Repair or Replace?

If you are replacing a floor made of another type of material with hardwood flooring and you want to read about repair considerations, please reference the Factors to Consider section of this Hardwood Flooring Buyers Guide for your current flooring material. There you will find the Repair or Replace discussion under Factors to Consider.

If you are have a current hardwood floor that is in disrepair and are thinking of installing a new hardwood floor, you might first explore fixing your existing floor. If your damage is:

Limited to the surface of your hardwood floor

The damage goes beyond the surface, but only effects one or several planks

If your damage is limited to the surface or to several planks, it may well be more cost effective to repair you current floor. You or a flooring professional can remove the damage to your floor's surface with a belt sander and then refinish the floor. If one or several planks are ruined, they can be removed, new planks can be carefully matched to your existing planks, and then the new planks can be individually finished to match your original finish. If your floor has been ruined by flood, fire, or other major catastrophe, replacing the floor is probably your only option. The good news is you have many options to match your lifestyle, tastes, and budget.

Brand

The most popular hardwood floor brands are Bruce Flooring, Kahrs Flooring, and Mirage Flooring. The process of evaluating several or more brands will give you an sense of just how many option are available to the hardwood floor shopper. You will see hardwood flooring available in many different types of wood, in many styles, and a variety of widths. You will see pre-finishing flooring and unfinished flooring. You will see many different techniques manufacturers have developed to have flooring planks connect to each other. You will see a number of different techniques for attaching flooring to the substrate. It is a good idea to evaluate the product lines of several brand manufacturers before you settle on a flooring product for your do-it-yourself project OR before you start interviewing and getting quotes from flooring professionals. The flooring product you purchase from a brand manufacturer is the most important decision you will make in this entire process, and will have a huge impact on how your flooring looks when the project is completed. 

Get Help or Do It Yourself?

The complexity and difficulty of installing a hardwood floor varies greatly by the product you choose. More products than ever are being designed and sold specifically to the do-it-yourself market.   Standard, unfinished hardwood is more complex to install, more susceptible to "novice" mistakes, and involves a lot more labor and effort. These well-designed do-it-yourself products have resulted in an increase in the percentage of hardwood floors that being installed by handy homeowners. However, most of the hardwood floors in the United States are still installed by experienced flooring professionals.

Subfloor

Hardwood floors require a clean and level surface. Different types of flooring and installation methods may have an impact on subfloor requirements: for instance, nails cannot be used with a cement subfloor. Consult the manufacturer's subfloor specifications and talk to your hardwood flooring professional about the subfloor requirements of various hardwood flooring products and if they are met by your specific subfloors. If your current subfloors are not suitable to the product you plan to install, the subfloors may be brought up to specification by preparing or conditioning them, or you may have to install a new subfloor.

Materials

Solid hardwood floors: These are the original hardwood floors, the kind of floors you played on at Grandma's house. Solid hardwood used to be sold exclusively in its unfinished form. Now solid hardwood is available in finished planks as well as unfinished planks (so your hardwood flooring professional finishes the floor after he has installed it). The most common woods used in solid hardwood flooring are white oak, red oak, cherry, maple, white ash, pecan and hickory. Solid hardwood is generally about 3/4" thick and 2 1/4" wide, though other widths are available. The planks come in varying lengths, ranging from 12"-84". Solid hardwood flooring can be refinished (sanded, stained, and waxed or polyurathaned) several times, so a hardwood floor can easily last over one hundred years. However, solid hardwood floors are sensitive to moisture, and should not be installed on concrete slab or below ground level.
Solid hardwoods used in flooring come in a wide range of qualities and conditions, that can effect the look of the wood and its impact on your home. As an example, here are the four types of oak used in oak solid flooring. They are ranked from highest to lowest quality:
Clear oak has a consistent and unblemished look. It has very few flaws or character marks.
Select oak has a few flaws, but not many. Most of the planks will match well with the other planks.
No.1 Common has a lot of variation in color between light and dark. There are some marks. Matching planks to maintain a uniform look on in the flooring may be challenging.
No.2 Common oak is the wood that falls below the standards of the above three categories. No. 2 Common oak allows for all character marks; like knots, worm holes, and discoloration. It may be hard to get a consistent look in your flooring using this wood, and you will need to be careful about not putting using planks that will be unattractive or distracting in prominant areas. If you are the type of shopper that gets a lot of satisfaction from buying the dented cans that are discounted at the supermarket, then No. 2 Common oak may be right for you.
You should spend some time examining with various grades available in the hardwoods that interest you. Which look best fits your design plan, and what is the price differential between the various grades.
Engineered Hardwood: Engineered hardwood is constructed by taking between two and five thin sheets of hardwood veneer and gluing them together to form one hardwood plank. When the sheets of wood are stacked, the manufacturers change direction of the wood grain between alternating sheets. This makes for a more robust wood product, and one that is less sensitive to the effects of water and less prone to expansion than solid hardwood. So, unlike solid hardwood, engineered wood can be used below ground level and can be installed directly over concrete slab. Engineered wood is constructed in a manner than allows several sheets of inexpensive hardwood to be used for the lower layers, and the top layer can consist of a much more expensive wood. This makes it possible to manufacture and sell engineered hardwood floors using premium hardwoods (as the top layer) at a much lower price than solid hardwood floors using the same premium woods would sell for.
Longstrip Hardwood: Longstrip hardwood is similar to engineered hardwood, but different in a few important ways. First, longstrip hardwood is the "giant" of the hardwood materials, with the largest dimensions: 86" long and 7 1/2" wide. Longstrip hardwood uses less expensive wood (not hardwood) as it sublayer. Thin strips of hardwood are glued on top of this sublayer. The top layer is made up of 17 to 35 pieces of hardwood strip, which are glues on to appear to be three rows and several lengths of standard hardwood plank. Because of its large size, longstrip is very easy to work with and installs faster than any other hardwood material. Damaged planks are easily replaced.

