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 some of the information from her monthly Great Flooring 101 seminar to share with you as quick tips when shopping for new flooring.

First of all, 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.

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If it is laminate you are thinking of, think again. Although it has been a durable, budget-friendly option for many years, the new WPC and SPC vinyl floors 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 WPCs and SPCs being waterproof and more durable. Be sure to get the newer version of WPC, which features a rigid core material. This helps you install it beautifully without a lot of expensive floor preparation (smoothing out the subfloor). And because these are so popular, Kahala Pacific Floors currently has hundreds of different looks to choose from.

Regular bamboo floors are not popular due to the fact that they scratch 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, Oct. 13 at 10 a.m. Enjoy pastries and coffee while gaining a wealth of information. Best of all, is that 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

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