Floor boards have been around for centuries and for centuries we have been laying floor boards, sanding them and then sanding them again. In the last couple of hundred years we also started to put in tongue and groove elements to make the floor more weathertight.

Unfinished Tiber Flooring

Unfinished wooden flooring is the raw wood. Unfinished flooring may have been tongue and grooved and in some cases may also have been treated, but it won’t be stained and sealed. Unfinished floor boards are how floors once came, and the process to sand, stain and seal them was labour intensive and time consuming. Thankfully for many of us, technology has now developed a way for hardwood floors to come prefinished.

Prefinished Timber Flooring

The saviour of modern home owners around the world. Prefinished wooden or bamboo flooring gives you the ability to get a floor laid in your home that has been sanded, stained and sealed without having to go through the messy and timely process yourself. Prefinished floors are sanded in the factory and then stained and sealed under high temperatures to ensure the best possible finish. Technology has made this process easy and has taken the manual labour cost out of floor boards. This has also made real hardwood floors affordable to most home owners.

Advantages of prefinished hardwood floors

• They can be used over a concrete slab or existing floorboards in the form of a floating floor.
• There is no mess involved. All the sanding has been done off the premises so not dusting involved.
• All the staining and sealing has been done so you don’t have to live with the fumes.
• The planks will all be uniform and fit together perfectly, essential for the perfect floor.
• You can install themself without the rental of expensive equipment.
• Rather than having rooms in your house unusable for days you can install a prefinished floor in a day.
• Perfectly smooth surfaces make for easy cleaning and maintenance.

Advantages of unfinished hardwood floors

• Most of them are right there already under your feet. The cheapest flooring available.
• If they are existing floors you know they fit with the age and character of the house.
• They aren’t perfect and will have some flaws, this can give them character that prefinished floors don’t have.
• Labour is the biggest expense in finishing floors. Do it yourself and the labour is free.
• Some of the hardwood in existing floors is rarer and harder to get hold of these days, so your floors may be a real asset.

Whether or not to use prefinished floors will be a decision largely made by budget and what you already have. Some people like nothing more than rolling up their sleeves and revelling in a job well done, while others like the fact that having their floors done doesn’t mean a major life disruption. When deciding on your options make sure you look at cost and overall viability. Installing the most expensive prefinished floor boards may not be the best option for some properties.