Wood Floors of Dallas Podcast

Solid vs. Engineered Hardwood: Making The Right Choice

• Hunter Ross • Episode 3

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What Are The Key Differences Between Solid Hardwood And Engineered Hardwood? 

Standing at the crossroads of solid versus engineered hardwood? You're not alone. This definitive guide takes you through everything you need to know to make the right choice for your home or project.

Hunter Ross, with over 20 years in the building products industry, breaks down the fundamental differences between these popular flooring options. Engineered hardwood, with its plywood base and hardwood veneer top layer (ranging from 2-4mm thick), offers remarkable stability and installation speed. A typical 2,000 square foot project can be completed in just five days – roughly one-third the time required for solid hardwood. Modern manufacturing techniques have revolutionized engineered products, creating finishes that often outperform traditional hardwood in scratch resistance while allowing for wider planks without stability concerns.

Solid hardwood remains the gold standard for complete customization. From intricate herringbone and chevron patterns to decorative borders and inlays, solid hardwood transforms your floor into a truly bespoke feature. The installation process involves multiple layers (moisture barrier, plywood, felt) before the wood is secured with specialized fasteners. After installation, the floor undergoes professional sanding and finishing, allowing for completely custom colors and effects. While this extends the timeline to approximately three weeks, the results can be spectacular.

Ready to transform your space with the perfect hardwood floor? Call 972-525-0026 for a free in-home consultation or visit our website to learn more about working with a team that values honor, quality, and expertise.

To learn more about Wood Floors of Dallas visit:
https://www.WoodFloorDallas.com
Wood Floors of Dallas
159 W. Main St., Suite 200
Lewisville, Texas 75057
972-525-0026

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Wood Floors of Dallas podcast, where we bring expert insights on hardwood flooring design and craftsmanship, hosted by Hunter Ross, owner of Wood Floors of Dallas, with over 20 years in the building product industry. Whether you're a homeowner or a general contractor, we're here to help you create amazing spaces with honor, quality and expertise. Let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Not sure whether to go with solid or engineered hardwood. You're not alone. In this episode. Hunter breaks down the pros, cons and perfect scenarios for both so you can make the right choice for your home or project. Welcome back everyone. I'm Sofia Yvette, co-host, slash producer, back in the studio with Hunter Ross, owner of Wood Floors of Dallas. Hunter, how's it going today?

Speaker 3:

Good Sophia, how are you doing?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing good also, and that is great to hear. So, hunter, for our listeners who may not know what are the key differences between solid hardwood and engineered hardwood that's a great question.

Speaker 3:

It's a really big question that a lot of people have, and so we'll kind of just dive into the key features of solid hardwood and then the key features of engineered and give people a real kind of in-depth dive of which ones are best for your home and the benefits and features to doing each one right. So, starting with engineered hardwood, what it is is a plywood base and it has a veneer or a top layer of what we would call a solid hardwood piece on the top of it. Usually that top layer or veneer is anywhere from two millimeters to four millimeters thick. The thicker ones can be refinished. So after you've installed your engineered hardwood, it's lasted many, many years and then you would like to either refresh it, make it all brand new again or change the color. With the thicker, thicker top layers you can go ahead and re-sand and refinish them to your liking. So in engineered hardwood, most of the products in that category do have a two millimeter or below veneer and they're really not designed to be refinished. The reason being is because the coatings that are put on them are so good, the finishing lines are state the art, and that is pretty much with almost all manufacturers today. Those engineered products and the finishing lines in the past were not that great. But the technology has advanced so far that now your engineered hardwood is truly built better and is more resilient to scratches and things like that than a solid hardwood is Okay and that can be argued, depending on who you talk to.

Speaker 3:

But if you really get down to the technical details, it really is just a more perfect finish. So in engineered hardwood there's a million different colors and sizes and patterns and all the things that you can get, but also you're not creating a custom color, right. So engineered hardwoods benefits are primarily speed of installation time. It takes roughly about one third of the time for installation if you can, you know, put it up against solid hardwood. So let's say, within five days you can have 2000 square feet of your home with brand new floors from start to finish in five days. Okay, so very quick to install. It goes down with adhesive, it's glued to the concrete or you know whatever subfloor plywood depending on if you're upstairs or downstairs and it goes in quickly and you can get really wide planks because it's so stable. That's very popular with everybody these days. They're just gorgeous, big, wide boards that you can see very well. So that's engineered hardwood and then in solid hardwood it's kind of like the world is your oyster. You can really have anything that you want. Obviously there's more art involved, it's way more technical, the installation is and it takes much more time to complete. But at the end of the day you can make that floor completely custom However you want it. You can do all kinds of patterns in the floor chevrons and herringbones and all these types of things borders, inlays you can get really, really intricate with whatever you're putting on the ground. Borders, inlays you can get really really intricate with whatever you're putting on the ground. So in like a really nice custom home.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people are just in love with the beautiful look and final finish of a solid hardwood. Right, and to go into the process basically, if you have a concrete subfloor in your home, we will put down a six mil poly as a moisture barrier and then you'll get three quarters inch plywood and then felt, which is kind of the same thing as roofing felt, if you want to think of it that way, but there's a felt layer and then the solid hardwood goes on top of that and then it's installed with fasteners which are called cleats or nails, basically, and those cleats go from the top of it and it's secured into the plywood subfloor and that's how that's installed. And then the sanding and finishing process starts, where we sand it with multiple different grits to get it to a very nice finish. We then stain it and then we finish it with your choice of coating. One good thing for everybody to know is that there's two main types of coatings. There is a polyurethane finish which is either two or three coats. We always do three coats of polyurethane.

