By choosing wood as a finishing floor covering, homeowners strive to add coziness and comfort to the interior of their home.
Eco-friendly, natural and very warm material is very pleasant and easy to use, but rather capricious to process.
Choosing the quality and texture of wood coating, preserving all its properties, but adding strength and resistance to external influences to the material, is not an easy task. Let's consider how to cover a wooden floor depending on the flooring area. What properties will different types of coating add to wood?
Wooden floors - myths and reality
In the minds of many, plank flooring looks too simple compared to laminate or parquet boards. But this is a mistaken opinion. These materials are produced with a ready-made decorative top layer, which can imitate expensive and exotic wood species. But precisely to imitate. Nothing prevents you from decorating the floorboard, giving it any desired look. For this purpose, there is a huge arsenal of paints and varnishes, waxes, oils, and impregnations.
In addition, there is no problem in buying not pine boards, but oak, larch, walnut or any other species, including merbau or wenge. It's just a matter of price.
Decorating a wooden floor Source dvervdom.ru
Another erroneous opinion is that the boardwalk will definitely dry out, become deformed, creak, and cracks will appear in it. Indeed, this will happen if the boards are poorly dried, initially have defects, if they are laid on a poorly prepared base, or if errors were made during the installation process. The coating laid in a room with an unstable microclimate with frequent changes in humidity and temperature will also creak and dry out. But all this, with similar initial data, will happen with parquet boards, parquet, and laminate. Repairing such floors will be more difficult and expensive.
Yes, laying and finishing solid wood floors can take longer. But they will probably cost less, and they will look the way you want. And they will last longer.
The floor in the house is made of block parquet
Piece parquet is completely natural. These are small rectangular tiles made from oak, maple, ash, beech and some other hardwoods.
Fig. 6. Parquet tiles are manufactured in such a way that, using their tongue-and-groove profile, they are easily and very tightly mounted with adjacent tiles. Moreover, the installation of piece parquet can be done in various patterns (“deck”, “Christmas tree”, “square”, “wicker” and many others). The photo shows several installation options.
Fig 7. Agree, this “drawing” looks very impressive and respectable. By the way, a specialist can custom-make almost any design option, laying out parquet tiles the way you want. However, this is not easy and requires special knowledge, additional time and, of course, finances.
Fig8.
What should the floorboard be like?
Most often, planed pine boards are used for floors. They have good strength, resistance to rotting, an affordable price, and can be easily processed and decorated using paints and varnishes. The board can be:
- regular edged;
- tongue and groove;
- and a quarter.
Floorboards with a quarter Source garantwood.ru
The most popular option is tongue-and-groove boards equipped with a groove and a tongue on the opposite long end edges. Sometimes tongues are also present at short ends for joining boards along the length. This profile provides the highest quality coating without cracks and with minimal risk of deformation.
Thickness
Before laying a wooden floor, a base is prepared for it in the form of a frame made of logs. The thickness of the floorboards is selected taking into account the distance between the joists: the larger it is, the thicker the boards should be.
Table for determining the thickness of boards Source stroimzanovo.ru
It is important! Do not forget that after leveling and sanding the flooring, its thickness may decrease by several millimeters.
Variety
The higher the grade of products, the fewer knots, chips, scratches, resin bags and other defects they have. The best and highest quality, and therefore more expensive, is the “Extra” variety.
See also: Catalog of companies that specialize in doors, windows and related work
Humidity
Floorboards can be sold raw, immediately after leaving the sawmill. It can warp and become deformed during the drying process, especially if stored improperly.
It is better to buy natural or chamber-dried lumber. The latter have a humidity of 8-10%, they can be used immediately without fear that the flooring will dry out. Boards with a moisture content of 12-20% must be dried in a dry room, stacked using spacers. In utility rooms, on terraces, and verandas, floors can be laid from planks of natural moisture.
Storage conditions
It is advisable to select floor boards personally, inspecting each one for defects and distortions and of the same thickness. It is important to pay attention to the conditions in which they are stored. The storage location should be dry, ventilated, and the boards should not be in bulk, but in stacks.
Lumber storage warehouse Source tildacdn.com
Flooring rules
The process of installing wooden flooring consists of several stages.
Preparing the base
The board must be ventilated, so it is not laid on a solid base, but on joists or beams. They must also be dry and thick enough to support the load.
