Flooring ‘N Tiles

Sharing some thoughts about one of the most important tools of the trade. This isn’t any DIY stuff, really, but if you’re interested in flooring, you might find this a good read.

Professional floor sanders are among the most necessary tools in a flooring contractor’s arsenal. Belt driven and rotary sanders are used in combination as a rule, for the best possible sanding. The rotary sanders tend to be necessary for hard, out-of-the-way places like corners and edges, while the belt sanders are fabulous for the very major work of sanding the main areas of a floor.

Whether reconditioning an old floor is called for, or for a light tweaking and sanding of a brand new, freshly-installed wood floor, floor sanders are just an ideal tool for each. Naturally, the variety of grits available to a floor sanding machine determine the amount of consuming the surface a professional floor sander will undertake. Rough old floors require a grittier and more deeper penetrating grit for reconditioning. Eating away sometimes decades of wood surfaces can take place, removing thus all signs of aging and of pockmarked and etched surfaces. The result when reconditioned, can be amazingly attractive. It always amazed me how fresh an ancient floor can look after a through and proper sanding.

New floors can also require some sanding, but with a much finer grit rating and typically to roughen the floor enough to accept the urethane or varnish applications which will eventually protect and make the floor shine like new.

These can be very powerful machines which require the utmost care in use. Indeed, the deeper the grit, the more you have to watch how long you dally in one spot. It is entirely possible to overdo the sanding and thus create a gouged area. Amazingly, the rougher sandpapers can simply eat up the surface of a floor. Be careful with these remarkable machines however, and you will be totally delighted with the result. There are few machines indeed that can deliver so well on your intended result. Floor sanders are simply dream come true for almost anyone dealing with wood floors.

More natural style flooring today -

Natural limestone classic floor tiles rate as a high quality product with much to recommend it. Limestone reveals little graining or crystalline texture, giving it a smooth, honed, granular surface or polished look. Limestone contains lime from sea water, making it a very popular choice with its fine selection of earth-tone colors suitable for a wide range of environments. So you get a highly durable stone product with a natural tendency towards the earth tones so popular in home flooring anymore. Limestone is a bit softer than other stone tiles but its deep fossilization gives it great depth and visual interest.

This visual depth gives a real insight into the success of limestone as a flooring tile. The appearance is arresting, actually. It is really quite pretty. The depth spoken of makes it look “deeper” and more transparent in a way, yielding a look inside at the very components of the stone itself.

Limestone is making inroads in the business of tiled walls as well, and for much the same reason. I like the natural limestone classic floor tiles. They can take some coloring without sacrificing the other qualities and is a dense and typical stone in that is easy to clean and maintain.

A rough floor tile is a result of design, not error. Modern homes are now able to incorporate rough floor tiles into a congruent and interesting mix of tiles, throughout the house. Informal-looking and yet mysterious in their naturalness, rough floor tiles can add an element of Nature into our ultra-civilized homes.

I have seen abundant cases of this which actually provide a warm sense of place, complete with an ambiance which welcomes visitors and the owners alike with this naturalistic and completely rewarding sensibility. Thick rugs, animal and manufactured, the welcome site of wooden furniture and fixtures all can combine in an extraordinary way to relax one and to please the eye.

Typically absorbent of light, these gorgeous tiles can mute the glare from the outdoors and a glaring sun, thereby “cooling” the vista immeasurably. Not only that, but being absorbent of sun and its light also means these natural rough stones tiles can also store heat, providing a cozy and warm surface for hours after the sun has actually set.

Looking out onto nature or some nice landscape, the sense of being at least partly “natural” at one’s very toes is an appealing and dramatic sort of concept. The non reflective nature of rough floor tile further encapsulates the home owner in his “castle”, making everything somehow as if not more intimate than any other flooring substance.

While on the topic of laminate flooring, I figured a quick DIY tip is a good topic for one more blog post!

Repairing laminate flooring is reasonable simple in the end and follows some sensible methodology.  However, unfortunately, inasmuch as laminate flooring clicks into place like a jig saw and receives its strength from just that interlocking nature, it may require a substantial amount of removal and replacement to really fix things.  For example, the most common and most recommendable manner of fixing it involved removing all the interlocked laminate flooring pieces which extend inwards from the outer edge.  Thus, it is a process of removing all strips leading to the affected area.

Thus, simple as it may seem in principle, it can be one big pain to fix them, owing to the sheer volume of what needs to be undone just to get to the area desiring a replacement board or two.  Nevertheless, since they are a simple fix, from the standpoint of complexity, it is pretty easy to do.

