You can consider it a blessing if you have hardwood floors in your home; many people only wish they had them. Not only are these floors lovely, they are particularly practical as well. Wood floors are known to last for many years when they are properly maintained and cared for, and they stand up well in all types of weather conditions. Despite this, even those who are very particular not to allow water on the wooden flooring have been known to occasionally develop a mold problem.

It seems that most likely cause of mildew and mold on hardwood flooring comes from flowerpots. If the water drainage is not cared for properly and in a timely manner, it can cause major problems when it comes to your hardwood floors being at risk of mold. Generally, the damage that lies beneath the flowerpot is quite extensive by the time it is found.

However, the good news is that this damage is not permanent; with the proper information and a little work, this problem is repairable. If your floor is finished mold can be removed in most cases, as it is often only the floor finish that has been damaged.

You will need a scraper, which is available at a local hardware store, most often in the paint supply department. Although the size of the scraper does not make much of a difference, you may want to begin with a scraper that is 8 inches wide. Holding the scraper in your hand, you will pull the it along the grain of the wood, adjusting the pressure so the edge of the scraper is in contact with the hardwood finish. However, you should take care as to not dig deeply into the wood with this tool and run the risk of damaging your hardwood floors all the more.

The next thing you will need is a sanding sponge (180 grit) that is designed for the purpose of finish removal. You should then sand along the grain until you have removed most if not all of the mold. If there happens to be a little mold remaining you can use a diluted mixture of Clorox on the area to finish the job. You should be careful though as this could harm the floor if proper caution is not taken.

When you have finished the procedure of sanding and bleaching, you should sand again. This time you will need a 200 grit sand paper. Always remember to sand along the wood grain and never against it. If possible, you should touch up the finish with the same hardwood finish that was used on the rest of the floor. If you are not able to find an exact match, just try to match it as best you can with the next closest match of finish.

To prevent this type of problem, be sure that all your potted plants have proper drainage and that there are no pots leaking onto your flooring. In fact, all liquid spills should be quickly and properly cleaned up as they occur. These small steps will safeguard and prolong the magnificence and lifetime of your beautiful hardwood flooring.

Visit us for more information on types of hardwood floors, refinishing hardwood floors and wood floors.

There are many types of flooring and one of it is laminate flooring. The best laminate flooring surely will fully satisfy your needs. By saying so, it should be affordable, doesn’t require much maintenance, easy installation, and lasting without losing its shine and beauty.

Also known as ‘engineered wood’ or ‘composite wood’, laminate wood is produced through a bounding process of wood in the forms of veneers, strands and fibers with addition glue that , together, form materials that are then tested to meet local or international standards.

Laminate flooring is reasonably priced hence making it a perfect choice as economical flooring with exquisite design for your home. It is easy to maintain, easy to clean and highly resistant to sunlight, scratches, stains and even burns.

There are variety of shapes, design and sizes in plank and tiles to suit and fit with the dimensions of diverse floors. You can find in stone, ceramic tiles and wood designs that come in different colors and patterns. As there is laminate flooring that requires adhesive materials to hold the planks and tiles together, there is also some that does not require glue to keep them in place. You can also find pre-glued flooring that only requires little moisture to stimulate the glue.

If you are to fix best laminate flooring in sensitive area such as the bathroom and kitchen, it is advisable to check the thickness and quality of the core before purchasing it. The core becomes stronger and much more stable as the thickness increases. Laminate cores of improved quality come with water resistant features. Moreover, laminates with paraffin wax saturate joints and is very suitable on bathroom surfaces. With the existence of paraffin wax, it protects the core thus avoiding the floor to be dented by the water that enters the core.

Do consider your life style and budget when deciding to purchase your laminate flooring. Do not be blinded by the over-choice in designs and prices. Always picture how it will look like in your home before deciding which to purchase. Laminate floorings prices range from 1.5 to 5 dollars per square feet. Of course the prices vary as the designs and qualities increases. So always stick to your budget. The differences in price are to suit many level of affordability.

There are many places where you can purchase best laminate flooring. Now days, you can even opt to purchase it online! How easy is that? However, always consider the quality of the product before anything else. Most stores, online or hardware stores provide warranty options. So choose protection against moisture, fading and staining damage during warranty period for your best laminate flooring’s needs.