Speaker 3:

This is what we would consider a professional grade polyurethane. It's not something that you can pick up at a Home Depot or Lowe's or any kind of store like that. It is a very specialized product for what we do, and so the finish of the regular polyurethane is that's your standard, and then you have an upgrade option to something, for example, that's way more durable, that does not Amber or yellow. And your regular polyurethane does Amber over time. That's a natural part of it and a lot of people really just like that. It gives it a lot of richness over time. But some people don't. They want to really clear, like more light color. A lot of people really just like that it gives it a lot of richness over time. But some people don't. They want to really clear, like more light color, a lot of times, and so we use a water-based finish called Bona Traffic HD, and that product specifically is no or low VOC. The ones that we use are no VOC, which is very nice.

Speaker 3:

Your regular polyurethane is a very strong smell. It's a very strong odor. It cures a lot slower and so you have a lot more dry time after that finish is applied, compared to doing like this Bono water-based product with no VOCs. That product cures within roughly 48 hours to almost 95% hardness. So there's a big difference between those two as far as their durability and their dry times. Both of them are durable, but the benefit of the Bona is primarily you get a significant higher level of abrasion resistance than you do to a regular polyurethane finish. Specifically, what that means is you're not going to walk through the finish with regular everyday use. That bone of traffic HD is going to be at least three to four times stronger, if not more, but for sure three to four times stronger than your regular polyurethane finish, with a caveat of all wood scratches, and I think that's really important for everybody to know I say this to the clients all the time we're just cutting a tree down, which is outside, and then we're putting it on the ground, and so it is not a rock and it is not concrete, it is just a limb. Basically it's just wood.

Speaker 3:

So all hardwoods, floors of all kinds can ding and scratch and dent. It's just natural, it's part of nature, and so we like to make sure clients understand that. It just adds character. These floors have been going in for hundreds and hundreds of years and that's what makes them beautiful and the maintenance on them. You can keep them up for a very long time, right, so they'll last forever. But those are the primary two types of finishes that you'll get on a solid hardwood product.

Speaker 3:

And then, as far as like installations go, I know we touched on this a little bit before in a previous podcast, but the installation process of a hardwood floor is roughly about a 21 day cycle, of a solid hardwood floor is about a 21 day cycle, and the installation of an engineered hardwood is around a seven day cycle. That includes, you know, having your furniture moved out of the home, the work being done, all completed, and then having your furniture moved back in. Okay, so just to really dive into the solid hardwood process and hit all the main points, you're going to deliver the material to the job site. It's going to acclimate for a week to get regulated to the relative humidity inside the home, make sure it's balanced, then it gets installed. The installation takes about a day and then it'll sit in place for another five to seven days while it equalizes installed. Then we come in, we do the sanding and finish process, whatever stain color you liked, et cetera. So we do that sanding and finish process and that takes around four to five days total. So if you add it all up, you're looking at roughly 21 days for a solid hardwood installation. If you add it all up, you're looking at roughly 21 days for a solid hardwood installation. And then really with engineered hardwood, we can put in thousands and thousands of square feet of engineered hardwood in like roughly five, six days.

Speaker 3:

And one important thing that I want everybody to know about engineered hardwood and also really on click lock floors, just so you know, the preparation of the slab of the base is the most important thing. We spend a significant amount of time and effort and energy and money making sure that the subfloor is as flat as possible. Most companies don't do that because they don't realize that part of it can be the most detrimental to the success of a flooring project. Not only does it make it harder to install, but it creates be the most detrimental to the success of a flooring project. Not only does it make it harder to install, but it creates a lot of tension in the floor.

Speaker 3:

The adhesives that we use to glue the product down are very strong. They're made to do their job very well. As soon as they grab the floor and they grab the underside of the floor, it will suck itself together. It's an extremely strong adhesive. Wow, floor, it will suck itself together Like it's extremely strong adhesive. What happens, though, is if you have dips and you have raises in your floor, you're creating so much like force and tension up and down on the floor that you can create major problems that result in a wood floor installation failure If you don't properly do this. The other part of it is that you'll get a lot of hollow points, a lot of hollow sounds in your installation.

Speaker 3:

Properly float that floor and make it very flat. So slab preparation is super key, very important. We spend a lot of time, like I said, making sure that that surface is flat. We use floor float to fill in the low spots and we grind the high spots with grinders and you start with a nice clean slate and then the installation goes very, very smoothly. The end result is that that floor is going to last basically forever, right. So key things there with engineered hardwood is really focusing on getting the slab flat and we can put it in in roughly about a week, no matter how much it is. If it's like 4 000 5 000 square feet, which we do, that sometimes that'll take two weeks, but almost all projects are done within about five days. Did I cover all of it?

Speaker 2:

I think you most certainly did well, hunter. Thank you so much for sharing those helpful insights with our listeners today. We'll catch you in the next episode and have a fantastic rest of your day.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to Wood Floors of Dallas podcast. Ready to transform your space? Ready to transform your space? Call 972-525-0026 for a free in-home consultation or visit woodfloordallascom to learn more. Work with honor, build with excellence. See you next time.