Solid wood flooring is one of the most classic and traditional types of wood flooring you can enjoy in your home in St Albans. With its old-world charm, solid wood flooring creates a unique atmosphere in every home and working place. It can add cosiness and warmth to your living room and bedroom or professionalism and elegance to the office in St Albans. Solid wood flooring works beautiful and stylish in all contexts and contributes to the beauty and complete look of every interior, no matter if a modern and contemporary one or a classic and traditional one. However, solid wood flooring is not only beautiful, but it also ensures amazing durability, long-lasting and hard-wearing power, solidness and sturdiness. The key to a beautiful and sturdy solid wood floor is definitely its proper installation that starts and finishes with the professional help of experienced specialists in St Albans.
Our professional hardwood flooring specialists have an enviable experience working with hardwood flooring and all sorts of wood species in St Albans. Thanks to many years in the field and an impressive portfolio of so many successfully finished installation projects, our specialists definitely have the right set of skills and so much knowledge that helps them fit the best solid wood floors. There is no project that is too big, too small or too challenging for the professionals working for our company – they are trained and know exactly how to respond in every situation and how to achieve stunning results even when there are challenges and obstacles along the way.
Of course, in order to ensure a sturdy, solid, and durable floor that also looks amazing, our professional hardwood floor installers always start by assessing and inspecting on-site in St Albans and preparing the room for the upcoming installation project. This is very important as it is the key to make sure you won’t experience any issues and problems caused by poor fitting performance in the future.
Now, in order to prepare on-site, hardwood floor installers will make sure the temperature of the room where fitting of the solid wood floorboards is planned is about 18 degrees and the relative humidity is about 50 to 60% - the optimal conditions in a room, where installation of a real wood floor is installed. Humidity, indoor moisture levels and temperature are extremely important for a solid wood floor. Hardwood floorboards are cut from a single piece of timber. Even when they are cut, they still have their natural response to changes in their environment as a living tree would have. Wood has a porous structure and as a result of the impact of humidity and temperature fluctuations, wooden floorboards often contract, expand and shrink slightly.
While this is absolutely natural and there is nothing to worry about, sometimes this natural movement is excessive and the floorboards get permanently damaged, which requires an expensive repair or even replacement. Therefore, in order to make sure your newly installed solid wood floor won’t get damaged, you better ensure the best conditions for an installation and allow the materials to acclimatize to their new environment. This means keeping the wooden floorboards on-site and out of their transportation packaging for 7-8 days. This allows the wood to get used to the environment in the room and do not shrink or expand so excessively.
Every solid wood floor should be installed over a dry, level, and clean subfloor, which means that the subfloor requires some additional inspection and maybe preparation before the solid wood floorboards are laid. Our solid wood floor professional installers will thoroughly assess the condition of the subfloor and recommend if there is an additional need for something to be done or they can carry on with the installation process in St Albans.
Since the subfloor must be completely dry, the specialists will check the moisture content. In case there is no need to further dry out the subfloor, the installation part can continue. However, if the subfloor cannot be dry for some reason, it is highly recommended to have a moisture barrier underlayment installed under the floorboards that will prevent the wooden floorboards from getting damaged by moisture. This is also the right time to check out all pipework around the house and make sure there is no need for any fixes to be performed before the floorboards are laid. Underlayment should be installed also when the subfloor cannot be completely level and uniform for some reason. This additional layer will create a uniform and even surface for the floorboards to be laid down. In addition, a layer of plywood underlay is required if the subfloor is concrete, so the floorboards could be nailed down.
An essential part of the installation process of solid wood floorboards is the expansion gap. The expansion gap is left around the perimeter of the room, between the floorboards and the walls, in order to ensure extra room for the floorboards to expand without getting damaged or breaking. Don’t worry the expansion gap will not affect the appearance of your floor as it is covered with the help of flooring accessories such as skirting boards. The expansion gap is only a few millimetres wide and it is practically invisible, however, very important for the perfect condition of the floor.
Hardwood floorboards can be either nailed down or glued down. The nail-down installation includes driving the nails at an angle that fixes the floorboards down to the subfloor and secure them to the next row of floorboards backwards. The nails remain hidden and won’t affect the appearance of the floor. In case the floorboards are glued down to the subfloor, our wood floor installation professionals use premium quality wood floor adhesive that does not lose its strong bonding power throughout the years, won’t crack or wear off.
Depending on the specific conditions and aspects of your project, our experienced and reliable solid wood floor professionals will recommend the right installation method that will ensure a solid, durable, beautiful and long-lasting hardwood floor in St Albans.
Our hardwood floor fitting service comes with obligation free site visit, quick quotations and free advice. Give us a call on 020 88309782 to speak to a member of our staff, who can arrange for a free assessment of your hardwood floor fitting service at convenient for you time.