The best part is maintenance. It is very easy with laminate floors, therefore ideal for busy parents, working adults and elderly. Laminate flooring is worry free! If you spill anything on it, quickly wipe it off. Other than that, there’s nothing to worry. As long as you follow the maintenance guidance given with your purchase, you will be able to maintain your flooring well. Limit to only damp mop to clean laminate flooring or go for vacuum instead.

Laminate Flooring is one of the popular choices as flooring solutions of many, find out what kind of floor is perfect for you and your needs at the Flooring Dude site at http://flooringdude.com

The basement is one of the most important but often overlooked parts of a house. Usually relegated to a storage area and nothing more, the basement can actually be used for quite a number of things, and any other uses you may plan on putting your basement through will be an important factor in deciding what type of flooring you should use for it. Here are some of the most common and popular types of basement flooring used, and their purposes, and pros and cons.

Concrete – plain old concrete flooring is the most common thing you’ll see in people’s basements. This is for households that regard the basement as just a place to store stuff. Concrete flooring is best for basements that see a lot of traffic, with people hauling stuff to and from it. It is especially suitable for people who decided to set up a home workshop and plunked it in the basement, as the man of the house will often haul stuff to and from the basement to happily tinker, saw, hammer, and drill away. The punishement that raw concrete can take is best suited for this. The bad thing about plain old concrete is, of course, it’s aesthetic value – or lack thereof.

Ceramic Tile – this is a good alternative to concrete, though ceramic tile isn’t an option for basements that see a lot of hard, heavy stuff hauled to and from it on a regular basis. On the other hand, it’s perfect for basements that housewives have gone and converted into a room for placing the washer and dryer machines. Moisture is a natural occurence in most basements due to the humidity of the air running beneath a house, so ceramic tile protects the floor from water damage.

Hardwood Laminate – this is the ideal flooring for basements that have been converted into another floor of the house. More often than not, this means that instead of a storage space, the basement has been turned into a game room, function room, library, music room, or whatever. Hardwood laminate is a warm and attractive flooring for these converted basements, but remember if you go with this option that these rooms need a good ventilation system because of the air moisture buildup that basements usually suffer from. If the basement remains closed off, the humidity will eventually damage the wood.

Thick Carpeting – this is the simplest way to dress up a basement. As mentioned earlier, concrete is the floor of choice for most people. Thick carpeting is not a good idea if the basement usually sees people hauling and dragging heavy objects across it’s surface all the time. However, if the basement is often used for storing relatively small objects that don’t need to be dragged along, carpeting is an option to soften the look of the basement. An air dehumidifier is needed for carpeted basements, however, because otherwise the basement’s air moisture will cause mold build-ups in the carpet.

Rubber/Foam Mats – this is basically a cross between the ideas of using carpeting and ceramic tile. Unlike carpets, rubber mats have the twin advantages of being waterproof and won’t really have any problems with mold build-up. It’s biggest advantage however is it’s noise insulating capability. This is often a good choice for busy basements which see a lot of activity and noise, as the mats will also act to dampen sounds coming from the basement. In tandem with this, the basement walls and ceiling can also be lined with acoustic insulating material to make sure that even working with power tools in the basement during the dead of the night won’t wake up the rest of the household.

Radiant Heating – lastly, radiant heating panels are the ideal choice for houses in cold environments. These panels are sturdy, waterproof, and actually trap and hold heat, keeping houses warm even in the dead of winter. The biggest drawback to this type of flooring is it’s inapplicability for houses in hotter environments, since basements are naturally hot and the trapped heat in basements is what causes the air humidity in them. This type of flooring would only amplify the problem in a house situated in, say, the tropics.

For more tips on home improvement visit http://www.perfecthomedecor.com – a site that offers interior decorating tips for every room in the house as well as more tips on basement decorating.

Laminate Flooring has made the most significant change to the flooring industry in the last 25 years and continues to make tremendous changes and improvements over is hard surface counter parts.

In Europe they have been enjoying its features and benefits for several decades but not as laminate flooring as we know today. Decorative laminate was really the origins and the beginning of what now is known as laminate flooring. The decorative laminate was widely used in kitchen counter tops and furniture. As the technology evolved in the counter top laminate industry it clearly became apparent that with the endless number of decors that could be created, could also be created and used on the floor.

