March 2008 Archives

I flew back into Seattle recently and looked out the window at some stunning scenery so I grabbed my camera (although I think I wasn't supposed to use electronic devices) and snapped a few shots:

Did you know that the "grade" of hardwood is not an indicator of strength but only a indicator of the color uniformity and other visual aspects of the floor.

Too often people believe a #1 common red oak will not wear as well as a clear grade red oak, but that grade is not relevant to durability for the most part.

One of the toughest laminates in the market is Alloc.

It has been around for years and is tried and tested both in terms of the locking system and well as the surface durability.

I have recommended Alloc commercial flooring for those super tough situations for years and it continues to be a strong player in that market.

So if you are planning a project for your office, university, school, church or you just have a really active household and want a family room floor that is tough, I would check out Alloc.

ALLOC has a series of best selling floors located on this link at iFLOOR.

Some of their classic patterns like the wild cherry or antique pine are something lots of guys try to copy, but so far Alloc remains the clear leader in those types of patterns.

I get a ton of questions about Bamboo so I am going to repost an article here that I have written in the past.

There are 2 key things that I encourage people to remember about bamboo.

1. It has lots of shade variation. Mother nature makes it very varied.
2. It is still a floor. It will dent and it will scratch regardless of the structural benefits of bamboo being "tough."

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Is Bamboo For You?

By Steve Simonson - articles@smoothcorp.com

Bamboo is one of the hottest trends in flooring today; captivating consumers with its beauty, durability and earth-friendly story. (Not all bamboo is earth friendly search my blog for "BAMBOO" to learn more.)

This article provides basic information on bamboo flooring, tips on how to choose a floor that's right for you and what to avoid when making your purchase. This is a general summary of bamboo flooring and will cover some of the basic questions or, as we say in Internet lingo: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

I come in daily contact with flooring manufacturers and sales reps from all over the world and without exception, each one claims that his or her product is of the finest, highest quality. Over the years I've developed a talent for discerning the truth hidden in the marketing doublespeak. It is this expertise, coupled with many hours of study and hands on experience, that I am happy to share with you in this article.

Bamboo Background

Bamboo is actually a grass. It grows at an astonishing rate of one to three feet a day during its peak growth cycle, reaching heights of 125 feet or more and sometimes with diameters of two feet. Once the bamboo reaches maturity at five to six years old, it stops growing and is ready for harvest. Bamboo also regenerates at about the same time so it does not need to be replanted.

The forests of China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Korea are the main sources of bamboo used in manufacturing flooring and other related products. China is the largest producer of bamboo products in the world and the Chinese government owns most of the bamboo forests. It issues harvesting permits to companies and individuals concerned. To the readers concerned about the well being of China's endangered panda population, you can take comfort in knowing that BAMBOO FLOORING DOES NOT DEPRIVE GIANT PANDAS OF FOOD.

Giant pandas do not eat the species of bamboo used in flooring and other bamboo products. Pandas live at much higher elevations and in different provinces than where the majority of bamboo forests are located. Most of the best bamboo is found in the eastern provinces, which is a non-panda dwelling area for the most part.

Shopping for Bamboo - What should you consider?

Colors

There are two basic colors of bamboo available, natural and carbonized (fumed). Natural bamboo looks just like it sounds, although it actually receives a bleaching treatment to accomplish the light tone. Carbonized bamboo, on the other hand, undergoes a heating process. This darkens the wood and produces a rich caramel color. Both colors have WIDE variations in the actual shades.

For the more adventurous type, there's a new breed of stained bamboo floors that is being offered by higher end bamboo flooring lines. Availability of these new colors adds a whole new level to the bamboo story.

And, if you are lucky you may also find the really premium hand-scraped bamboo floors. It combines the rustic beauty of hand scraping with some interesting stain and finish techniques. This is a breakthrough in bamboo flooring when done right!

Newer techniques have also introduced engineered bamboo floors, click bamboo floors, strand woven bamboo flooring and a multitude of stained bamboo options. Some really cool stuff in Ming Dynasty and Springwood Bamboo.

Styles/Finishes

Solid bamboo is available mostly in three or six foot lengths, although it's sometimes possible to find a company that offers random lengths as well. Solid bamboo has pre-milled tongue and groove on all four sides and can be installed by gluing down, stapling or nailing. Only solid bamboo over 4" should be considered for a floating floor application.

Longstrip bamboo typically comes seven feet long and approximately eight inches wide. It comes with a standard tongue and groove system built primarily for a floating installation; however, you can staple or glue this down as well.

