Well I was planning on a whole angst-ridden piece about what kind of floors I was looking to put in for Friday’s posting. The problem or the source of angst was one of the moral quandaries I had with my choice of flooring. I thought I was being all good and wonderful by choosing bamboo flooring. Then I read a Treehugger article about how bamboo is filled with formaldehyde, made under poor working conditions, isn’t local and thus requires a fair amount energy to get to the East coast, etc, etc, etc. And despite my desire to do right and and go for the more expensive cleaner (working conditions, older farms that don’t deforest, etc) bamboo flooring, I just can’t afford it. And there is a lot I can’t afford, where doing the right thing just falls to the wayside because simply put, I don’t have the money for it, particularly when crap like the hole in the wall appears, sucking money from one thing to fix this other thing. Good Lord knows what else I may find that is a budget killer.
Well the floors may be a non-issue. Apparently, I have some heart pine floors. Heart pine, that can be kept, buffed up and made nice. Maybe. It was a small portion of the floor. When the whole of the floor has been revealed, then maybe, hopefully, keep your fingers crossed & pray, the whole thing will be worth saving and I don’t have to worry about bamboo floors. If not, maybe maple from the USA.
8 thoughts on “Renovation 2007: Morality and floors”
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Mari – the floors we refinished (that you commented on in my blog) were heart pine
http://ledroitpark.blogspot.com
let me know if you have other questions as you’re thinking this through that i may be helpful on
if you can could you show us a picture of the existing floor, especially the bad spots? who wants to see the nice spots at this point? 🙂
Off topice, but have you see this (part of the New Town stuff)?
You could also use cork. They make wonderful floors and are as low as 99 cents a foot at lumberliquidators. Also, very (very) easy to install.
Bamboo is very renewable
2nd lumber liquidators, they rock. got my pergo there for 69 cents/sq ft.
refinish is much cheaper than replacing floor. but replacing sections of heart pine is pretty expensive.
Inked- goodness, they are acting like its a done deal, and like there isn’t a glutty glut glut of condos on the market.
Regarding the floor. I saw it. Or better, I saw a portion an original wall had sat on and it was lovely. Well, from what I could see under the dust.
I’d ordered some samples from Lumberliquidators and the bamboo looks nice, so does the maple. I need to order more samples of their cork.
has anyone used universal floors to restore hardwood flooring? did they do a good job?