Showing posts with label wholesale flooring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wholesale flooring. Show all posts

21 March 2010

More on cork floors


I have been barking about cork floors for years and all of the sudden the rest of the world seems to have caught up with me. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm hearing a lot of noise out there that agrees with my opinion of the stuff.

Tim Carter writes a syndicated column called Ask The Builder that runs with some regularity in The St. Pete Times. Here was his column from yesterday's paper.
Q: I'm interested in cork flooring planks and wonder if it's really as good as the salesmen tell me. Because money is very tight, I'm looking for a discount cork floor. A local carpet store is having a cork flooring sale soon, so now's the time to make a decision. Do you have experience with this material? If so, would you install it again in a home you'd build? Is it as durable as they say? How do you protect it? Is it easy to clean?
A: I understand your doubts about whether cork flooring is really a suitable material to walk on day in and day out. After all, when you hold a cork from a wine bottle in your hand, you can see it's somewhat friable. In comparison, a piece of oak seems impossible to break apart or chip.

I had my doubts, too, until I saw a cork floor. About 35 years ago my father-in-law took me along for a ride to visit a business partner. When we walked into the kitchen, I saw the strangest floor.

It was cork kitchen flooring, resembling the deck of a ship, with planks that were very long and about 8 inches wide. When I asked what kept it from disintegrating, the man said, "Son, you don't have to ever worry about this floor wearing out."

I later discovered that cork flooring was used in many commercial and institutional buildings that receive heavy foot traffic. You don't have to worry about durability if you purchase a high-quality cork floor.

To give you another example of its toughness, I installed cork plank flooring tiles on the steps that lead to my basement. Steps are a great place to test flooring as your foot typically slides on the tread surface as you climb.

My basement steps got heavy traffic because our home office was downstairs. Countless trips were made up and down these steps, which were not vacuumed that often, adding grit to the equation.

Just yesterday I cleaned these steps, getting them ready for an open house. They looked the same as the day I installed them 10 years ago. I owe much of this to the toughness of the cork, but also to the fact that I coated it with five coats of high-quality urethane.

Another thing that helped the cork on my steps was the custom oak nosing I installed. Because I knew shoes would be sliding onto each tread, I had the top piece of oak milled so that it was 1/64th of an inch thicker than the thickness of the cork planks that were glued to the steps. This prevented the shoes from wearing away the front edge of the cork on each tread.

I used clear water-based urethane on the cork on the steps and on the floor in the entire basement. It was easy to apply and is easy to clean. I just use regular liquid dish soap and water to clean up spills. For regular mopping, I add 8 ounces of white vinegar to 2 gallons of warm water.
You can read more from Tim Carter on his website Ask the Builder.

With that ringing endorsement in mind, I have two cork floors being installed in two projects in the next few weeks. Both jobs are getting a wide plank, engineered floor from US Floors in Georgia. Job one is getting a floor called Cleopatra.


Job two is getting a floor called Merida.


I can't decide which one I like more. US Floors has really broadened my horizons when it comes to the flooring I specify and cork's rapidly replacing my former knee jerk use of travertine. US Floors also sells flooring made from bamboo and oil-finished hardwood. Check out this floor sample.


Now guess what it's made from.

Give up?

That's bamboo pretending to be tiger wood and I will not rest until that ends up in one of my projects. I have never seen anything like it. Well, I have. It's just that it was real tiger wood.

Anyhow, back to cork. What do you guys think? Anybody out there already have it? Care to share a story?