One style differentiator is the look of the floor and how the individual bamboo slats are constructed. The two most commonly available looks are referred to as horizontal and vertical. This, essentially, is just the difference in how the individual bamboo slats are put together to make the flooring. The direction of the slats, changing from laying the flat horizontal to the lengthwise vertical assembly, transforms the entire look and feel.

Strand Woven is yet another style available in the bamboo market. This bamboo is literally shredded, glued together, and cured to get it to stick together again. This technique produces a very HEAVY floor in sheer weight. The floor itself is capable of moderate to high traffic. However, due to the quantity of glue required to put the floor together, many manufacturers use inexpensive glue containing levels of formaldehyde. At present I do not recommend strand woven bamboo until it can meet appropriate formaldehyde emission levels and NONE of them presently do. (2008 footnote: right now Ming Dynasty and Springwood have some strand woven options that are low emissions that I feel comfortable with.)

Solid Versus Longstrip

Bamboo grows in high, narrow stalks that are cut into individual strips, glued together in many layers and made into flooring planks by applying heat and pressure. This method produces a structurally strong and solid bamboo floor. Solid bamboo floors are typically 5/8 of an inch thick. CHEAP BAMBOO IS OFTEN THINNER THAN 5/8 INCH SO THIS IS A CLUE TO ITS LOW QUALITY. Don't get liquidated on the cheap stuff.

The other type of bamboo is most commonly called longstrip, and is also considered an engineered floor. Longstrip flooring has bamboo on the surface, a wood core board, and a balancing wooden back layer. This floating floor offers better expansion and contraction than solid bamboo.

Durability

Durability is always a sought-after quality in any flooring. In the Janka Ball Hardness test, natural bamboo scores higher than northern red oak and northern maple. Carbonized bamboo scores about five percent lower than its natural counterpart in hardness, yet is still rated higher than northern red oak. Vertical grade is typically harder than horizontal grade because of the way the bamboo is constructed on the planks themselves.

The Janka test can be manipulated or misunderstood based on which tests are being run on the product. An example of this is when there are different results for species that may sound the same. Teak will be half as hard as Brazilian Teak. So don't assume the numbers you see are always accurate.

In addition, resistance to indentations should not be the only factor to consider when choosing a floor. For instance, laminate flooring exceeds a 4,000-pound Janka rating. This rank is higher than all real hardwood floors and is nearly four times higher than a northern red oak. If this were the only test of durability we would all have laminates in our homes, right?

While bamboo is tough, when it comes to indentations this does not mean that it is impervious to dents, scratches, discoloration or other damage. NO FLOOR IS. The ability to resist scratches is tied more to the quality of the finish, its application and number of coats.
Installation

Bamboo can be installed over concrete floors using glue down method, or it can be installed on plywood using the nail down method. If you use a floating method of installation, you can go over concrete, vinyl and other stable hard surfaces. Thanks to advances in flooring technology, bamboo is now available in easy to install glueless systems that any homeowner can install in one weekend. As you know, the beauty of the click together system is its ease of installation. Since there is no glue being used, you have less of a mess and faster installation time. Overall, this makes the job go smoothly and effortlessly.
Brand Availability

There are hundreds of bamboo flooring manufacturers. But when you walk into any flooring retail store in North America or Europe and ask to see samples of bamboo, you'll find that only 20-30 percent of stores have samples available. Of that percentage only ten percent of the sales staff will be knowledgeable about bamboo flooring. It's not because bamboo has just been recently offered outside Asia, it just hasn't achieved that "critical mass" as yet. Worse, retailers who have recently started to introduce this option in their flooring departments don't even know the basics about bamboo. BUYERS BEWARE!

However, as North American mainstream manufacturers like Mannington have started to introduce bamboo flooring, one could expect to see this beautiful product becoming available everywhere.

Conclusion

Words to the Wise

When shopping for bamboo you'll often hear a sales pitch that goes something like: "Bamboo is as tough as nails, stronger and cheaper than oak and maple, environmentally friendly, great looking and it can leap tall buildings in a single bound." Although there is nothing inaccurate about this statement (except for the tall buildings claim), I caution you to look beyond the marketing hype. Trust is always the number one factor in buying a big-ticket item and you should find a company you can count on.

Now, let's recap:

Upside to Bamboo

* Bamboo is a durable product with an aesthetic appeal that’s becoming increasingly popular with American and European consumers. With the proper finish bamboo makes a durable floor AND brilliant fashion statement.

