It’s amazing what a difference clean, fresh floor coverings can do for your home. If you are in the market to throw out your tired old floor, Shirley Pai Hilton of Kahala Pacific Floors has distilled down some of the information from her monthly Wood and Stone Flooring 101 seminar to share with you as quick tips when shopping for new flooring.
First off, if you are thinking about wood, go to a specialist. The large home improvement stores rarely carry anything in the way of wood that can be called good quality. Also, with Hawaii’s humidity, move away from solid wood and go with an engineered floor that has a decent wear layer on it. You want to be able to refinish it at least a few times. This is pretty much the best bang for your flooring buck.
If it is laminate you are thinking of, think again. Although it has been a durable, budget-friendly option for many years, the new luxury vinyl tiles (LVT) have really pushed it out of the way. Either way you are just dealing with a photograph sitting on the surface, and you can never refinish the floor, but many folks like the additional feature of the LVT being waterproof and softer under feet.
Be sure to get the newer version of LVT which features a rigid core material which helps you install it beautifully without a lot of expensive floor prep (smoothing out the subfloor). And because LVT is so popular, Kahala Pacific Floors currently has hundreds of different looks to choose from.
Regular bamboo floors are not popular due to scratching easily. However, strand or compressed bamboo is a good alternative. Made of smaller strands or strips of bamboo mixed with resins, this composite offers a super hard form of this flooring made of grass.
This is a mere fraction of what you can learn at Hilton’s monthly seminar. The next 90-minute session is scheduled for Saturday, Nov.
11 at 10 a.m. Enjoy pastries and coffee while gaining a wealth of information. Best of all: seminar graduates get a very special lifetime discount. Call 847-7711 to reserve a seat.
KAHALA PACIFIC FLOORS
contact // 847-7711
address // 926 Kohou St.
web // kahalapacificfloors.com
See more articles from: Kahala Floors