Wood Kitchen Flooring is Known For Its Eternal Beauty and Warmth

Wood kitchen flooring offers some of the largest number of choices of any flooring material on the market today. When you figure the different types of wood, grain pattern, stains, etc you can come up with an almost limitless number of choices which can be both a good and a bad thing depending on how good you are at figuring what you want.

Other then the type of wood flooring you choice another big option is going to be if you go with strips, planks, parquet, or hand-scrapped flooring and if you are going to go for the unfinished or pre-finished type. I personally recommend the pre-finished type unless you enjoy the task of finishing the wood flooring and are good at it or you will probably end up messing up a lot of the flooring.

As far as the other choice of strips, planks, parquet, or hand-scrapped that is really a matter of personal preference and the look you are going for. Strips and planks are both long narrow pieces of wood that are fit together to form the flooring. Planks are the wider of the two types and most people feel they help give a more spacious look to your kitchen. Parquet wood flooring is put together from pieces of wood flooring and if done correctly can lead to some truly impressive, and unique, looking wood kitchen floors. Hand-scrapped kitchen flooring has a rustic look to it and is great if you are planning on some minor damage to the flooring because it hides scraps, cuts, and other assorted damage better then the other three types.

Wood flooring is obviously a potential fire hazard because it is made of wood and wood burns so make sure that whatever wood flooring you purchase has been treated to help retard a fire in the event that you are unfortunate enough to have it happen to you. Wood is also very susceptible to water damage and needs to be sealed correctly to ensure that you don't damage your floors the first time you spill something on them. Even with the best type of sealant if you allow water to sit on top of your wooden floors it is going to damage them so I always recommend a mat where water is a potential issue along with making sure that any liquid spill is wiped up immediately.

Pros:

-Hardwood flooring gives kitchen a type of warmth unlike any other flooring material.

-Easy to install

-It can last a lifetime if properly sealed and maintained

Cons:

-Prone to damage from scratches, dents which can cause it to need to be refinished.

-Susceptible to water and fire damage

As far as cost goes hardwood has a pretty wide range because of the number of choices that are available to you as the consumer. A typically wood kitchen floor will run you anywhere from $4-12 depending on the different types of options you pick. Wood flooring today is very easy to install so unless you are going for a truly unique look you can probably avoid the extra cost associated with labor and make it a DIY project.

Laminate Kitchen Flooring is Beautiful, Versatile, and Economic

Laminate kitchen flooring

Laminate kitchen flooring is one of the most versatile types of kitchen flooring out there today. There is almost a limitless amount of styles, patterns, and designs you can pick from with laminate that honestly your imagination, and you do-it-yourself ability are really the only thing stopping you. With today's laminate it is almost considered movable because it is basically just snapped together over the sub-floor and can be unsnapped when you're ready.

Laminate is designed with an image of choice covered by a layer of melamine to protect the image. The laminate flooring that you buy today can be almost a half of an inch thick. I do recommend the thickest laminate that you can afford because it will hold up to daily wear and tear much better than its thinner counterpart and for the small added cost it will pay off over time.

Ease of installation is one of the biggest selling points of laminate because it is a pretty inexpensive product to begin with and with the advances today in the installation methods it makes it a DIY project for almost any homeowner. In the old days you had to glue the pieces of laminate together to make the design that you were going for however the laminate that you buy today is more like a puzzle with interlocking pieces. Also because of the advances in installation laminate kitchen floors have become so popular that manufactures have made laminate that resembles almost any other types of kitchen flooring material out there from rubber, glass, stone, granite, and many many more.

Pros:

-Ease of installation

-Amount of choices from the very common to the very exotic.

-Easy on joints and limbs

-Easy to change out pieces if one piece is damaged but the rest of the floor is okay.

Cons:

-Laminate is prone to pitting, denting, and scoring

-Moisture is a potential problem with the cheaper types of laminate

Laminate is one of the more inexpensive materials to use costing between $3-6 dollars per square foot for materials and another three dollars or so for installation if you do not do-it-yourself. If you are on a budget but would still like a material that has some durability and functionality then laminate kitchen flooring is a perfect choice for you and your family.