Posts Tagged ‘unfinished hardwood flooring’

Going green…staying green…MAKING GREEN

Okay, time to put in new floors. Why are unfinished wood floors the greenest choice? We know all the choices, we see the cheesy box store offerings, we have had the sticker shock at the boutique, so now what?

Lets make this easy, shall we?

We KNOW we want to be sensible and be as green, Earth friendly as we can be…so no carpet, vinyl or laminates. We know we love natural products, so lets focus on ceramic, stone or hardwood. We know we hate hard and cold and the Doctor has told us that its why our back hurts…so hardwood.

Okay, we love hardwood…now what? Read the rest of this entry »

Looking Forward…To the Way it Was.  Simple Floors

We are becoming more aware as a people. In just my lifetime, I have seen great strides in our abilities to see mistakes and correct them…not always and sometimes its a trial and error at best…but I do feel we try.

I think back to when I was a kid and walked among the trash along the road picking up bottles to take back to the store for refund, 2 cents for a small bottle and a nickel for the quart size. There was litter everywhere, I remember the ad on TV with the American Indian standing along side the road and a car drives by, tosses a bag of trash out the window and it lands at The proud Indians feet…a close up of his face reveals a tear.
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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.

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Are we using up our Natural Forests by buying unfinished hardwood flooring?

United States Forestry facts:

FACT:  Forests cover over one third of all land in the United States.
FACT:  Over 72% of hardwood forests in the United States are privately owned.
FACT:  Over 70% of forest land that was here in 1600 is still forest…over 737 million acres!
FACT:  In 1952 the volume of timberlands in the US was 184,090 (in million cubic feet)
FACT:  In 1999 the volume increased to 335,722 (million cubic feet) an increase of 82.4%
FACT:  Forests in the US are increasing at an average rate of 5.27 BILLION cubic feet per year AFTER mortality and harvesting!

Total growth…12.22 Billion cubic feet
Mortality……..<2.50> Billion cubic feet
Harvest……….<4.45> Billion cubic feet

FACT:  Harvest has over doubled (102%) since 1952 and we are STILL showing growth in our forests.
FACT:  There is 82% more growing timber in the US now then in 1952
FACT:  Over 1.5 billion trees are planted in the US every year…that’s 4.1 million seedlings per day!
FACT:  Each year 6 trees are planted for every 1 that is harvested.
FACT:  43,700 companies in the US employ 1.75 million workers.
FACT:  Wood is recyclable, biodegradable and durable, lasting often for centuries and can be returned to the earth at anytime with a benefit to the earth!
FACT:  Wood is renewable while stone, iron or coal once used is gone forever.
FACT:  Wood makes up 47% of all industrial raw materials used in the US yet require only 4% of the energy used to produce these materials!
FACT:  Steel structure materials require 3 times as much energy and 16 times as much clean water to produce then wood.
FACT:  As an insulator, wood is 16 times more efficient as concrete, 415 times as efficient as steel and over 2000 times as efficient as aluminum!

We hope these facts ensure your stance that along with beauty, value and ease of maintenance…UNFINISHED HARDWOOD FLOORING will always be the right thing to do for our world.

Why is looking for flooring values important? Money is tight so flipping a home is now riskier then ever. Yet to a shrewd investor, there are still opportunities. One might argue that a person with a keen eye and good common sense can actually still do quite well. I have seen such examples first hand, and while some cases in one area won’t work well in another, let me share some basics as they pertain to hardwood flooring.

Make the investment where it is noticed first. As we enter a home or a room, impressions are made, so WOW them from standing in the doorway looking in. An entrance way dome in a smooth, flat and decidedly REAL hardwood will give an immediate impression of quality as well as a psychological feeling of warmth and stability. These ‘impressions’ right off the bat, are very easy to obtain using even inexpensive unfinished flooring and doing a fair or better job of lightly sanding and finishing. A pre-finished floor will be seen as better then cold hard tile or carpet that has no resale value…but its still a cheap ‘quick fix’ look compared to a floor that is site finished. And NEVER insult your would be buyers with the laminate products, they are often seen as something that needs to be removed in order to even sell.

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Impact of different floor coverings on our environment

Unfinished hardwood flooring is classified as environmentally green.  And everyone is environmentally aware these days, and rightly so. As we learn more about our surroundings and our effect on them, we come to learn the importance of many of the little decisions we make and the long term ramifications of them. One such ‘small’ decision is in our choice of floor coverings for our home or office.

Carpeting
One choice that has been popular since the 60′s is wall-to-wall carpeting. A huge industry that is doing a good job of trying to police itself and move towards making a smaller impact on our environment. The chemicals that make up the vast majority of yarns used in the manufacturing process as well as some of the primary and secondary backings are fossil fuel derived. The industry has made large strides into using recycled plastics in the development of modern yarns, but more yet can be done. The foot print of waste carpet in the landfills has also come to light. Discarded carpet has a very long life after it is discarded and even causes trouble by getting caught up in the equipment working the landfills…bottom line…not green, but better then it was!
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