Tag Archives: Floors

Benefits of Polished Garage Floors

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Ease of maintenance is the key reason many business owners and retail facilities are opting for polished garage floors. But, there are some more benefits to the polished garage concrete floor than just aesthetics and ease of maintenance. Not only are they easy to clean, they hold up well to heavy forklift and food traffic. When owners compare maintenance costs between concrete polishing and other alternatives they find that savings are enormous, easily replacing the cost of polished garaged floors installation, and turning in long term benefits. They also reduce the labor, time, and expense to apply them. The glossy and lightening surface resists the marks of forklift truck tires and staining from harsh chemicals.

Although keeping polished concrete shiny requires minimal effort and expense, certain substances may cause damage to your floor system if left to stand, so it is obligatory to clean up spills immediately. With basic cleaning, polished garage floors can be kept in luster for years. Fortunately, it is easy to restore the gleam with a touch-up. A soft broom or dust mop can do the work. If that doesn’t work, step up to water with a mild soap, then water with a stronger soap, then follow with a good rinsing.

Versatile to match with any style of Decor

Epoxy garage floor covering has the versatility to go with any style of decor. Looks can range from simple gray concrete with a sealer to a more complex colored base with multicolor flecks in it, offering a design similar to polished marble or granite. This system provides an excellent wear surface that can stand up under walking and driving on.

Enhance a plain Gray Concrete Garage Floor

This heavy-duty epoxy based systems not only beautify the look of the floor, they also hide minor imperfections and are resilient to stains. With many colors options to choose from, polished concrete floors give you an array of design options.

Option to choose various Designs

Polished Concrete floors offer many advantages. They are easy to maintain and most importantly, they can match any decor or style. Choosing the design for your garage floor covering can be as simple as matching the color of your house or as involved as hiding any imperfections or flaws in the existing floor.

High reflectivity of Polished Concrete

Compared to other alternatives, such as tile, carpet and hardwood flooring, a polished floor offers a different look and feel not yet observed in many residential and commercial facilities. The undeniable truth is that just about every garage could become something beautiful through the process of concrete polishing. It allows the client to choose the level of brightness, shine and reflection to accommodate their needs. The addition of coloring dyes and stain also offers the customer the possibility of making the floors more attractive along with the improvements in functionality.

The high reflectivity of polished concrete is an important benefit, especially for hotels and restaurants, malls, hospitals, office building, warehouses, car and motorcycle showrooms, retail outlets that want to project a bright, clean and professional image. This makes polished garage flooring a best choice for those who can’t afford marble or granite floors but want the same brilliant and mirror-like finish.

Best Flooring For High Traffic Areas

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The Best Flooring Choices for High Traffic Areas In any interior decorating project, choosing the right flooring can be among the most difficult decisions. This is true for both homeowners and business owners. Choosing the right flooring for heavy traffic areas can be particularly difficult. The flooring used in these areas must be able to withstand all of the “abuse” it will suffer due to the many feet that will walk across it over the course of its lifetime. It should also be easy to clean. After all, heavier foot traffic means a greater likelihood that the flooring will suffer spills, stains, and more.

Of course, there are many different flooring options, including carpet, laminate, tile, wood, and so on. Within each of the major categories of flooring, there are some choices that are quite suitable for high traffic areas. Nevertheless, some flooring materials remain better than others in areas where people and animals will move repeatedly across the floor every day.

The best flooring for high traffic areas is probably tile. Ceramic tile, stone tile, and other tiling materials are incredibly durable and hold up well to high foot traffic. Unless it is made of a highly porous material, tile is also easy to clean with a damp mop. It should be noted, however, that not every type of tile is good for an area that many people walk across. Glossy tiles made of material such as marble can be quite slick when they get wet, increasing the odds that pedestrians will slip and fall. Tile grout may also stain easily if it is not sealed. A darker grout is probably the best flooring for high traffic areas because it will not show spills and stains as easily.

