Floored : No Need to Pine for the Rich Wood Grains of Oak or Parquet When Choices in Hardwoods Make It Easy to Step Onto Laminated Wonders and Be . . .

If you are living in a house built before 1966, chances are you’re sitting on a gold mine: solid strips of golden-hued oak.

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Buried beneath the wall-to-wall carpeting of many of these homes, just waiting to be brought to light, are hardwood floors.

While a number of homes built after the mid-’60s do have hardwood floors, that was the time when a home began to be considered a home even without them. Wall-to-wall carpeting was becoming popular, and the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration stopped requiring hardwood floors for homes to be eligible for financing.

“Any home built before 1966 that had FHA or VA loan approval most likely has hardwood floors,” said Stephen Guenther of Wood Floor Wholesalers in Orange.

Some who pine for wood floors are lucky enough to find them just waiting to be exposed; for others, realizing the dream of wood floors means installing them.

Hardwood flooring is a more expensive option than either carpeting or linoleum, but it’s one that homeowners are returning to nonetheless.

If your home is built on a concrete slab and you’d like to add hardwood floors, you have three basic options: laminated wood strips, pre-finished or unfinished, glued down directly onto concrete; quarter-sawn strips or parquet blocks, which, though both solid wood, can also be glued down; traditional hardwood strips that are nailed into place over plywood subflooring. If your home already has plywood subflooring, you have all the options.

Joni Owen of Kitchens by Joni in Fountain Valley first noticed renewed interest in wood flooring about five years ago when clients started asking for it in remodeling jobs. Brought up believing wood floors meant paste wax and buffing machines, she was initially taken aback. “Who has time for that now?” she wondered.

But the polyurethane finishes installers use in nearly all cases today make hardwood floors as easy to care for as no-wax vinyl, Owen discovered. Interest in hardwood flooring has continued and intensified in the last two years, she says.

Style is one reason, Owen ventures. “The focus now is on beauty of materials rather than trappings, and wood floors fit right in with that,” she says. “When you have the pattern and depth in a floor you get with wood, you don’t need much else.”

Practicality is another consideration. The sleek surface of wood, especially in non-beveled styles, is very easy to keep clean , says Owen, and its neutrality makes it suitable with any decor. Now that homeowners are upgrading more often than relocating, wood’s durability is also seen as a plus, she says. “People seem willing to invest in quality as long as they get practicality too.”

The price of refinishing or installing a hardwood floor varies with what you want to have done--from smoothing out rough edges to adding an inlaid design; from installing laminated wood strips to a sanded-in-place floor.

But the days when wood floors cost $1.75 a square foot for materials and labor--the prices Gary Stepp of Grange Flooring in Tustin remembers his father talking about--are long gone.

* REFINISHING HARDWOOD

The only way to find out for certain whether your home already has hardwood floors is to pull back some of the carpet and take a look. If you do, sanding off old finish, filling in cracks and applying a new finish is usually all that’s required to make them look good as new. Unless the floors have suffered termite or beetle damage or been badly stained from over-watered houseplants or poorly trained pets, they can be refinished without repairs.

“If you have to replace a few boards here and there, it won’t show, because you’re sanding everything down to bare wood anyway,” Stepp said.

Refinishing existing hardwood floors in a natural finish averages $2.50 a square foot for labor and materials, Stepp says. Staining adds slightly more.

Don’t try to save money by handling this job yourself, Guenther advises. Sanding is the biggest part of refinishing, and it’s not a job for amateurs, he says.

“Sanders are very aggressive machines. If you stop in any one spot, even for a few seconds, you may gouge out a trough it will take you the rest of the afternoon to sand out--if you don’t make the same mistake again somewhere else, that is.”

Once down to bare smooth wood, protect the

surface with a coating of paste wax or a clear polyurethane finish. Because of easy maintenance, most people are choosing polyurethane, installers say.

“Much as I love wax finishes--they get richer over time as the wax continues to penetrate the wood--I can’t recommend them for most people,” Stepp says. “There’s just not enough protection against spills, and they require a high level of maintenance.”

Polyurethane, on the other hand, is impervious to spills. It can be mopped as easily as linoleum. When the polyurethane surface begins to lose its shine or becomes intolerably scratched, a light abrading with a rotary buffer and a new coat of finish will bring back its luster. Maintain the finish, Stepp says, and you’ll never have to re-sand the floor.

Polyurethane finishes should be resurfaced every two to five years, depending on degree of wear, Stepp says. A professional can refinish up to 1,000 square feet in one day. Budget 75 cents to $1 a square foot for the job.

* PRE-FINISHED LAMINATES

The majority of homeowners installing hardwood over concrete choose pre-finished laminated products, according to Tom Bedford of Bedford Hardwood Flooring & Supplies in San Juan Capistrano.

“The biggest problem with concrete is moisture,” he says, “and these products are naturally resistant to moisture because the grain of the wood runs in a different direction in each layer.

“We can put the wood down directly onto concrete in most situations. A moisture barrier (of sheet vinyl) is necessary only about 25% of the time.”

