Getting Started

Replacing carpeted or tiled areas in your home with wooden floorboards can breathe new life not only into the room in question, but your whole house. As well as adding value to the price of your home, they may improve the health of your family, as nasty bugs and germs have nowhere to hide on wooden surfaces.

There are many different types of wood flooring you can install and it can be done to suit all price ranges.

If you have some DIY ability, it should also be possible to do the work yourself - which will save you money on installation costs. But there are plenty of companies out there willing to do the work for you and so, if you decide to go the professional route, you should be able to get a competitive price. Try your local Yellow Pages or ask a friend or neighbour who has had similar work done for a recommendation.

What does it involve?

For many years, installing hardwood flooring in your home meant a team of professionals arriving at your house with large strips of oak or maple, which would then become your floorboards. It would take a team of four or five people to install the flooring, which then needed to be sanded and varnished several times before it was ready to be used. During this process you would have to leave your home, as the varnish could not be walked on and could take several days to dry. The costs at the end of this laborious process would be huge.

Thankfully, now it is easy to buy good quality engineered-wood or laminate products (plastic that resembles wood) which remove most of the hassle of installing a wood floor. These products will arrive in your home stained and finished, and are usually quite painless to maintain.

Now the most difficult part of wood flooring is simply deciding on the right type of wood floor for your home. You will obviously want a floor that looks good and matches the style for your home but you also need to consider a material's durability, comfort, and ease of installation, as well as how easy it is to clean.

There is a wide range of wood flooring available, and each type of wood has its own individual plus and minus points. For example, real wood floors are a fantastic choice for an authentic look and feel - but they can hit your pocket hard. On the other hand, laminate wood flooring will work well in a contemporary family room but, at times, can look shiny or fake.

The best thing to do is to decide on the look that you want for the wood flooring and how much you have to spend on it. Don't worry if you have a small budget, as all wood floors come in a wide variety of different protective finishes and varnishes, which means you still have tons of choice for the finished result.

As with any major decision, however, you should always try to take samples of the wood home first, to see what would best match your furniture and walls.