Installation Method

There are four methods of installing your hardwood floor:

Nailing: The "old fashioned" and original method, but still and excellent choice with solid results. Most commonly used with solid hardwood flooring products that are 3/4" or thicker. 2" nails are used to attach the hardwood planks to the subfloor. Nailing can only be used with wooden subfloors that are on grade or above grade.

Gluing: An effective choice with engineered and parquet floors, but does not work with plank hardwood. Adhesive is applied with a trowel to the subfloor and then the flooring is secured in place. Both the adhesive and trowel specifications need to match the specifications of the flooring manufacturer.

Stapling: Pneumatic staple guns will deliver similar results to nailing your flooring in place, but stapling is faster than nailing. If an installer is using a pneumatic staple gun, you should see some benefits in a somewhat reduced quote for the job. Manufacturers will often recommend specific pneumatic staple guns and staples that will work best with their products, and this is something you might want to query flooring professionals about during your quote and interview process.

Floating: Floating is a process whereby each plank is glued to the adjacent planks, but the floor is not glued, nailed, or stapled to the subfloor. When installing a floating floor, a thin pad is placed between the floor and the subfloor, which provides an added benefit of making floating hardwood floors less noisy than other hardwood floors. Wood glue is applied to the tongue and groove of each plank to hold the planks together as the floor is assembled. The floating method of floor installation can be used with some engineered floors and all longstrip floors. Floating is the fastest, easiest, and cleanest method of installing hardwood floors.

Design/Style/Pattern

There are many distintive designs and styles of hardwood flooring. Here are some of the variables:

Width: hardwood floors planks are available from less than 2 inches in width to 7 inches in width. While most floors are constructed of boards of varying lengths but of identical widths, some hardwood materials (particularly engineered) enable you to using planks of diverse widths, providing a dramatic flooring design element.
Wood: There are many woods available, and many grades available in each wood.
Grain:  In addition to the many types and grades of wood, each wood can be cut using two methods which will have an impact on how its grain appears. Sliced Cut results in a more uniform pattern created by the grain, whereas Rotary Cut tends to expose large and bold graining patterns.
Materials: We have already discussed that hardwood is available in solid hardwood, engineered hardwood, and longplank hardwood. Engineered and longplank are the most versatile in terms of design. If your flooring plans including a dramatic design or style, you may be best off using longplank or engineered hardwood.
Stain: Once your floor is sanded, you can either finish the floor in the natural wood color, or add a coat of stain to add another color element to your hardwood floors. There is a wide array of stains to choose from. You might want to look at some decorating magazines, visit some designer showrooms, or even hire a decorator to get some advice. There are rules of thumb that are good to know: for instance, if you are adding a hardwood floor to a small room, a lighter floor (and light stain) will maximize the feeling of spaciousness in the room. Dark wood or stain will make as small room feel even smaller.
Finish: In the final step of installing your new hardwood floor, wood floors should be finished to preserve and protect the wood (that is, unless you've purchased a pre-finished hardwood flooring product). Your choices are wax or urethane. Wax has a natural look, but is harder to maintain and needs to be re-waxed periodically. Urethane is more protective and lower maintenance than wax, and urethane has become the most popular finish for new floors. Urethane is available in matte, satin, and gloss. If you have a well-traveled room or a room that the kids use, consider using a matte or low-gloss finish: it is less prone to showing scratches. The drawback of urethane is that once the finish is scratched or damaged, it is not possible to reapply urethane as a "patch" to fix it. A urethane floor needs to be sanded back to bare floor if you want to reapply a new coat of urethane.  

Cost

A hardwood floor will last many years, so it is important that you factor your costs against the long-term value you'll derive. Don't buy a higher quality floor than you need or will enjoy, but try to afford basic materials that will bring you pleasure every time you experience them.