Fantastic Floor Presents: Manchurian Walnut

Welcome back to your favorite hardwood spotlight blog series, Fantastic Floor Presents! This week we're taking a look at one of our newest additions to the Fantastic Floor product line: Manchurian Walnut!

Manchurian Walnut, also known as Chinese Walnut, is one of the most sought after Asian exotic hardwood flooring varieties in the country. The heartwood is a beautiful combination of browns and yellows, while the sapwood is a pale gray. The hallmark of the species is its tight grain pattern and occasional burls, which gives the wood its dramatic, exotic appearance. The species is also commonly used in the construction and manufacturing of high-end furniture and art pieces.

Manchurian Walnut is not only beautiful, it is also has the durability you would expect from an exotic hardwood flooring material. It has a Janka hardness rating of 1,010 pounds, and its density and tight grain makes it naturally resistant to wood rot and boring insects.

Want to learn more about Manchurian Walnut? Contact Fantastic Floor today to speak with one of our experienced hardwood flooring professionals. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

This Just In: Laminate Flooring!

As you probably have noticed, Fantastic Floor is constantly getting beautiful new hardwood flooring varieties added to our product line. Just recently we've added new varieties of Maple, Walnut, Acacia, and Tiete Rosewood, among others. Well, this month we received another exciting line of flooring materials. Not quite hardwood, per se, but still a very high quality product: laminate flooring!

What is Laminate Flooring?
Laminate flooring is a multi-layered synthetic flooring material that is bound together through a lamination process, hence the name. The inner layer is usually made of a resin and fiberboard blend and the top layer is usually a high-definition photo of a specific hardwood species. High quality laminate flooring tends to have a very dense inner core, which makes the flooring more resistant to water damage and quieter to walk on. Low quality products have very light, loose inner cores, leaving them susceptible to warping, buckling, and other common flooring problems.

The Benefits of Laminate Flooring
Laminate flooring may not be the fanciest flooring material you can find, but it does have many important benefits. There are three main reasons people choose laminate flooring over traditional hardwood: cost, ease of installation, and durability:

• Cost
  Laminate flooring is almost always less expensive than hardwood flooring. This allows home owners to install laminate in more rooms for a lower price than hardwood.
• Ease of Installation
  Laminate is the DIY homeowner's dream-come-true. Most varieties are very simple to install, with many manufacturers featuring glueless, tongue-in-groove boards that can be quickly and easily installed by DIYers and flooring professionals alike.
• Durability
  While not quite as resilient as solid hardwood flooring, laminate flooring can still take quite a bit of wear-and-tear before it needs to be replaced. Most residential laminate flooring is many times harder than traditional hardwood and has a high UV resistance, making it more resistant to fading and other sun-damage.

Laminate Flooring Products Offered at Fantastic Floor
Fantastic Floor is proud to now carry Luxury Laminate flooring products from the Garrison Collection. The Luxury Laminate collection comes in a variety of styles, including Red Oak, Vintage Cherry, Rich Walnut, Classic Maple, and many more. View our Luxury Laminate flooring page to see all of the beautiful new laminate flooring products we carry.

Want to learn more about laminate flooring? Contact Fantastic Floor today to talk with one of our experienced sales representatives. We look forward to hearing from you!

FAQ: Should I Expect Color Variations?

Like any other natural product, hardwood flooring is going to have degrees of color variation. Though they happen with any grade, the lower the grade, the more likely there will be dramatic color variations. Fantastic Floor stocks only the highest quality hardwood flooring materials, so color variations are fewer with our selection than some of our competitors. Still, there are a few varieties and styles of flooring that experience variations more than others. For example:

Certain Exotics
Specific types of exotic hardwood flooring, such as Acacia and Cumaru, are known for their striking color and striping variations. The color of these species can vary greatly from board to board, making it difficult to predict exactly what color board you'll end up with.

Distressed
Distressed hardwood flooring is designed to have dramatic variations in color, texture, and grain patterns. These variations give the wood the eye-catching, rustic look many modern designers and homeowners are looking for. However, it also means you can't be sure the boards will match a specific color scheme.

Reclaimed
Reclaimed hardwood is popular with eco-minded designers and homeowners. However, like distressed flooring, the rustic look reclaimed wood is known for is also hard to match with specific colors and design schemes.

Curious about hardwood flooring color variations? Contact Fantastic Floor today to learn more!

Fantastic Floor Presents: White Oak

Welcome back to Fantastic Floor Presents! This week we're shining the spotlight on one of this year's most popular hardwood flooring varieties: White Oak.

White Oak hardwood flooring is full of light tones that create a very crisp, clean look. It has been a hardwood flooring standard in homes across the United States for years due to its versatile combination of deep grayish-brown heartwood and pale white tones. These light colors complement nearly any room design scheme, making White Oak flooring a popular flooring material among interior designers and decorators.

White Oak hardwood flooring is also well-known for its durability, strength, and resistance to wear. It is often served as planking for boats and has even been used in mining operations. It has a Janka hardness rating of 1,360 lbs and a density of 900 KG/m3. FSC-certified engineered White Oak flooring also has great dimensional stability, meaning there is less warping and buckling than other species.

The amazing decorative flexibility of White Oak hardwood makes it an outstanding floor for all settings and occasions. Visit Fantastic-Floor.com to view more of our White Oak products, or contact us with questions or concerns. We look forward to hearing from you!

We're now on Pinterest!

Fantastic Floor is now on one of the hottest new social media photo-sharing sites: Pinterest!

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that allows people to organize and share their favorite internet stuff: photos, recipes, blog posts, etc. On Pinterest, you can browse the pinboards of your friends, family, celebrities, and favorite brands (like, say, Fantastic Floor!).

So go check out the Fantastic Floor Pinterest account, follow us, and start sharing! We look forward to seeing you!

Hardwood Density: Which Species Is Best? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Density is an important mechanical property to consider when choosing a new hardwood flooring material. Density is related to a floor's durability, longevity, and resistance to moisture and wood-boring insects. The following infographic featuers the top 10 densest hardwood flooring materials you can find on the market today. Enjoy!

Learn more about hardwood density at www.Fantastic-Floor.com/WoodDensity.

Fantastic Floor Presents: Tarara

Welcome back to Fantastic Floor Presents, the only blog series that shines a spotlight on the most popular hardwood flooring materials available today. This week we're featuring one of our most popular South American products: Tarara!

Tarara hardwood flooring, also known as Canarywood, is a colorful, exciting exotic hardwood from the forests of Brazil and Bolivia. It's heartwood varies in color from bright yellow to deep orange, with long streaks of black, purple, and red throughout. This dramatic contrast gives the wood an especially vibrant, exotic look.

Like most exotic hardwood varieties, Tarara hardwood is a very durable flooring material. It is also, however, very easy to work with, making it popular with woodworkers and furniture makers. The interlocked, irregular grain pattern and uniform texture is dynamic enough to catch the eye of house guests, but versatile enough to complement almost any home design scheme.

Fantastic Floor offers clear prefinished Tarara hardwood flooring in a variety of lengths. View our selection at www.Fantastic-Floor.com, or call us today at 888.448.9663.