Start at the closest edge by a wall and remove the molding.  Make sure you don’t break the moulding either, lol.  Careful!

From this point, it is your standard average simple matter of separating the boards which interlock until you take out enough to arrive at your desired fixable area. Hopefully, you will have the correct-colored and sized boards in your hot hand to replace the damaged one.  From here, we just rebuild, going once again, wall-wards.  When finished, tack the molding back in place and you have your newer, better floor!

Still thinking about shiny tiles, metal ones came to mind.

Metallic retro floor tile looks are another interesting design twist undergoing a small renaissance in the booming floor tile industry. There are many of these “retro” designs currently in high vogue, including the classic black and white combination that takes you back in time and forward into home fashion. Checkerboard marble decoratives and classic black and white octagons for floors.and walls are the hottest and most chic of the lot.

Metallic colors and tiles are also hearkening back to the clutterless era of Bauhaus design elements of the 30′s and 40′s, starkly empty of clutter and somehow retro in its “post modernness”. Clean lines, the “metallic” floors absorb light incorporating warm metallic copper shades with a slightly iridescent patina, varying in colour when seen in different lights or from different angles. While seemingly cold-sounding, the fact is they make an elegant floor when mixed with a combination of rugs and other effects, like furniture and art.

Very sleek, very urban the metallic look is making its way back. The black and white look, as mentioned above, is also coming back hugely, especially in many restaurants and eateries, clubs and such where a premium is placed on a “retro” ambiance. Both hearken back to another era in a rich way, interestingly complete with the best aspects of those periods.

Here are a couple of metal flooring tiles available on Amazon.com, to whet your appetite and possibly inspire you -

In a mood for something far away from rustic Tuscany style… and a topic almost any floor tile expert would love approaching: shiny expensive chic floor tiles. It is frankly a challenge to find the most “chic” of anything, much less the amazingly wide variety of floor tiles.”Shiny” is easy! “Expensive”? No problem! But “chic”? Now there is an argument in waiting. There is even an argument which states the “most chic” of all tiles nowadays are the most “retro”! Now go gut that ’50′s bathroom. Like baseball cards once used as bicycle noise makers, many of the chic-est bathroom tiles are long gone in dumps all over the world.

However, assuming the newest and most attractive and expensive floor tiles are what we are searching for, we can look no farther than marble, in terms of natural stone. Marble’s uniqueness and other-worldly beauty is pretty unmatchable in nature and in flooring in general. Travertine can also be placed in this category, a small step below marble in beauty and a step upwards in terms of durability and popularity.

Take a look at this polished marble tile set – at just over $150 per carton (at the time of writing), covering 11.25 sq FT, it’s expensive and chic enough to fit the bill (click on the image for more details) -

In terms of the “unnatural”, manufactured varieties, we enter an entirely different arena. Metals, glass and ceramics now become a part of the lexicon of the most chic and expensive. There are tiles which are hand-made, virtual objects of art with colorations and even prints of photographs and art work, faithfully replicated and providing glamorous and insanely attractive flooring. Unlimited in potential, these ceramic creations offer the stylings of artists and can be computer-rendered, deriving form an individual’s personal request. Amazingly, then, you can actually take part in the design of your own tiles! Thus manufactured, then delivered, right to your door.

I hear this a lot: “We’re looking for Toscana floor tiles.” It is interesting inasmuch as there is no real set “Toscano Tile” outside of numerous tiles bearing that brand name. Yet, there is something very relevant in the question. We often hear of the “Tuscany kitchen”, for example. It implies a warm, sunny place, rife with light from the sun and with your more muted earth tones with perhaps some riotously-colored ceramic tiles mixed in. It is a truism in the industry that Tuscany offers a blend of fashion and of uniqueness, a reminiscent sense of place and time.

Yes, the brand, Toscano, is highly popular. Many firms manufacture and sell tiles with just that designation. It helps to bear in mind that almost all reflect the aforementioned properties to a “T”. Earth-toned, they can be of a terracotta sensibility, even polished, or they can be somewhat crudely-arranged earth-colored tans and browns with mottled tops and uneven edges. Both work and both have described exactly what people were looking for upon finding out the selections in that name.

Tuscany is famous for many things, but few more than the farmhouse-style of kitchens and ante-rooms. Toscano floor tiles almost always reflect these qualities and almost always satisfy. There are few ways to go wrong with a selection of a homey and warm-looking set of tiles like toscano floor tiles.