engineered oak flooring

What Is Engineered Oak Flooring?

When you wish to set up a new flooring in your home, it’s tough not to choose a hardwood floor. Amongst the materials used for flooring, wood has been used for the longest, thanks to its appeal and durability. Equally, there are a lot of wood types you can decide from including maple, cherry, and oak–and even engineered oak flooring.

What is Engineered Oak Flooring?

If you’re not familiar with engineered oak flooring it is a wonderful option to solid oak, basically because it looks just like the actual thing, but has qualities that solid oak doesn’t have. Solid oak flooring is made up of oak and nothing else. Wood is lumbered from the oak tree and then ranked previous to being cut into flooring planks. Oak is mostly strong and hardwearing wood in addition to being fairly affordable and abundant, which is undoubtedly why it is so trendy.

installing an engineered oak flooring

Solid oak is 100% natural and as because of that, when warm and wet weather fluctuates, it expands and contracts. This is totally normal and takes place constantly with solid oak. On the other hand, this can cause concerns with flooring if it occurs exceptionally as it often does in bathrooms and kitchens.

Engineered oak flooring on the other hand, which is often referred to as ‘machined oak flooring’; ‘real layer oak flooring’ or ‘semi solid oak flooring’ remains pretty much un-phased by these weather changes.

Solid wood floors are created using planks of completely solid wood whilst engineered wood is made from numerous layers of hardwood. The upper layer is created of a slender strip of natural oak wood whereas the other layers are prepared from fibreboard or plywood.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t confuse engineered hardwood with laminate hardwood. Generally, a laminate hardwood has an image of wood on the outside while the centre is made from numerous layers of fibreboard.

Engineered oak flooring, like any other quality engineered flooring product is made up of layers of ply which are attached together to shape a solid and highly steady core board. That core board is then topped off with concrete oak and the completed product, even though more constant than solid oak flooring looks just like solid oak.

Where Do You Intend to Install the Flooring?

When natural elements similar to water and heat come into contact with wood, it contracts and expands accordingly. Eventually, this method may leave a number of gaps between planks that were firmly installed. Per se, solid wood is not the most excellent option if you want to set up in a space with high moisture content or temperature fluctuations.

engineered oak flooring

Given that engineered oak flooring has numerous layers of constant plywood, it makes a great alternative for laundry rooms, bathrooms, and kitchen. Simultaneously, the setting up process is quite dissimilar and therefore you can fit it where solid wood would be awkward to handle.

Setting Up a Wood Flooring

To set up a solid wood floor, you require containing a subfloor where it will be attached and this makes it hard to set up over a hard concrete. You can as well nail an engineered oak floor, or use staples to fasten the floor. Likewise, you can include a floating floor where the wood doesn’t include anything underneath. More frequently than not, installers will have some sort of cushioning material underneath and this means that you can have this floor in any place you want.

If you aim to leave the floor in an exceptional condition for your grandchildren, you might want to resolve on solid wood. Essentially, you can refinish this wood several times and the floor will be still good even after a number of generations. Be sure to read how to take care and renovate your floor vents as well.

Alternatively, you can refinish an engineered wood twice. But you can do supplementary refinishes if the wear layer is thick enough. As a rule of thumb, constantly ensure you ask an expert with the refinishing plan. On average, good engineered oak flooring can stay for about 10-20 years.

It’s vital to be well educated when making flooring resolutions for your residence. Researching and learning as much as you can about this procedure is necessary before you create any flooring investment.

Why Choose Engineered Oak Flooring:

It looks exactly like the real thing. Thanks to the solid oak top layer on engineered oak flooring it looks exactly like solid oak.

You can fit it in every room in the house. As we’ve mentioned, because of the intelligent way engineered oak flooring is made it can be built-in rooms where solid oak flooring wouldn’t usually be recommended, such as bathrooms and kitchens. This is great news for everyone who’s keen to have an oak floor but is concerned about the effects of moisture or temperature fluctuations.

It is appropriate for setting up over under floor heating. Solid oak flooring is usually a ‘no-no’ for fitting over under floor heating. Once more, thanks to its structure there is no issue fitting the correct engineered flooring over under floor heating.

You can re-sand and re-finish it numerous times in its lifetime. A great thing about all oak flooring is that you can make it look like new numerous times. This is because, with a light sanding and a re-finish, your floor will look just like it was just fitted. If your home has heavy traffic or you’re keen to contain the give to re-sand and re-finish your floor often, you should choose an engineered oak floor with a pleasant thick top layer or lamella.

There’s a massive choice available. Oak, like any other wood, comes in a whole range of grades and colours, from really light to fairly dark as well as from prime to rustic. Engineered oak flooring is offered in pretty much every option of oak accessible, which means that you have a huge choice of colours and grades on the market, letting you decide for a solution that’s perfect for you.

It won’t bust your funds. One of the best things about engineered oak flooring is that it looks a million dollars but won’t cost you even a part of that. Again there’s an enormous range on the market and if you shop around cautiously you should be able to bag yourself a good deal within budget that looks as if you’ve actually pushed the boat out.