Hardwood Floors December 2025/January 2026

BEN TOTTA

We worked on a real modern, new house and the sheetrock went all the way down and there was not a traditional baseboard. The letter of the law in our NWFA guidelines is to match the thickness of the wood for expansion space, so with solid ¾” thick flooring, you would have a ¾” gap between wood and wall at the base. This wasn’t achievable in this scenario. In the spirit of the law, I sometimes try to achieve as much expansion space as I can that could still work. A piece of solid wood really only moves in its width, and not hardly at all in its length. When it comes to walls where the wood is butting into the ends of the boards, those are easy because wood doesn’t really move that way even when it gets wet. You can go a lot tighter on your expansion gap and it’s not much of a concern; it’s the sidewalls we are more concerned about. The sheetrock is normally a ½” maybe 9/16” coming off the stud walls. This is nowhere close to the required ¾” gap we need at the base. It had to be closer to ¼” to 3/8” to not see it. Sometimes on the edge of the board, instead of just cutting it a square edge, you can actually cut it at an angle so at the top of the board is reaching out further than the bottom. You’re not going to have as much of an issue with that because the lower you go on that piece of wood, the more of a gap you have there for expansion and only the top of the board that is reaching up. Another scenario is where windows go all the way down to the subfloor in a home and just have a metal window frame. You don’t do trim in front of those. We run the flooring up to it and leave a consistent gap of about ¼” and fill it with the black silicone or caulk. It leaves a flexible joint for that piece to move when it needs to move, but still looks like it is cut tight to fit.

Long-Lasting Real Engineered Wood Flooring

The hard surface marketplace is full of confusion. The NWFA Refinishable Program cuts through the clutter and identifies real wood flooring products with wood top-layers thick enough to be sanded & finished. Look for the certified refinishable logo to ensure you are buying, selling, or specifying a sustainable engineered wood flooring product that has been designed to withstand the test of time, change its look, and be renewed. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAM AND VIEW THE COMPLETE LIST OF CERTIFIED MANUFACTURERS

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INDUSTRY 2026 NWFA WOOD FLOORING GUIDE

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