Easy 'repairability' is a floor's best friend

(NC)—There’s a lot to consider when buying a new floor. What style and colour will suit you best? What type of floor do you need—hardwood, laminate, or cork? What about plank size? And let’s not forget about price. With so many questions to answer when making a selection, many consumers don’t take into consideration the importance of the longevity and durability of the floor. Are all floors created equal or do some companies offer extras to help ensure your new floor stays looking beautiful?

With everyday life, it should be expected that your floor will take a little wear and tear, especially if you have pets or active families. Spills, scratches, and life can and probably will happen to floors. Sanding and refinishing or worse, replacing an entire floor, is not only difficult, but also expensive. What will happen if you have an unsightly dent or scratch in your new floor?

A new way to replace damaged floor planks

One company has an answer to life’s mishaps. Torlys Smart Floors offer the Bulldog tool for all its hardwood, laminate, cork and leather floors. Because all Torlys floors utilize a special joint technology, Bulldog allows you to replace a damaged plank even in the middle of the room without removing the whole floor. This tool pulls the damaged plank away from the rest of the floor and allows for inserting the new plank simply and easily. There’s no glue, no nails and best of all, there’s no mess.

Torlys offers the Bulldog to all its dealers and it’s a smart consideration when looking for the perfect floor for your home. Not only does easy plank replacement give homeowners peace of mind about purchasing a new floor, it’s environmentally responsible. For more information visit torlys.com.

Consider this before purchasing flooring

1 Buy an extra carton or keep some extra planks when finished installing your floor so if you ever need to replace a plank, you have one that matches your existing floor.

2 Check to see how easy it is to repair your floor. Does the manufacturer offer special repair tools?

3 Ask your dealer for minor fix-up kits when you purchase your floor. That way you are prepared for small wear and scratch fixes.

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Contour Guard: A protective shield for hardwood floors

(NC) – Most solid hardwood floors in your typical Canadian family home can take a beating over the years. You have the high traffic wear and tear, variations in temperature and humidity that wreak havoc, permanent stains, germs, spills and leaks and even the sun leaves its mark.

In most cases these attacks on your hardwood flooring are simply naturally occurring phenomenon that owners of a wood floor have accepted to live with for years.

However, there’s a new generation of hardwood flooring that has set a new standard in overall protection to help deal with these common difficulties for wood floors.

Canadian-based Silhouette Hardwood Flooring, with its exclusive “Contour Guard” total protection finishing technology, has created the new industry standard in premium hardwood flooring protection and durability.

“At Silhouette we take the finishing of hardwood flooring to a new level by enveloping each floor board in a protective shield, our Contour Guard total protection technology indeed enhances the value and performance of your hardwood flooring,” explained Tom Gormley, President of Silhouette Hardwood Flooring.

Lab tests have shown that Silhouette’s flooring with Contour Guard is more resilient, easier to clean, healthier, more scratch-resistant, better sealed from moisture and well protected from the sun’s damaging rays than any other premium hardwood flooring brand.

Here’s a look at how Contour Guard protects the common problems facing hardwood floors:

Gap protection

Without strict humidity controls in place in your home, most solid hardwood floors will experience separation between floorboards due to fluctuations in humidity causing wood to contract and expand. With Silhouette’s gap protection, not only the top, but the sides and ends of each precision-milled floorboard are stained, eliminating any possible unattractive effects from gaps.

Aqua protection

Undetected moisture from excess spills and leaks, as well as certain uncontrolled jobsite conditions, can cause hardwood flooring to suddenly expand, cup, or even buckle. With Aqua protection, specially formulated sealants are applied to contour every board to protect against and reduce the affects of moisture.

Germ protection

This is a patented process whereby the entire contour of each floorboard is protected by an antimicrobial coating that resists mold, mildew and bacteria.

Stain protection

With Silhouette’s stain protection incorporated in the topcoat of all of its flooring virtually nothing found in your home will stain your investment, including indelible ink or even iodine which simply comes off with a dry paper towel even after hours on the floor.

Wear protection

Hardwood flooring is susceptible to scratching, especially with families and pets. Through the use of nanotechnology, wear protection keeps hardwood flooring durable and delivers a clear furniture-like appearance to help beautify the wood.

