Refinishing Floors

There are plenty of variables when it comes to hardwood flooring. As the flooring industry becomes more and more advanced it seems like manufacturers are adding even more bells and whistles to their products. Like, this flooring has special built in Dispell-a-Shield Technology or this one was produced entirely from re-purposed driftwood. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get my point. While many of these features may seem negligible there are some which should be carefully scrutinized in order to get the most out of your flooring purchase. In this post I’ll just briefly cover the thickness most hardwood floors are available in (sorry if anyone has trouble with fractions.) The thickness of hardwood flooring is one of the most often glossed over hardwood flooring attributes and it really shouldn’t be.

The width of hardwood flooring directly correlates with how long it will last. There are hardwood floors installed hundreds of years ago that are still in relatively good condition. That’s because hardwood flooring can be repeatedly refinished. When hardwood flooring becomes damaged or just starts to look old, it can be sanded down to the fresher wood beneath. Then this wood is finished and coated to look like new. The number of times a floor can be refinished directly relates to its thickness. But if you had 1/2 inch hardwood floors how many times could you have them refinished? Since each time a floor is refinished about 1/32 of an inch is removed from the flooring, which means if you had 1/2 inch hardwood floors, with a wear layer of about ¼” that means you could have them refinished between 5-7 times. Which is a lot because you shouldn’t have to refinish your flooring again for at least five more years. Now, there are different things to take into account. In some instances it may easier to just replace any damaged boards by themselves. And also, if you have a sizable dent/scratch/what have you, in one board and you want to refinish all of your flooring, then all of them will have to be sanded down past the point of this damage. So whenever you’re shopping for hardwood flooring pay careful attention to the different thicknesses. And if you want your floor to stick around for a while then, thicker is better.