Pre-Finished And Unfinished Hardwood Floor Installation

When it comes to adding warmth and style to your home or office nothing achieves this look better than hardwood floors. At Restoration Hardwood, we specialize in custom site finished hardwood floors, but we also install pre-finished hardwood floors that will enhance your homes beauty and meet your budget.

Does Your Existing Hardwood Need To Be Replaced?
Sometimes replacement is necessary if the hardwood is too thin to sand, if not, it is always best to refinish for the following reasons:

• Refinishing = recycling, instead of adding to the depletion of our forest you can do your part to prevent it.
• Refinishing hardwood is approximately one third of the cost of replacing it.
• Lastly, refinishing is a quicker process taking half the time that it would normally take to rip out and replace your old floors.

Custom Site Finished vs. Pre-Finished
So, let’s say that your wood floors need to be replaced or that you have decided to finally get rid of that carpet and install hardwood floors in your home, what type of hardwood should you get installed? Unfinished or Pre-finished? The differences are listed below and should help you to determine what type of floor is best for you.

• Product: Unfinished hardwood flooring is milled in both solid and engineered variety’s. It’s then installed, sanded, stained (if requested) and finish coated on site in your home. Pre-finished hardwood flooring comes in both solid and engineered as well, but the sanding, staining and finish coats are applied at the factory. Both come in all types of species, widths and finishes.
• Price: Some pre-finished products can exceed the cost of professionally site sanded floors. We recommend getting a quote on both products.
• Refinishing: As the years go by that once bright finish can get a little dull. When this happens both unfinished and pre-finished floors can be re-sanded to restore that lustrous shine.
• Style: Both are nice, however, unfinished floors are site sanded flat with no visible grooves, whereas pre-finished floors have beveled edges resulting in slight grooves between each plank. In a high traffic environment such as the entrance to your home these grooves can become dirt traps that may be difficult to keep clean.