Hardwood Flooring: Giving The Finishing Touch !
Max Patel
Add the drop dead gorgeous look to your hardwood flooring right now. Give it the right finish! Preserve the beauty of your flooring for a long time to come. And all such long lasting benefits come with just one good coat of hardwood finish. Bewildering? Don’t worry its true! The best in hardwood flooring finishes have finally hit the market and given the dream boost every wooden floor house or office ever needed. Given the vast plethora of finishes available for your hardwood floors, one needs to understand what the basic options are and how each differs from the other.
Essentially, finishes for hardwood flooring come in two types – surface finish and penetrating finish. As the name suggests, while the surface finish rests on top of the wood and on the surface, the penetrating finish soaks through the wood and forms a layer within the top layer of the wood. Each of these has its own merits and its pays well to understand what the benefits in each case are. We will delve a little deeper into what are the various aspects of using surface finish as it’s the most popular finish widely available in the market today.
The process of applying a surface finish to the hardwood flooring has 2 steps to it. The first step is the use of wooden paint or stain to give the flooring the color and pattern of the wood that you prefer. Once this sets in, a second top coating of varnish or polyurethane is given as a protective layer which helps the flooring retain the first layer of stain given. Not only does this make the finish durable but on the whole, it improves the resistance towards abrasion to a small extent and more importantly, helps keep the bugbear called moisture off your worry list.
Even in choosing the top coat for your hardwood flooring, options are aplenty. And easily the most common of these are urethane derivatives. The most popular ones are oil based urethane, moisture-cured urethane and water-based urethane. Oil based urethane, a favorite among many hardwood floor households, is available in gradient sheens from satin sheens to semi-gloss to gloss sheens. For best results, this finish is applied in three coats with an allowance of 6-10 hours between each coat depending on the ambient drying conditions for the hardwood floor.
As you can see, you can lose yourself in the maze of finishes available for your hardwood floor, be it a case of surface finish or be it a case of penetrating finish. No matter which road you take, be sure to do a careful study of the long term advantages that each finish gives you before making a decision. For if you do your homework before hand, you will be able to protect your investment in hardwood flooring for ages to come!
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