LESLIE: Alright. Next up, we’ve got Mike from Tennessee calling in. And what’s great is that Mike tuned into us on Facebook and knew that we were in studio and gave us a call through our Facebook fan network.
Hey, Mike. Welcome.
MIKE: Our house is on a slab and we’re wanting to change to possibly some type of wood flooring but trying to decide what type would be best and how to go about that decision.
TOM: OK. Well, it’s very easy. Because your house is on a slab, there’s only one type of wood flooring that you can put down and that’s called engineered floor. The reason it’s called engineered floor, Mike, is because it’s put together in layers, kind of like plywood where you have alternating layers of wood? And that’s necessary for it to be dimensionally stable.
If you were to try to put down solid hardwood floor on a concrete floor, that concrete is so damp and moist that the solid hardwood would very quickly warp and twist and it just wouldn’t work. So you want engineered hardwood and that can be installed as a floating floor, which means the floor pieces themselves would lock together but they don’t really attach to the floor. They just kind of float and they go down over an underlayment which is usually, with engineered, like a thin foam, so it even gives you a little cushion when you walk on it. And you cut it to fit the room and you cover the exposed edge with some molding when you get out to the baseboard.
So it’s pretty straightforward, pretty easy project to do. I would buy the best-quality engineered that you can afford, because it really counts on the finish. If you get a commercial-grade, for example, finish, it’s going to be far more durable, because it is almost impossible to refinish. So you really do want to have a good-quality finish first time out of the box.
MIKE: Well, that’s great information. I appreciate it.
TOM: You got it. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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