What's So Great About Hardwood?
Affordable for any budget
Our customers are often surprised to hear that hardwood floors are not priced significantly higher than a mid-grade carpet. And that's just the beginning of the good news! Once you install your hardwood floors, they last a lifetime. With proper maintenance and care (see "Easy to maintain"), you'll never have to purchase another floor covering again. An added bonus is if you ever decide to sell your home, you should be able to add twice the cost you paid for your hardwood floors on to the asking price of your home (so if your floors cost $5,000 to install, you should be able to add $10,000 on to your asking price) in an average market. Not only that, but your realtor will surely be pleased that he/she gets to use your beautiful floors as a selling point (which is a whole lot more appealing than "Grubby carpets throughout! You get to pay to clean them and then get to pay to have them replaced when they won't clean to your standards!") And, just another great added bonus is that should your dishwasher/washing machine/toilet/etc. leak, you only need to replace a portion of your wood floors rather than having to tear up your entire floor covering for the room and pay a good deal of money to replace the whole room.
Healthiest form of flooring
What we at Footprints Floors love about hardwood is when a hardwood floor is clean, it's CLEAN. Have you ever been there when your old carpet is torn out? We often have customers ask (as their carpet is being removed), "What is THAT?" They are referring to the massive amount of dust and debris that come from the area between the carpet and the pad that is rapidly disintegrating. And, that's just what is visible to the human eye! But for hardwood, sweep, mop and voila! - you have a nice, clean, healthy floor for you and your family to live on.
Easy to maintain
Maintenance for hardwood floors is twofold. You have your day-to-day cleaning and your 2-4 year screen and coat procedure to keep your floors in tip-top shape. Your day to day cleaning isn't much different from other floor coverings (carpet, tile, laminate, linoleum). If you have a vacuum cleaner that has a "hard floor" setting (which most all vacuum cleaners sold today have), you just need to run your vacuum on the hard floor setting to get rid of all dust, debris, dirt, etc. In fact, you'll soon experience how much easier pushing your vacuum on smooth, wood floors is compared to thick carpet. What a perk! An average household should only need to mop (never wet mop) with the Bona Kemi mop (or a similar product) once every week or possibly even every other week. If you have indoor/outdoor pets and/or kids who like to track the outdoors, indoors, you'll need to mop more often.
The second part of wood floor maintenance is your 2-4 year screen and coat procedure. This is where Footprints Floors comes back to your home, buffs your floors with our professional Bona Kemi buffer, and then puts another coat of finish on your floor. The goal of the screen and coat process is to prevent your floors from getting to the point of needing a full sanding (refinish). Some customers prefer to simply wait until their floor is in need of the full sanding (on average, 7-12 years depending on the finish used), and maintain their floors that way. Either way, we're happy to give you a good deal on these maintenance procedures as our lifetime customer.
Good for the environment
Wood floors are a great choice because wood is a sustainable resource. Oak floors (the most common wood pictured when one refers to hardwood floors) are affordable for a reason: wood is not in shortage these days. Statistics from the U.S. Forest Service show that nearly twice as much hardwood timber is added through new growth as is harvested. Additionally, the sanding, sealing, and water-based finishing products we use are made by an economically sound company, Bona Kemi. Check out their website: www.bonakemi.com to see why Bona Kemi is the clear choice for Footprints Floors.