After tile, wood is a good flooring choice for high traffic areas. In addition to adding warmth to a room or building, wood flooring is durable, especially when it is made of a hardwood such as oak or maple. Real wood floors, on the other hand, are very expensive. Furthermore, they can get scratched and scuffed very easily. Therefore, it is probably not a good idea to install them in high traffic areas where heavy items such as furniture are regularly moved across the floor.

Laminate flooring is a wood alternative that, while less expensive than wood, retains many of wood’s benefits. It can also add warmth to a room because it is designed to look like real wood. Laminate can also be quite durable, especially if it is cared for properly. However, this layered flooring material is also susceptible to water damage. Spills must be cleared immediately; otherwise, liquid can soak through the layers of the flooring material and ruin it.

Vinyl flooring can be a good choice for high traffic areas because it is inexpensive and can mimic the look of real ceramic or stone tiles. Usually, it is made of a durable plastic or a plastic composite. However, like various laminates, vinyl can be damaged by water over time. It will usually take longer for such flooring to suffer water penetration and damage, but water that sits on vinyl for lengthy periods of time can warp the vinyl and cause it to pull up from the floor.

One final flooring material that many people consider for high traffic areas is carpet. This flooring is perhaps the least attractive option for high traffic areas because it soils easily. Buying carpets that are stain resistant can help alleviate this problem, but no fiber is completely stain proof. Those who insist on this flooring material for a high traffic area should choose a carpet rated with a performance level of 4 or 5 in order to guarantee that it will hold up well over time.

3 Reasons to Replace Your Carpets With Oak Flooring

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There’s a growing trend across the western world to replace carpets with hard surfaces, especially wood flooring, and here are the three main reasons why:

1. Hygiene

Carpets, whether they are synthetic or natural (such as wool) harbour dust mites. There is a fact and no matter what your attitude to cleanliness or how fastidious your cleaning regime, if you have carpets, you have dust mites living in them. Dust mites are a leading cause of asthma, particularly in children, a disease which is made worse as our homes become increasingly insulated.

It’s why vacuum cleaner manufacturers spend so much on research and development and use HEPA filters in their machines. To thoroughly clean a carpet requires either toxic chemicals or steam cleaning causing disruption in the home and high expense. By contrast, with a hard floor, there are few places to hide for dust mites and other harmful bugs. A simple mop across the floor with a mild detergent after vacuuming is usually all that is needed to keep your floor clean and looking great.

Wooden flooring has the additional advantage of being inherently antiseptic thanks to natural oils contained within the wood – an advantage sadly lost if a polyeurethane or plastic coating is applied.

2. Wear Rate

There are some carpets with very long wear guarantees – typically those used in public spaces such as shops, hotels, etc. However, even these carpets cannot compete for longevity with most hard surfaces, wood flooring included. It does not take long for foot traffic to begin wearing down carpet fibres as the friction of grit carried under shoes gets to work. Top quality vacuums look to counter this wear by lifting and realigning carpet fibres as they lift dust and dirt, but it is a losing battle.

A carpet simply does not age well – it does not mellow, it just looks shabby. No hard floor is immune to wear, but wooden floors and oak flooring in particular, can look better as they age – mellowing an developing the rich patina which gives them their character. If a patina does not suit you, a solid oak floor finished with a natural oil or wax, can be sanded down and re-oiled to look new once again.

3. Changing Fashion

As fashions change and interior design trends come and go, a carpet can quickly go from being state of the art to yesterday’s look. This is especially true of patterned carpets or those with particularly strong colours. Swapping an old carpet for new can be a costly and disruptive exercise and not one to t be considered lightly. With a natural and neutral wooden floor, fashionable rugs can be laid over and then changed with the times.

The wooden floor itself can be coloured and finished in any number of ways – sanding back to the base wood whenever you fancy a change. This versatility is perhaps the number one reason for wood flooring’s popularity through the decades. The increasing popularity of wood flooring, in particular oak flooring, has meant that prices have begun to tumble. Laying an oak floor now costs little more than fitting a good quality carpet. Given the advantages of oak flooring, it’s little wonder that the carpet industry’s entire existence is now severely threatened.