Why Unfinished Hardwood Flooring and why now more then ever?

In the 1950′s housing starts were booming and most all of the homes had unfinished hardwood flooring.  It was beautiful, abundant, inexpensive and structurally sound. It was what one expected in a home. For the next two decades, it WAS the flooring of choice.

Then the late 60′s and early 70′s…wall-to-wall carpet hit the scene in a big way. It was quiet, soft, felt good on bare feet and could be had in many colors. Builders liked the fact that it was cheap, fast and covered up ‘less the perfect’ sub floors. Hardwood flooring was still used but only in high end homes or in just a room or two, it was still considered better in most every way…but we as Americans LOVE to have what’s the newest, latest and greatest…we just can’t help ourselves.

Fast forward to the late 80′s, Carpet wears out….huh, no one told us that. Now we have learned that replacing ugly carpet every few years isn’t such a great thing. The Hardwood flooring industry hasn’t stood still and they decided to  try to bite into the ‘fast and easy’ aspects of carpet by putting a finish on the boards before they left the factory, they knew it wasn’t as good as site finished…but to survive, they needed to give customers what they wanted even if it wasn’t what was best for them.

Then came all the ‘just-like-hardwood’ vinyl tiles, plywood veneers and wood looking pictures on hardboard backers…called laminates…these products were designed to have a wood look, kinda, and snapped or were glued together over a thin pad…and it was ‘new’…so the Americans flocked to them.  Again the hardwood industry flinched, but knew that it would only be a matter of time…and it was! The stuff started out at over $4 per SF and is now everywhere for 79 cents a SF or even less! It was a mess (although easy to pull out of the house when it failed) It sounded hollow, came apart, swelled with any moisture, was cheap and LOOKED cheap.

Pre-finished hardwood floors kept up the pressure with new advertising that took a factory problem (long drying times and defects from wet finish) and turned the solution into a ‘look what we have done for you’ ad approach. Aluminum oxide and other drying agents were put into the finish, this made the finish at the factory dry fast and hard, allowing for more production with less defects…so we tell the customer that we made it harder for them, we showed them how resistant the finish was to an abrasive wheel…customers ooooed and awwwwed. We didn’t realize that we don’t OWN an abrasive wheel and that the major thing we do is drop things…on the hard and brittle finish. And now the new clincher…there are small gaps between each board…a sanitary night mare! The dust mites the caused problems for some in carpet, could also live between the boards. Bacteria, food residue and hair also never completely cleaned out. So now we go back to UNFINISHED hardwood…more choices of species, more width choices, flat, smooth and sealed surface and all with more value and less cost then ever before.

Its humorous and enlightening as we learn from our mistakes. Will we make more of them? Of course! But through it all, quality will survive…unfinished hardwood floors will always be the ‘greenest’ most cost effective, longest lasting and lowest maintenance of all flooring choices!