The Truth of Pine Floors

There’s a lot of opinions out there regarding different types of flooring and installation. We always recommend you understand all your options fully before making any final decisions. To help in your research, we’ve debunked some common Pine Flooring myths below:

Myth: Pine floors are not durable enough for high traffic areas.

Truth: Pine is a wonderful choice for the entire home, including high-traffic areas. There are different species of Pine that hold up better in certain conditions – for example, Eastern White Pine is one of the softer woods, though also one of the most beautiful, and has held up in entryways and living areas of homes since the 1700’s. Red Pine and Southern Yellow Pine floors offer a similar light patina and feel as the Eastern White, and are a bit harder, allowing for maximum abuse with little wear.

Myth: I can’t install a Pine floor over radiant heat.

Truth: Engineered Pine is the perfect solution to both rooms with radiant heat as well as basements. Available in various species, widths and grades, Engineered Pine is resistant to the temperature and moisture fluctuations of these atmospheres. Once installed, it is impossible to discern the Engineered Pine from a solid wood floor, allowing the beauty of Pine in any area of your home.

Myth: Plank Pine flooring will cup and split with changes in weather.

Truth: Plank Pine Flooring is manufactured and kiln dried specifically to withstand changes in humidity and temperature with little to no movement. Your installer will allow the floor to acclimate for 2-3 weeks in its environment before installation to ensure the floors are well adapted to their new home. Proper subfloor and installation will finalize the process, creating a beautiful new Pine floor to last for generations.

Sourced from: http://iheartpine.com

Art of Clean are specialists in: 

Hardwood Floor Cleaning, 

Stone floor Cleaning,

Carpet Cleaning,
Rug Cleaning,

Upholstery Cleaning 

Leather Furniture Cleaning, 

Working for domestic or commercial clients throughout Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

For more information about our services please contact our friendly team on 01223 863632 or visit www.artofclean.co.uk.

 

Pine floor board sanding, filling and finishing in Cambridge

We completed work on a pine floor in Cambridgeshire. The floor had been recently sanded and sealed by another floor cleaning company. This floor had several unique challenges; the first one was the fact that client had already had this floor sanded 6 weeks before by another company. The company had sanded a really large room in only one day, and then on the second dasy only spent a few hours to seal the floor. The following day the customer walked on the floor to find that her socks stuck to the surface. The reason was because it was water based and resulted in the grain rapidly raising in the wood giving it a very rough surface.  They then failed to key the wood floor back.

The client also asked us for the floor to be a darker colour - We therefore advised the following:

For a more superior finish we filled the pine floor boards with strips of special pine slithers, then we carried out the sanding of the floor (see photo above). There were also some repairs we had to carry out to the floor boards. Some knots where filled with our special Knot Kit glue gun. The final filling process included filling the floor with a specialPallmann Allkit resin mixed with very fine wood dust from the floor. This helped to hide the imperfections in the floor like woodwork holes in some boards.

After this preparatory stage the wooden floor was ready for the application of a special DARK brown Pallmann magic oil (see photo below). The benefits of using a product such as Magic oil from Pallmann is that our client could use her floor much quicker.

The downside of using some oils for finishing your wood floor is that several coats need to be applied and many hours of drying is required. With Pallmann Magic oil we do not to wait that long before normal foot traffic can return.

The benefit of using a contractor that uses Pallmann Magic oil is:

You can use the floor much sooner - light foot traffic can commence within 4hours after the oil was applied (in ideal drying conditions)

Localised sanding can repairs can be carried out - unlike a lacquered floor - if it wears you do NOT need to re sand the while floor. A scratch can be sanded back on the spot the scratch appeared on the wood floor and just re-oiled. Above is a picture of the finished floor.