Hardwood Floors February/March 2019

Designing with Hardwood Floors (Continued)

PLAINSAWN involves a series of parallel cuts where the remaining cuts are perpendicular to the first set of cuts, producing wider boards than rift and quartered wood, and the boards will vary in width. Board faces have a cathedral grain pattern containing mostly flat-grain wood with some vertical- grain wood and more variation within and among boards than other cuts.

QUARTERSAWN cuts can produce vibrant ray flecks and a tight wavy grain. The flecks are caused by wood rays, which are life veins of a tree. They run perpendicular to annual growth rings and parallel to the board surface. Wood rays are more pronounced in white oak and appear as white lines that grow vertically from roots to leaves. Quartersawn cuts are when the log is cut in quarters and the remaining cuts are perpendicular to growth rings, producing narrow boards with a vertical grain. Although there’s more waste, the board face has an interesting fleck pattern that contains a tight wavy grain.

finish line, as well as adding aluminum oxide for scratch-resistant surfaces. Another aspect of finishes is that the color possibilities are truly endless; there is something for everyone. The 2019 Essential Trends: Color and Style Forecast for hardwood floors was recently released in the October 2018 issue of Hardwood Floors and further details my thoughts on the colors to watch this year. As in diamonds, the cut of hardwood dictates its appearance. In the 1800s, quartersawn was typically used due to both the fashion and function of the times. Today, many hardwood floors are made from plainsawn cut wood because it is a more efficient cut with less waste. In the design world, I frequently get requests for rift and quartered partially for its look as well as for its cache. Rift and quartered is more efficient today with minimal waste but has a longer production time, which does add to the expense of the product. See the graphics above for additional details on how the different types of cuts affect the appearance of the wood.

behind engineered. Most people want a certain look at a certain price, and engineered hardwood floors allow manufacturers to take a particular cut of hardwood that might come at a premium and make that the featured surface layer of their products. Both solid and engineered floors can be sanded and refinished, but solid offers the opportunity for more numerous times than engineered. The sandability of engineered hardwood floors depends on the thickness of the top veneer layer. Additionally, engineered can be installed above, on, or below grade. Because of its cross-ply construction, engineered floors are more dimensionally stable, allowing for installation on wood or concrete subfloors, which includes basements. Beyond solid and engineered, the options shift to finishing, which includes site finished, where the finish is applied on the jobsite. The other option is factory finished, where the finish is applied at the manufacturing facility. The manufacturing environment for factory-finished products also allows for enhancements like UV lights on the

both the ease and accessibility of the smaller size of the wood used by the craftsman as well as the fact that these herringbone and parquet designs were, and still are, incredibly long-wearing if maintained properly. Currently, we have a very diversified market where we can install on a wood subfloor or concrete slab, opening up more and more homeowners to the possibility of having hardwood floors in their homes. Today’s preferences are for domestic species like white oak, maple, and hickory with waterborne finishes due to increasing EPA VOC regulations. It has reached the point now where it’s expected that the products will be GreenGuard certified, and don’t be surprised for the specifier to ask about the safety of the product. The shift in the marketplace has gone from primarily solid and partially engineered to the reverse due to the versatility and dimensional stability of engineered hardwood floors. There are plusses and minuses of each, but the plusses are now stacked more strongly

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