Installing Mirage Lock Hardwood Flooring

The Mirage Lock video is a great example of some of the new prefinished wood floors that are available that do not require any glue, staples or nails during installation. (You will still need some wood cutting tools, etc.) Glueless wood floors (like Mirage Lock) are installed by floating the wood floor over the top of a wood sub-floor or fully-cured concrete slab.



The only thing I noticed when visiting their web site is the Mirage Lock has a "High-density fiberboard (HDF) core". The HDF core is what is used with laminate flooring. So this is really a laminate core construction with a real wood top layer. In other words, this is not a true engineered wood floor. None the less, it is an easy-to-install flooring option for someone who desires a wood floor appearance. Note: Mirage also manufactures real engineered wood floors as well.

Transitioning Wood Flooring Between 2 Rooms

Often homeowners want to have wood flooring installed in adjoining rooms. The question arises how to transition the wood planks in the doorway. HardwoodFlooringGuide.com has a good article covering your options. Click here to view the article on adjoining wood flooring between 2 rooms.

Glueless floating hardwood floors

I recently published a page on FloorFacts.com discussing the new hardwood floors with glueless locking systems that you can float over different subfloors, such as wood, concrete slabs and some types of existing hard surfaces materials. The photo I show on the left is a Mannington wood plank with the specially designed tongue for glueless installation that I took it with my Canon Rebel digital camera. Although it's okay I don't feel it really helps consumers understand this terrific new glueless installation system.

While working on a web site development project today I came across a great Quicktime demonstration on RobinaFloors.com that really does a nice job of demonstrating how wood planks are interlocked together with this glueless installation system. Once you see this video I think you will have a better idea how wood planks are interlocked without gluing or nailing. (Just be patient, the Quicktime video takes about a minute to download before viewing.)

Click here for the Robina Floors VR-Loc Glueless wood Plank Quicktime Video.

Armstrong Premier Performance Hardwood Flooring

I recently read where Armstrong Hardwood Flooring was named a winner in the Home Magazine 2008 American Building Product Awards for its Premier Performance Hardwood Flooring style. This Armstrong 3/8" thick, engineered hardwood floor has a feature they call: "thru-color construction". What this really means is the top wood ply of each plank has been totally impregnated with acrylic and stain. We saw this same thing years ago with Hartco's Pattern Plus product line (was discontinued a long time ago).

The advantage is when a plank is scratched the color doesn't change because the stain and acrylic go all the way through the top finish ply. Also, since the top ply is totally saturated in acrylic it is harder than normal. The disadvantages are you can never refinish or re-stain your wood floor and the appearance looks a little less natural.

Armstrong states on their web site that Premier Performance Hardwood Flooring can be glued-down or floated over most wood sub-floors as well as fully-cured concrete slabs. You can also install these floors on, above or below grade. So if you are looking for a really tough, durable hardwood floor this may be worth seeing at your local specialty flooring store.

Wide Plank Hardwood Floors by Carlisle

Another choice for homeowners today are wide plank wood floors. A site I ran across recently really caught my eye. The site is wideplankflooring.com and it is the home of Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. Looking around their web site it appears they manufacture a wide range of wood species and colors all in wide planks flooring. They definitely have some great looking wide plank floors, including hand scraped wide plank floors as well. They also appear to have a blog as well... see www.hardwoodsurface.com.

Wide plank wood flooring can really give a room an elegant an old charm appeal and with today's finishes are much easier to maintain than the old wax floors Grandma use to have.