This all depends on what is important to you. In most cases (over 90% of the time) when a consumer is given ALL the information (without bias) they almost unanimously choose the look and feel of the custom install, sand and finish project. The problem is that consumers don’t even get to see the difference when they shop for flooring at any of the retailers in town.
Flooring retailers are only selling pre-finished flooring products. You don’t stand a chance of being able to make an educated decision if this is your only means of shopping. They will tell you horror stories of the mess and toxic fumes created when doing a site sanding and finish. The reality, especially today, is not at all as they describe it.
Flooring companies using “dust containment” sanding equipment and high-end water-based finishes have revolutionized the industry in that these projects are Not Messy and You Don’t Have to Leave Your Home.
When given all options, the reason most consumers choose site-finished wood floors is the look and feel. A floor that is installed, sanded and finished on site will become one floor, artistically crafted and created for the most custom look possible.
This picture is a site sanded and finished floor.
A prefinished floor will essentially become a floor consisting of several hundred pieces of individual flooring.
If you look closely - better yet, click on this picture - you can see what we are talking about.
Finally, while it is true that the factory applied finish on prefinished flooring is more durable than the products we use to site finish a floor, the recommended maintenance for both floors is the same. Every 2-5 years (depending on traffic) wood floors should be lightly abraded and recoated with polyurethane.
My Prefinished floor is guaranteed for 25 years, isn’t that a great deal?
Sure it is, so long as you never intend to set foot on it. Seriously though, the warranty on a prefinished floor is a warranty that the finish won’t wear off for a certain time period under “normal” conditions. Normal is then defined on three pages of small print.
The fact is, ALL floor finishes will scratch under normal conditions and this is NOT covered under any warranty. The way to fix finish scratches is to have your floors periodically cleaned, screened (light abrasion) and recoated by a professional flooring contractor.
Prefinished flooring cannot be refinished, right?
This is not true. In fact much of refinishing work we do is sanding prefinished floors. We do have to sand just a tad harder on our first pass to remove the beveled edge, but when we are done, you will never know that the floors were ever prefinished.
What about engineered flooring? Is it Good, Bad, or Ugly?
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