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Anyone have pre-finished floors that they love or hate? Stores give you two squares and suppose you are able to tell how they will look covering an entire room. Would enjoy skipping the mess and inconvenience of site-finished but not if they really look so much better. Do they!?!
Done both. Be wary of bevel edge -- you'll never get all the dirt out of those bevels unless it is loose dirt and not mud. Or you can do like I do now, and get on your hands and knees with a soft bristle toothbrush.
Installed bevel edge prefinished in 2 different homes. All I do is vacuum cracks. (ha!) Site finished was a pain in the butt but oh, the results...plus it was wood strip w/no bevels, and it sealed it up tight, almost like a hard plastic. No dents in the floors when something was dropped, no scratches, nothing could get through that lacquer. Maybe site finished uses different, harder products?
We chose prefinished and are not very happy with the product or installation.
We bought this beautiful looking (at least it was on the display) Manchurian Walnut flooring that was hand scraped. 90% of it was good, but every box had a few bad pieces in it (i.e., finish/sheen was not consistent, etc). Most of the time the installers removed those bad pieces and went to the next box, but in some cases they slipped through due to them not paying attention.
Also, there was no unique moulding for this flooring, so they had to use something close. . . . which is not a perfect match. . . but just OK. And finally, they installed the moulding with the nail gun pressure too high and split some of the moulding, which became more obvious after a few seasons of expanding and contracting. Oh. . . . and they filled the nail holes in the moulding with a lighter color wood filler, which dried lighter then when we first inspected their work.
I think there is no comparison to site-finished floors. There is no unevenness to the individual planks or strips. The finish always looks continuous- not stripped, like eased edge or beveled.
Here's a little more info to understand the differences:
Different hardwood floors have different edges. Hardwood floors come in either a beveled edge, or a square edge. Today, most hardwood floor manufacturers are calling their beveled edge "eased edge" because the tapered edge is dramatically reduced from the old deeply grooved edges.
The beveled edges do serve a purpose. The manufacturer can produce beveled edge planks faster than square edge, which in turn lowers their production costs. Also, a beveled edge floor is more forgiving when installed over irregular subfloors and you don’t have the problem of "overwood" (uneven plank heights abutting each other).
Here’s a summary of today’s hardwood edge types:
Square edge:
The edges of all boards meet squarely creating a uniform, smooth surface that blends the floor together from board to board. This can be had in a prefinished board. Unfortunately, it get nicked fairly easy- "there goes that board!" But, this is what a site-finished floor would look like.
Eased Edge:
Each board is just slightly beveled. Some manufacturers add an eased edge to both the length of the planks as well as the end joints. This helps with the waste of damaged boards as I mentioned above. Eased edges are used to help hide minor irregularities, such as uneven plank heights (overwood). Eased edge is also called "Microbeveled Edge"- a trade mark.
Beveled Edge:
These products have a very distinctive groove in them. Beveled edge planks lend themselves to an informal and country decor. With the urethane finishes applied at the factory today, the beveled edges are sealed completely. The edge of the wood is sealed but not the joint- as in site-finished floors because you start with unfinished strips or planks. Dirt and grit can easily be swept or vacuumed out of the grooves- but it can also find it way down within the joint, and excessive amounts of accumulation can create buckling problems when floors go through their expansion and contraction cycles..
Let me say thanks before I can no longer find this thread (where do they move to?)!
So, a microbevel may be small but still not microscopic and noticeable throughout. Not ideal.
Leaning toward sucking it up and bearing down for the site-finished project...
I've never seen a pre-finished square-edge floor but I can't imagine it working out very well. I would be very concerned about over/under between adjacent planks. It could be caused by imperfections in the subfloor, or by the fact that it is impossible for a hardwood flooring mill to create planks that are always EXACTLY the same thickness. The bevel on most pre-finished flooring helps to hide those problems.
The nicks are probably caused by normal handling during the installation process. The square edges are somewhat fragile on the uninstalled planks. And since the planks are pre-finished, it's difficult to touch-up that sort of damage.
If you want a smooth floor without the bevels in between planks, then in my opinion you should choose unfinished flooring that is sanded and finished on-site. Find a well-respected pro in your area and I don't think you'll have any regrets, except for the temporary inconvenience caused by the mess.
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