors. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point your last-a-lifetime hardwood floors are looking like they may go into early retirement, very early retirement.

Inspect your subfloor before you begin installing new wood floors

To get ready for the installation of your new floors, make sure your subfloor goes through a thorough inspection process. Walk around to make sure that that nothing is loose, squeaky, or sticking out in places where they shouldn’t. Every flaw and inconsistency in your subfloor need to be repaired and corrected before you can begin laying your floors.

Check the moisture content for your subfloors

If you are trying to do this yourself, and you don’t have a moisture meter, then you are in above your head. Testing the moisture content of your subfloors is a step that many skip in their rush to get their new floors. But subfloors with a too high or too low moisture content will cause significant damage down the road, often leading to warped and cupped wood floors. It’s not a pretty picture, but it will cost you a pretty penny to repair. This is why your subfloors need to be in perfect condition before laying new floors.

Your hardwood floors should last a lifetime, and part of ensuring that is making sure that you have the right subfloor for the wood floor of your dreams. To ensure proper installation, the right flooring materials, as well as finding the correct moisture content talk to a hardwood flooring installation expert in your area.

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Be a Hardwood Flooring Rebel and Leave Them Unfinished

Choosing between the many floor finishes can be a little overwhelming. You just spent a long time deciding on the wood species and the installation pattern, and now you have hundreds of floor finishes to choose from to complete your hardwood flooring project. But, what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could just leave your floors exactly as they are, raw and natural.

Tips to great natural hardwood flooring in Colorado

We teach our kids to appreciate natural beauty. We teach our kids to ignore photoshopped magazine covers and to appreciate their bodies as they are, not what doctors and diets can manipulate them to look like. We teach our kids that make-up should enhance natural beauty, not alter the way your face looks. The same is true for hardwood flooring finish.

Sure, you can find a finish that will completely alter the look of the wood species you choose, changing the color, hiding little imperfections, making each board look exactly like the next. The way that everyone now has the same perfect white Hollywood smile. It gets a little creepy when everything looks the same. It takes away a lot of the personality. Wood has personality. Let it shine through.

Leaving your floors naked and raw may feel wrong, but if they’ve been installed correctly and sanded smooth so you won’t get splinters in your feet, then unfinished floors can be quite beautiful, and just as durable as those with a finish.

Hardwood flooring inspiration and installation in Denver and Evergreen, CO

Raw floors will be more susceptible to stains and watermarks, but as the wood ages, like our face, the marks of time will show. Like wrinkles, the marks of time on your floors are like memories. And like memories, some are better than others, and the best part about hardwood flooring is that you can sand away those memories if one day you think you’ve had enough.

Having a hard time making a decision on your next hardwood flooring project, call us for a free consultation, or stop by one of our showrooms for inspiration and guidance. 

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Hardwood Floors for An Open Plan Home

It’s not uncommon for new homeowners to want to knock down a wall or two creating a big, open space. The open floor plan is more popular than ever, but there’s more to creating harmony with a large space than simply tearing down a wall. If you are combining a few rooms into one big open floor plan, you will need to add one major item to your reconstruction and remodeling project: new hardwood floors!

The chances are that each room that you are combining won’t have matching hardwood floors. Even if they have the same old, worn out matching carpet, you’re still going to be left with a patchwork of flooring once you remove the walls. Having a single type of floor for the whole area is going to go a long way in making your home feel harmonious.

Of course, you can break up the large living space by creating a few areas with unique flooring. Either using a different patterns, or a different wood species, but you need to be careful that you don’t overcrowd your space with too many conflicting patterns, shapes, and colors. The point of the open floor space is to create a single, warm, welcoming space for your family and your guests. The reason you want an open space is to bring people together, not make them feel fragmented and unbalanced.

Make hardwood flooring for an open floor plan consistent throughout

By choosing one type of hardwood floor to be the red thread throughout the space will allow you to get a little creative with your choice of furniture, wall decorations, and another decor that can help break up the big room into smaller functional sections. Like creating an area for dining, an area for reading, relaxing, watching TV, playing and entertaining. The great part about an open floor plan is that everyone can be doing something different, but still be together at the same time.

The most important aspect of your open floor home is that your living space now includes the kitchen. The kitchen is the reason the whole open floor plan came to be in the first place. For one, you will never be isolated from your family when you are cooking dinner. And two, you will never be isolated from your guests at the next party because you are stuck in the kitchen. And three, it will give you much needed space in the kitchen when you guests and your family inevitable end up in there so they can keep you company.

Hardwood flooring design and inspiration in Denver and Evergreen, Colorado

Extending hardwood floors to your kitchen is not as crazy as it sounds. As long as you take measures to protect your floors from stains and water damage. But, if you do decide to go with a material that seems more kitchen friendly, like tile, look for patterns and colors that complement the rest of your hardwood floors so that the contrast isn’t so stark.

If you’re looking to install brand new hardwood floors in your new open floor plan, stop by our design rooms for some inspiration, or schedule a free design consultation with one of our hardwood flooring craftsmen.

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The Benefits of Buying Mill Direct Hardwood Floors

Congratulations on realizing that the best thing for your new hardwood floors is to have a professional in charge of the installation process! That doesn’t mean that you can’t be hands-on during the entire process. Just because you have a professional crew, doesn’t mean that you aren’t part of the decision process, and buying wood directly from the mill is a way for you to feel like you are almost building your floors from scratch.

Mill direct wood is made to your exact specification

We all want to feel the personal satisfaction of building something with our own two hands, but our skills aren’t always up to the task. Many have tried and failed when it comes to hardwood flooring installations, often paying a lot more in repairs, or completely do over. But, hiring professionals don’t mean that you can’t feel like this is your project, and choosing the wood is one way to feel like you are the one in charge.

Instead of picking wood from a catalog and then stepping back from the process, talk to us about mill direct wood. You’ll get to see where the wood comes from, and you can speak directly to the people who are cutting and treating the wood, getting them to saw each of your boards to your exact specifications. You can make them wider, longer, etc., depending on your personal aesthetic. Sure, someone else is physically in charge of sawing, but you’re right there with them during the decision process.

Mill direct wood products for your Colorado floors

Having a hardwood flooring craftsman at your side, helping you oversee and complete the project will allow for your direct mill wood to go through the proper acclimation period before the floor is installed in your home.

And once you’re ready to oversee the installation of your new floors, you’ll feel like you’ve been part of the process every step of the way. It’s as close to “doing it yourself” as you’ll get, without risking damaging or flubbing up your floors. It is the equivalent of being there for the birth of your baby or staying in the waiting area. Buying mill direct wood skips over several middlemen who have made decisions for you before you even see the product.

Make yourself the main person in charge of making the decisions, and feel good about every choice!

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