* Bamboo is affordable. Back in the nineties, if you’d come to my retail store and asked about bamboo flooring, I would have quoted you prices of eight or nine dollars a square foot. That’s double or triple what you’ll pay for now.

* Bamboo can be installed in most areas of the home, including over concrete floors. It’s available in both the solid and longstrip versions, and in easy to install click together systems.

2008 footnote: more styles are available than ever in Bamboo!

Downside to Bamboo

* Colors and styles are limited. Bamboo is available in only two colors - natural and carbonized. The vertical- and horizontal-grained versions are available in both colors. Still, this limits you to a total of four options. There are a few companies that offer a wider choice of stains and other innovations like hand scraping, but these options are not available in most stores.

2008 footnore: because there seems to be so much cheap bamboo on the market it is really getting tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Bamboo is not a miracle it is a floor and there can be MAJOR differences in your bamboo. At the end of the day you have to invest in something you trust and have proper expectations.

Getting into the St. Patrick's day spirit I thought I would give you a quick tip:

When you prepare for installation moving appliances or heavy things is generally easy because you don't care what you do to the floor on the way out.

You do, however, have a lot more to be concerned with as you place appliances back in place.

My first suggestion is that you should choose the GOLD installation package and pay to have your appliances moved. It is cheap insurance when you think about it. You pay a bit to have us move it and bear responsibility if we ding your new $5,000 flooring investment.

If you are a DIY'er then I would really suggest using 1/4" plywood and being super super careful and slow. There are lots of techniques for putting it back safely, but let me assure you rolling the refrigerator on your brand new wood flooring is NOT a safe approach. It will ALMOST certainly leave dented wheel marks on the hardest of woods.

I am hoping this tip will lead you to use services or at a minimum extreme caution.

Best of luck on your project!

Hello,

I wanted to comment on the terrific experience I had in placing my first order with ifloor.com.

It began with my initial telephone call and conversation with Eugene. While had much of the information, with regard to material, I appreciated Eugene's patience in making a recommendation to the number of trim questions I posed to him. As with most businesses, the persona of that business is generally decided upon during initial client contact. Far too many organizations are worried about inventory rather than customer service. This is NOT the case with iFLOOR. Please see that my accolade is passed along to Eugene. He is a valuable employee and one who is sure to get my next order.

The only, and I mean only, problem I experienced was a damaged carton of laminate flooring. Estes was the delivery vehicle for the laminate flooring. I do not believe Estes caused the damage, since the damaged box was in the middle of the palate. More than likely, it was already damaged form the factory. Regardless, Brian, the Estes driver, was very professional in handling the problem. Shortly after unloading, Brian called his dispatch office. He placed a claim for my receipt of one more box of laminate. With receipt in hand, he said that I do not receive the new box by this Wednesday; I am to call his dispatch. He then kindly offered me his telephone number as well as POC.

As mentioned, apart from perhaps one suggestion (perhaps laminate order can be more securely packaged other than a thin coating on shrink-wrap), my overall experience has been better than expected. In the near future, I will again contact I floor for my additional home remodeling needs.

Thank you,
Ralph

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Kudos to Eugene and to our shipping partner who are both taking care of the customer. We also appreciate your business and suggestions! We of course look forward to serving you in the future and hope that we can EXCEED your expectations again.

People are the secret.

When you plan a construction job of any kind you are inevitably going to need to talk about a so called "waste factor."

To a guy like myself that tries to be thrifty with my money the very idea of paying money for waste seems crazy.

However, in the context of flooring waste is unavoidable and absolutely something you should plan for.

Overage/Waste is primarily the result of cuts which may or may not be usable elsewhere in the room.

Another key aspect to a waste factor is that some boards may not pass your own visual inspection. This is considered normal depending on the percentage of waste compared the grade of material you ordered. (the lower the grade the more the waste.)

Other factors that should be considered in this context include the availability of future materials to make a repair or change in the flooring.

I can not tell you how often someone needs an extra carton (or two) that would make their life so much easier, but they returned the extra material or didn't buy enough to begin with. This is such a shame and totally avoidable.

So figuring in waste is not wasteful it is part of the process and something a wise planner considers ahead of time. Anyway from 5-10% waste is a normal range and you should be sure to have some extra materials at the end of your job in case of a future repair need. You can thank me later on that one!

Any home that searches for a unique look must consider art work of some kind. The kind I like the best is art work for your floor.