Sun protection

Over time, in rooms getting a lot of sunlight, the sun’s rays will have a yellowing effect on both the wood and the finish. Silhouette’s sun protection helps maintain the integrity of the flooring for years by incorporating UV blockers into each coat of flooring finish. More information on the latest in premium hardwood flooring is available at www.silhouetteflooring.com.

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Shrinking floors

(NC)—If you ask any hardwood flooring expert what the number one registered complaint they receive after a wood floor installation and they’ll tell you that it’s the unsightly gaps between boards that magically appear at the onset of winter.

The most common cause of gaps between the boards is Mother Nature. When the weather cools and the heating season begins, the relative level of humidity in our homes becomes too low causing boards to lose their moisture and shrink. Meanwhile, when the wet and humid days of summer return the boards expand once again. This regular seasonal expansion and contraction over time is the most common cause of gaps.

Gaps can also occur when boards become too humid prior to installation leaving them with internal moisture levels that are too high when installed. This problem may be caused by a very humid environment at the installation site (wet concrete, moist subfloor, fresh paint) or boards exposed to rain or extreme humid conditions upon delivery and storage. The result is the wood absorbs the moisture and expands before installation. Once installed and ambient conditions return to normal, the wood will lose its excess humidity and shrink, leaving a gap between each board.

“Over time, and if left unchecked humidity will cause gaps between floor boards of even the highest quality solid hardwood flooring,” explained Tom Gormley, President of Silhouette Hardwood Flooring. “Especially when consumers chose a stain color on lighter woods like Oak, Yellow Birch and Maple, even fine gaps will show unattractive lighter areas between some of the boards.”

Once considered a natural occurrence one had to accept when choosing wood flooring, Gormley explains there is now an innovation in gap protection available for consumers looking for the beauty and elegance of quality prefinished hardwood floors without the unattractive off-colour gaps that inevitably come with them.

Silhouette Hardwood Flooring, one of Canada’s leading premium wood flooring manufacturers, has created the new standard in hardwood flooring protection called “Contour Guard”. It’s a unique patented contour finishing process that envelopes each of its floorboards. With its exclusive gap protection, not only the top, but the sides and ends of each precision-milled board are stained. “By doing so, you’re covered as the process virtually eliminates any possible unattractive effects from gaps,” Gormley added.

For optimal protection of your hardwood flooring, and to avoid significant unwanted movement, he also recommends maintaining the relative humidity inside your home within a range from 37 to 55 per cent year-round. “If the RH is not controlled then the moisture content of the wood in your home may rise as high as 14% in our humid summers and as low as 3% in our dry winters causing extreme swelling and shrinking, just like a sponge that swells when wet and shrinks when dry”. More information on premium hardwood flooring protection is available at www.silhouetteflooring.com.

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When it comes to buying a new hardwood floor, for example, it can be difficult to ask all the right questions at the time of purchase. We tend to select floors for their quality, style and their fit with a desired interior design. Rarely do we consider what may occur after installation.

In every home, simple accidents do happen, and some of them will be severe enough to cause unsightly floor damage. Even if the damage is localized, we believe that board replacement will be difficult and expensive and the floor will never look the same. For anyone with hardwood floors in their home, it’s a situation we’ve all dreaded.

At one time that was true, but not today.

Progress in floor joint technology has created new hard surface floors in hardwood, cork and laminate. The Uniclic joint in particular – found in floors made by Torlys Smart Floors – makes it easy to repair floors by replacing planks.

“Because the Uniclic joint process is reversible, we can explore possibilities for renewal that other companies can’t,” said Karen Deel, brand manager for Torlys Smart Floors.

“We’ve invented a tool called “the bulldog” that allows for unclicking a joint anywhere on the floor, removing the damaged plank and inserting a new plank in minutes, without hassle or mess.”

Not only does easy plank replacement assure peace of mind for homeowners, it means that environmentally-friendly renewal can be done instead of environmentally-costly floor replacement. More information is available online at torlys.com.

Tip: Think ahead when buying flooring.

Any new floor looks great when first installed. But what about three months later, when it gets gouged by a dropped toaster? Be sure to ask your retailer about the ease of plank replacement, and what assurance is offered that the floor will look great after any repairs.

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