The idea of laminate flooring was born. There have been many technical challenges the first of which was how can you take a simple counter top laminate and create a flooring product, the flooring product will take far more abuse by being walked on and a wear layer was created.

There has really been no stopping the technical tidal wave of improvements and ideas that followed. Led mainly by the European countries laminate flooring gained more market share year after year, no market experienced such rapid growth as North America. Massive marketing campaigns led by such brands as Pergo who are now synonymous with laminate flooring introduced laminate flooring to the American Public in the early 1990s.

The actual history of laminate flooring is quite short in North America, because Pergo had achieved household recognition with the new flooring products Laminate flooring in North America was widely referred to as “Pergo” floors again the synonymous status and the ‘holy grail’ of all brands.

In 2000 laminate flooring was a glue product; even so the market share within the flooring industry in North America continued to grow at a double digit pace. Many of the other US traditional floor covering manufacturers of carpet and vinyl added laminate flooring to their portfolio of products.

Then so was born the private label laminate. Laminate flooring was easy to private label you simply changed the insert or the packaging and then that created another brand or line of flooring. This was especially useful for the hardwood and carpet manufacturer’s to get on board with this new product. The traditional manufacturers of carpet and hardwood have huge distribution networks and with their own branded line of flooring were able to place thousands of new flooring displays in a matter of months and new brands started appearing everywhere. This continued to drive the growth in the USA.

As traditional US manufacturers of carpet and vinyl presented themselves as laminate flooring manufacturers, advertised the products, placed laminate flooring displays and drove sales.

Time Line in the US Market The next stages of growth were equally fast and I will break them down chronologically:

2000 was particularly painful for the Carpet Manufactures in Dalton, Georgia they were completely blindsided by the aggressive marketing of laminate flooring against their carpet and that is where the laminate took most of their market share from touting the Laminate Flooring product as hypo allergenic and showing close ups of carpet mites and bugs did nothing to help the domestic carpet manufacturers.

All hard surface flooring companies benefited. It was an exciting year for laminate flooring salesmen, even with terrible installation demonstrations and glue together flooring.

2001 Every year that preceded 2000 involved new, exciting and innovative changes to the laminate flooring market. The first change really started in 2001 glue free laminate. This was first introduced with metal clips on the back and during sales presentations as you tried to put it together you almost needed a sledge hammer, it was more difficult than the glue together method. Not very popular but the concept was created all we needed was the design and solution.

2002 A year later the technology of glue-less laminate flooring arrived, introductions of glue-less laminates began again revolutionizing the floor covering industry. Unilin Industries of Belgium introduced Quick-Step into the US market. Quick-Step utilizes the patented Uniclic joint system. Several other manufacturers bought licenses to use the Uniclic joint technology thereby acknowledging Uniclic as the industry standard for Glue-less technology.

Still 95% of the USA market was using glue together laminate, it took yet more aggressive marketing and this time mainly led by the home centers with names like ‘Easy-Lock’, ‘Quick-Lock’, ‘Speedy-Lock’, etc, to drive the consumer towards the exceptionally friendly D.I.Y. glue-less laminate flooring ranges.

It was predicted in 2002 that buy 2004 100% of the laminate flooring industry will be glue-less.

2003 This again proved to be a dynamic year within the laminate flooring industry, sales of the product per square foot continued to climb, but lawsuits with regards to patents over the locking system and who created and who could use it surfaced and would continue on for many years. Aside from the lawsuits the technology now happy with the glue-less free install and now a particularly D.I.Y. friendly product focused on creating the product to be as realistic as hardwood as possible.

2004 This saw some dramatic changes in the quality of the laminate product itself. The standard glue-free laminate flooring product was 7″ wide by 54″ long and it had a light ‘ticking’ effect, the panels went together with glue-less free locking system. Mostly all of the products were imports and mainly from Europe.

Towards the end of 2004 laminate flooring factories (though not fully integrated and small in comparison to the European counterparts) started appearing across the USA. The larger US manufacturers of carpets invested in laminate flooring facilities though they were not fully integrated (we can explore the importance of vertical integration later). But this showed the US retailer and distributor that the product was here to and it was time to start backing a horse.