Recently I was looking for some rugs for my own home and I was really taken by the great values we have in the clearance rugs section. Basically these are rugs that someone purchased and either we couldn't deliver or they were returned because the color wasn't right for the customer.

The good news for you is you get the buy these at substantial discounts.

Check out the AREA RUGS in the clearance section. And when you see the where is says "call for price" don't hesitate to call at 1-800-454-3941. The reason we can't show the prices is because they are priced so low the brands don't want us to show them. That's good for you!

Good luck in your quest to add art work to your own distinctive home.

There are lots of neat opportunities if you are a flooring consumer in the market right now.

Cool products, innovative design, spectacular engineering and prices that defy gravity!

Depending on your location iFLOOR is offering a Tax Free or Financing offer or in certain states just a financing offer. (*oac, restrictions apply, etc...) Either way there's no better time to buy flooring.

With great bargains in Alloc, Contractor's Choice, Exdura, Pergo, Westhollow and many more customers are sure to find the perfect floor for them.

Good luck on your flooring projects!

Joan Castillo did an outstanding job in placing our order and tracking our delivery. Her customer service skills are excellent. She polite, courteous, knowledgeable and, thorough in her service to the customer. I felt very confident placing my flooring order with her. I was very impressed with the quick delivery of the product. I will recommend IFlooring and Joan Castillo to my family and friends.

Thank you,


Linda
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Thanks Linda - I agree with you, Joan is a awesome! And the magic elves behind the scenes that make the whole thing click are equally awesome.

We appreciate your business and your referrals. Keep them coming.

ss

The newer line of True Flooring is something really impressive.

I realize I have talked about it before, but the more I see this wide planked luxuriously THICK commercial laminate flooring the more I fall in love with it!

We are doing an office expansion here in our Tukwila iFLOOR Support Center and I think we are going to use it for a big part of our space. We're also using cork in our contact center which will be very comfortable and also nice to suppress ambient noise.

I have really seen a lot of excitement around this newer evolution of vinyl flooring which will finally get this category competitive with laminate. A floating vinyl floor solves lots of problems that we normally face with a glue down vinyl!

There appears to be a huge demand for this particular brand KONECTO and that is leading to some supply shortages.

So my advice is to be sure to check stock before settling on the final selection. Nothing feels worse than making the "perfect" choice and hearing it is back ordered until June or July and then having to make a back up selection due to time constraints and then living on the floor for years to come always lamenting the final choice as second best. (Happily if you know the stock status before making the final choice, you'll be surprised how much that "back up" color really starts to look awesome once you find out it is the only one of your 2 picks that is actually in stock.)

Also bear in mind that we are seeing orders in the 5,000 - 10,000 foot range so it stock can be wiped out with a single order. As always the best policy is to order early and order often!

I did a search to find some of the coolest hidden hardwood values and I really loved what I saw! (at least the ones with Images)

These are cool and have a very high value given the low costs and high quality. I love the 5" tigerwood at basically 5 bucks - but know that won't last long!

I love the handscraped under 4 bucks - that's a great value itself!

I actually really dig the tiger effect which in the right area and for the right setting cool be totally cool. (Designers that means you.)

Anyway - just sharing some of that data. Click on the extended entry to see some of the details or the link above to get to the search page I used.

Good luck on your quest for the perfect floor.

(w/e)

Martin,

I have told my colleagues to request you since you provide excellent customer service. She is an interior designer and he is a general contractor and landscape architect.
We live in an upper scale area of Indy and most of their work are in the price range of over $500K. Janelle and I have been dear friends forever and I sell real estate so we refer each other all the time.

I think I have made a contact for you that will generate many leads to come.
Janelle and Bill will become your direct contacts and generate the vast majority of your business. Just try not to forget who hooked you up...OK?

You are great to deal with ....responsive....knowledgeable. Do you have a supervisor whereby I can praise you or are you the head guy? You should be the head guy if you are not already.

Fondly,

Pamela

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Pamela's message is a great one! She works hard to reward excellence. Kudos to Martin for putting his name on the experience and delivering on the mission. At the risk of being replaced as the "head guy" as Pamela suggests I really have to say I love this message! I hope I can refer some real estate customers to her in the Indianapolis market. (if you need a Realtor in Indy email us and we'll connect you with Pam.

Kudos to Martin and our fine customer for spreading the good word!

iFLOOR colors from the Marketing department.

Kudos to Bryan for his honor! We hit the objective he wagered on and he delivered!