While decorating one’s house, flooring leaves a lasting impact in the eyes of viewers. When we talk about oak flooring sydney. it is perfect to increase your home’s comfort and value as it never goes out of fashion due to its warmth, texture, and allure. Following are the few factors which make oak flooring the preferred choice among people in Sydney:
- Affordability: It is the most affordable form of flooring as compared to maple, hickory, and black walnut. It provides curb appeal to your home making it budget-friendly.
- Stability: Oak is known for its stability among other wood products in the market. Flooring made out of oak wood is strong and stable along with other characteristics such as resistance to fungus and infestation of insects.
- Suitability: It is suitable in case of heavy foot traffic, minor scuffs, and scrapes. One needs to find traditional oak for the flooring to have a lasting impact.
- Easy maintenance: It is quite easy to maintain. Your wood flooring will be easy to clean irrespective of any finishing applied to its surface. Generally, it needs quick sweeping and gentle mopping.
- Ages Beautifully: Oak flooring is timeless and it becomes more aged and beautiful as time passes. It deepens with rich detail, worn, weathered, classic, and timeless. Also, it enhances the value of a property depending on its quality to mature with grace.
Options available in Oak Flooring
- Solid: You may find it ¾’’ (19mm) thick and with planks widths ranging from 3’’ to 6’’. It is also available in parquet flooring styles.
- Engineered: A thin layer of real oak wood can be attached to the base of plywood. It can be used for the below-grade regions such as basements because of having more stability in comparison to solid wood. Their size can be ⅜” or ½” thick. There are various plank widths as well where 5” is common although a lot of manufacturers make the sizes of 7.5” or 8”.
- Laminate: Laminate oak flooring is where a 3D photographic image of oak wood is attached to a composite wood base. Laminate planks are usually 8 to 12mm in thickness where the widths are different as they can be 3” or up to 8”.
It is recommended that you install oak flooring in a random fashion in your Sydney home. This means that each board should be installed in a different position than the previous board. You should also stagger the joints by at least 8 inches. If your flooring has knots, then it may be necessary to stagger the joints by around 12 inches.
The first row of boards should be installed with the tongue side facing towards the wall. You can glue the boards to the subfloor or nail them down. It may be easier to use a pneumatic flooring nailer if you are installing hardwood floors yourself. Any nails used must have their heads sunk into the oak and not stand proud of it otherwise they will scratch people walking over them.
You must also ensure that you leave expansion gaps when installing this type of flooring. The minimum gap required is usually 1/2 an inch, but this can vary depending on where you live and what type of oak flooring you are using. A humidity meter will help you determine how much expansion space you need for your particular climate. The gaps may be covered up later on with a baseboard or quarter round mouldings if you wish to do so.
