Welcome to Hite Carpet Center and the world of hardwood floors.
Here, we’ll provide you with a brief overview of hardwood flooring and provide links to other useful resources to help you decide the best options to meet your needs and preferences.
Why Hardwood?
Hardwood flooring offers a range of benefits over other flooring options.
Hardwood certainly answers the need for both beauty and durability. The timeless, elegant look of a hardwood floor can add warmth and character to any room.
In fact, the natural characteristics of wood add depth and a visual appearance that many other types of floors try to duplicate.
Rich, inviting hardwood floors are not only beautiful to live with, they can also add value to your home at resale time.
Plus, today, hardwood types, options and applications are more diverse and delightful than ever.
As the consumer demand for hardwood floors has grown so has the manufacturer's ability to produce better quality finishes and superior construction techniques.
The result of those advancements is that wood floors can now be installed throughout the home and over a wide variety of sub-floors.
Hardwood floors are incredibly easy to keep clean. They can be swept, steam-cleaned, or vacuumed to remove any dirt or debris that has accumulated. Imagine not having to clean very often, while still knowing that your floors are not harboring any environmental hazards like dust mites or pet dander.
What makes wood floors even easier to maintain is the fact that they are significantly more stain resistant than carpets. If you spill something, all you need to do is wipe it up.
Harwood Styles
Knowing the basic styles can provide you with a firm foundation upon which to begin your hardwood-shopping journey.
Choosing your ideal hardwood flooring style is all about knowing the right combination of aesthetics, performance and budget that meets the needs of your lifestyle – emphasis on your.
Considering the vast amount of design options available today with hardwood floors, you can create a look “all your own” that will have lasting beauty and durability.
For example, inserting decorative medallions, running the boards on the diagonal, or creating a border are just some of the design styles one can consider.
But hold on. Before you get to the design, you need to select the type of hardwood flooring that’s right for you and your home.
Today you can choose between a pre-finished hardwood floor or one that is unfinished.
Pre-finished wood flooring comes ready for installation in your home. The hardwood boards have already been sanded, stained and finished at the manufacturing plant. In many cases this can provide a harder, better- protected surface.
Pre-finished wood floors offer a wider variety of wood species and save hours of labor and cleanup. But unfinished wood floors allow you to have a custom job – you choose the wood species and it’s sanded and the stain is applied on site. With unfinished you also have the chance to level the surface of the entire floor after it has been installed.
You get an extended factory finish warranty with pre-finished floors, but not with most job-site finishes.
Location
Remember that’s it’s all about location. To begin with, you need to look at where you plan on installing your new wood floor.
There are limitations on where some wood floors can be installed. This is especially true for the 3/4" solid wood floors.
Solid hardwood floors are more susceptible to moisture and are generally not recommended for basements, or installing directly onto a concrete slab.
To help you determine where these floors can be installed, it helps to understand the different grade levels. You can read more here
The installation method also can determine where the floor can go, so be sure to review the installation methods prior to buying your hardwood floor.
Grain and Cut
Hardwood flooring styles are the result of the wood species available. Some of the more common species are red oak, white oak, maple, cherry, white ash, hickory or pecan.
Each species has its own unique graining and texture. The graining on the boards is determined by the way it has been cut.
There are two cutting processes.
“Sliced Cut” shows a more uniform pattern.
“Rotary Cut” displays a larger and bolder graining pattern.
We are looking forward to working with you
At our showroom, you’ll discover Tennessee’s largest selection of high quality, high-fashion, name brand area flooring.
Each member of our sales team averages more than 20 years experience in the flooring industry.
You can also look forward to enjoying world-class customer service, the kind our customers rank right up there with the best they have ever experienced.