This led to more innovation from overseas, the first was a wood grain texture – the laminate itself had heavier wood texture but it was random and not too realistic in effect a modest upgrade, at first all manufacturers tried to sell this improvement for $0.20SF to distribution but the reality was their was no manufacturer cost increase to produce this texture – it was just a different pressure plate.

2005 The lawsuits over the locking system continued, incidentally the locking system lawsuit is not about the easy angle long joint of the laminate flooring, all the law suits focus on the end locking joint.

The chase to create an exact wood replicate of hardwood flooring continued and this led to a technology called ‘Register and Emboss’ or ‘Embossed and Registered’. The idea of this was for the pattern of the oak for example to be perfectly indented into the wood panel, so the grain of the Oak or Cherry was realistic to the touch.

All the manufacturers soon chased this technology, it required a relatively simple process, create the correct paper (décor pattern) and then have a press plate and the end of the manufacturing process to match that paper décor and then you have the grain embossed.

Legal arguments over who came up with that technology all ensued.

2006 The year of branding, distributors with ‘own brand’ tried to position themselves as manufacturers – one of the biggest being a vinyl manufacturer tried to position themselves as market leaders. Acquisitions also followed, Mohawk Industries bought Unilin ‘Quick-Step’ in 2006. This also became the year of the home center business, where having your labeled product in one of the three main US home centers was the ultimate goal.

One of the major carpet manufacturers and distributors with there factory in Dalton gained the business with Home Depot. Pergo was well positioned with a vinyl manufacturer you had private labeled their laminate line into Lowes Home Improvement Stores. Being a vinyl manufacturer and not a laminate manufacturer create a major problem and a crucial weakness as Lowes Home Improvement shifted their purchasing policy to ‘only’ buy factory direct.

A major Swiss group and manufacturer of laminate flooring also with the world’s largest factory in Heiligengrabe, Germany had been quietly building a factory in Barnwell, SC and at the right time were able to replace the vinyl manufacturer as supplier to Lowes Home Improvement.

2007 This really saw the legal issue on the locking system end as two legal systems emerged, one under Valinge Innovation and Uniclic Licensees each with approximately 100 partners paying royalties of roughly $0.04SF to $0.07SF. Licensees were granted all over the world and this led way to the re-emergence of Chinese laminate flooring.

In the mid 1990 China was one of the fastest growing laminate flooring markets in the world and most of this was supplied by shipping in container from Europe, there were huge distributors in China 100 containers a month in size – or 2,400 pallets a month. It did not take long for Chinese ingenuity to copy the process and buy 2001, China had a slew of factories (with large Government subsidies), some of this product came back as imports in to the USA, but the legal issues with locking systems and potential freezes of stock, cease and desist letter flying about scared off most distributors.

2008 China was back, this time the large factories had license agreements and were legal, the machines that made the laminate flooring were from Europe and the product quality was excellent.

There market tactics were equally excellent, instead off going after the low end dog fighting market of the 7mm and 8mm, they created a new look. A narrow plank and beveled the edges, this new narrow plank was approximately 5″ wide compared to the standard 8″ from Europe, the 5″ wide was a one plank look and combined with the bevel, register and embossing they had created the ultimate flooring.

This was it, everything over the last 25 years culminated to this point a flooring that had a narrow board look 5 inches wide, beveled or micro beveled on all four side, realistic textured surface and a lifetime warranty.

The European’s adjusted, but they were for once on the back foot, China instead of going after the low end market aimed high with a high quality, the highest quality laminate you could buy and they could make it and make it affordable to the US market.

2009 It is not clear where we can go from here, but the same was probably said in 2005, laminate flooring is now so good in appearance that you cannot tell it apart from real hardwood, the only clue is the price laminate flooring is far less expensive than real wood with more color choices. 2009 will be a difficult economic year and so will 2010. Consumers will focus on quality and price. Brand will become less important as the consumer becomes more educated. The huge price fluctuations four sided beveled and narrow plank from one distributor priced at $5SF and from another $0.89SF and yet absolutely no technical difference in the product. Consumer will research and the gap will close.

Laminate flooring in the US market is a remarkable story of growth and ingenuity. I do not think that a couple of tough economic years will have much impact on its future survival. It is an excellent product and with some effort and research by the consumer you can get incredible value.