Though laminated planks and strips come unfinished, most customers choose the pre-finished option, Bedford says, because it makes installation a quicker and cleaner process.

“Laminates used to come in oak, oak or oak,” Guenther says. “But now there are pines, cherry, pecans and even exotics like Brazilian cherry to choose from.” Companies also offer more choices in stains today.

The wear layers of the newer laminated woods also tend to be thicker and more numerous than the original products on the market. “Most can be sanded several times,” Guenther said.

Pre-finished laminated wood is the best choice for do-it-yourselfers, he says, though he doesn’t really recommend that option.

“The mechanics aren’t as hard as the aesthetics,” he says. “The spacing, cutting and all the little judgment calls. Believe me, this is not an intuitive process. There’s no substitute for experience.”

If you already own a table, miter, jamb and electric hand saws, then maybe you’re up to the job, Bedford suggests.

Gaylord Wilson, a homeowner who installed pre-finished, laminated wood flooring in the entryway, kitchen and dining room of his Fountain Valley home in December, concurs with Bedford’s advice. Though he didn’t own all these tools, Wilson already knows how to use them; he’s been working with wood as a hobbyist since he was a child.

“I don’t think you want to be learning how to use them at the same time you’re trying to figure out the mechanics of laying down wood,” he says.

Though the three-day job was harder than he anticipated, Wilson is pleased with the results and would tackle another project, he says. Gaylord is patient and a perfectionist though, warns his wife, Terri. If you’re neither, she suggests, you might want to reconsider doing your own installation.

Pre-finished wood averages $5 or $6 a square foot, Bedford says. A typical price for installation is $2.50 to $3.50 per square foot.

* QUARTER-SAWN, PARQUET

Quarter-sawn solid strips and parquet are also options over concrete.

Because they are removed from the center of a log, quarter-sawn strips expand vertically in response to moisture rather than laterally like traditional flat-sawn strips. Quarter-sawn strips of three-quarter-inch thickness or less can be glued down directly on concrete in many situations.

Quarter-sawn wood, which has a more subdued grain than either traditional flat-sawn or rotary-cut (peeled) laminate layers, is a good choice for homeowners who dislike pronounced grain, Guenther says.

Pre-finished, glue-down, quarter-sawn strip flooring averages $7 a square foot for materials, he says. Parquet flooring, in which individual squares made of smaller pieces arranged in a pattern are laid down much like ceramic tile, is another good choice for houses built on concrete slabs, according to installers.

“Expansion (due to moisture) is equal in all directions--not just in width like it is with strips--so warping is rarely a problem,” Stepp explains.

Though it can be the least expensive form of hardwood, parquetry has fallen out of favor in recent years because it is not considered as adaptable as other forms of hardwood.

“Simple strip flooring is very neutral,” Stepp says. “Parquet, on the other hand, really sets the tone for a room.”

However, large-scale parquetry--such as two-foot and three-foot squares--has been making inroads into the hardwood market recently, according to Guenther.

Though the size of the pattern makes these parquet tiles inappropriate except in large rooms, he says, homeowners living in more modest quarters are dropping single pieces of mixed-species tiles into simple strip flooring as focal points in entryways or in front of a fireplace.

* SOLID STRIPS

Concrete slabs don’t necessarily preclude solid strip flooring either, but it will raise the level of your floor by an inch and a half. You need to be able to accommodate the three-quarter-inch thickness of the wood plus three-quarters of an inch for a plywood subflooring underneath to nail it to. (If you already have plywood subflooring, you’re spared having to allow for that additional depth.)

Redoing moldings or shaving down doors to accommodate the l 1/2-inch combined depth of strip plus subflooring present comparatively minor challenges, Bedford says. Dealing with kitchen cabinetry and appliances is a much bigger problem.

“Do you have enough room in your toe kick to accommodate that height?” he asks. “Will you be entrapping your dishwasher or other appliances so there’s no way to get them out without taking out part of the floor?”

If you’re totally remodeling and planning to replace the cabinets anyway, then no problem, he says. But if you like the cabinets you have, you may need to consider another option, Bedford says.

As with laminated products, more and more homeowners are choosing to purchase strip flooring already pre-finished because installation is over in days as opposed to weeks and there’s no sawdust residue.

Some homeowners, Guenther is convinced, will always insist on sanded-in-place floors. “They’re the Rolls-Royce of hardwood floors,” he says. “Nothing else looks quite as seamless.”

Whether you choose pre-finished or unfinished solid strip, the cost is the same, according to Bedford. “You pay for the labor of the guys at the mill or you pay for my laborers in your home,” he says. “It works out about the same.”

Budget $10 a square foot to install standard oak strip, he suggests. Other wood types will cost more.

“The sky’s the limit,” Guenther says. “You’re only limited by your imagination and your budget.”

Those in the hardwood flooring business urge consumers to cover the basics in choosing an installer. Find someone with whom you feel rapport. Ask for references and call them; if possible, look at the actual installations. Make sure the installer has the appropriate state license--it’s called a C-15. Ask to see copies of workmen’s compensation and liability insurance coverage if an installer plans to use co-workers.