Flooring and Shower Remodeling in Cumming Hardwood and Tile Contractor

How to maintain hardwood floors

First things first, starting from outside! One of the basic and most effective things you can do to prolong the new look Read Moreā€¦

Can I sand and refinishid engineered hardwood flooring?



If you have ever been looking to install new hardwood floors in your house or refinish existing one, chances are you have heard about engineered floors and if they are sandable. In order to answer this question we need to start knowing the differences between solid and engineered hardwood floor products. We have talked about this topic briefly here Solid and Engineered flooring.
Engineered wood construction


What is engineered hardwood flooring?
If we want to summarize the answer; in short, engineered wood floor is a wooden flooring product made out of gluing veneers of wood. This alone explains it’s essential difference with a solid wood product and also explains why it’s usually not sandable. If you look at the picture above, you can see the layers of veneers that are building this board. Each layer of veneer is glued at 90 degree angle above next layer. This will add dimensional stability to the the structure making it suitable for installing over a concrete floor for example. As you see in the picture bottom layers like 1 and 2 are the backing while the top veneer 3 is the actual surface that you’ll step over and that is the one determining the color, grain, and name of that specific floor. If the top veneer is oak, you have an oak engineered wood and so on. In most cases the top layer in a thin film and not thick enough for sanding process. In order to refinish a wood floor, there will be several passes of sand paper starting from rough to fine over the surface of the wood which removes material and “eats” into wood. Most of the times the veneer on the top layer will be all gone if you attempt to sand this type of floor. What remains would be the bottom layer exposed which is very different. There are on the other hand some small percentage of engineered wood products that have a decent layer of veneer installed on top, say about 3mm.

Solid wood on the contrary as the name explains is a solid board milled from tree trunk. There is no secondary construction added to it. It’s thicker and has more wooden stock on top. This leaves enough “meat” on the top surface above where tongue and grooving is for sanding process, usually about 4-5 times.

solid wood and engineered wood