The following are used as support beams:
- thick boards placed on edge;
- bars;
- debarked round timber with the top side beveled into a plane.
The cross-section of the logs depends on the installation method - on a solid concrete base or on support posts. And also on the length of the span between them. Exact numbers can be found in SNiPs and reference literature.
Before laying the logs on brick or concrete columns, they are covered with a double layer of roofing material for waterproofing. You can place cuttings of boards under the logs to level them horizontally. Both joists and linings are impregnated with antiseptic before installing plank floors.
Laminate
If the cost of the material is an important selection criterion for you, then we recommend considering laminate flooring for a wooden house. The relatively low price of laminate is not its only advantage. Ease of installation, beautiful appearance - these are what developers like. You can install it yourself even if you don’t have serious professional skills. The only thing you need to consider: laminate is not completely natural.
Fig. 10. Its top layer is made of polymer and covered with a special film. Externally, such a coating very reliably imitates the pattern of any type of wood; it is no different, for example, from parquet or oak boards. As for performance characteristics, laminate is very resistant to moisture, mechanical stress and other negative influences. The range of this material is very wide on the building materials market, and you can choose the desired texture and color.
Video description
How to install logs for a wooden floor, watch the video:
Preparing the boards
Even kiln-dried lumber needs acclimatization to the conditions in which it will be used. Therefore, it is advisable to bring the floorboard into the house in advance and let it lie for several days. But this can only be done after all wet work has been completed - installing screeds, plastering walls, so that the wood does not absorb moisture evaporating from the solutions.
Then the boards are sorted, putting the deformed ones aside and choosing the smoothest and cleanest ones. Products that are not of the best quality can be used for wooden flooring in less significant rooms or for laying along walls where they will be hidden by furniture.
For reference! If the boards are of different widths, then narrow floorboards will deform less when drying.
After sorting, the lumber is treated with an antiseptic and left to dry. It is enough to carry out such processing only for the back side and ends, since the finished flooring will be subjected to sanding and protective and decorative finishing.
Antiseptic treatment of lumber Source myosu.ru
Which wood or wood flooring to choose?
Laminate floors are attractively priced. Optimal in tandem with warm floors. Otherwise, they are relevant only in rooms where you do not plan to walk barefoot - living room, hallway. Laying such a slab is not difficult.
Wood-polymer composite is a mixture of wood and plastic. It is distinguished by its high cost, durability and wear resistance. Most often used for terraces and verandas.
Cork is ideal for a bedroom, small living room, children's room.
Parquet of any kind, as well as solid boards, is applicable in all living rooms. There are also waterproof samples that can be laid in the kitchen and even in the bathroom.
To choose wooden flooring for different rooms, it is worth weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the material, taking into account its purpose at the place of installation.
Decoration
The floorboards in the house should be in harmony with the interior, so it is rarely left without a finishing coating, which also protects the wood from damage, discoloration, moisture and dirt. To do this, use various tinting compounds that do not hide the texture of the wood, or covering paints.
Tinting allows you to imitate any type of wood. You can change the tone using stains, impregnations, oils, wax, varnish.
Paints provide even more scope for designers. You just need to discard stereotypes and forget that a wooden floor can only be brown.
- White, light gray, beige and other light shades of the floor make the interior light, airy, and clean.
- Black color fits many modern styles, but you need to keep in mind that dust on it is much more noticeable than on a light-colored coating.
- Bright floor shades look great with light walls in minimalist interiors.
You can also paint the floorboards in different colors, create simple patterns on the floor using masking tape or patterns using a stencil.
Non-standard floor design Source systemautepleniya.com
In short, there are many options for decorating plank flooring. During the next repair, you can cycle it and change the decor.
Types of wood protectants
Various compositions for treating wooden floors are classified according to appearance and main component.
Classification by appearance factor looks like this:
- Transparent means . This category includes various varnishes and impregnations. The advantage of such products, in addition to protection, lies in emphasizing the natural decorative qualities of natural wood.
- Opaque materials . Any organic-based paints (alkyds, oils, polyurethane, etc.) and water-dispersible products belong to the category of opaque coatings.
If we talk about differences depending on the basic component of the protective agent, then the classification will look like this:
- Products with fire retardants . Such substances are applied to the coating to prevent wood from burning and are most often used in industrial and public buildings. It is also worth knowing that such products do not affect the appearance.
- Products with biocides . These compositions provide protection of natural material from mold, mildew and insects.
