Bamboo is fast becoming one of the hottest green flooring materials. Why green? There are at least two reasons. First and foremost, it’s sustainable. If you’ve ever had any in your backyard, you know how hard it is to contain. Even worse if you don’t want it, but it’s an under-the-fence gift from a neighbor!
Yes, I know there are non-spreading varieties. But the point is, compare bamboo’s renew rate to hardwood.
The second green aspect of bamboo is that it’s a natural product. Carpet usually has a lot of synthetics in it, and that means petrochemicals and off-gassing issues. Formaldehyde may also be an ingredient. Yuck.
There’s a variety of choices for installing bamboo flooring. It requires a dry floor and a membrane or layer of felt. Other than that, it can be nailed, glued, or floated like laminate floors. There’s something for whatever kind of subfloor you have!
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I’ve written articles about parquet floor maintenance in the past. These are interesting finish floors. They range from the basic tiles to the custom jobs that will really bend your mind. Since parquet tiles are made up of strips of hardwood, the options are open on creativity.
Keeping your floors looking good is basically the same ritual as with a plank type hardwood floor. Just sweep regularly, damp mop, and perform touch ups regularly.
In my parquet floor maintenance article, that’s what I focused on. But as I’ve found out from the emails I’ve received, what people really want to know about is more extensive repair.
Specifically, how to fix an area where it’s better to just replace a tile than to repair the tile that’s damaged. I found this concise instruction on replacing a parquet tile. This is just another DIY task that most of us like to tackle; give me a goal, hand me my tool box, and take the phone off the hook. Arg.
From the feedback I’ve gotten (thank you LDIYR (Loyal DIY Readers)), this usually happens when someone buys a home and discovers that some hipster in the 70s covered up some quality floors with tacky shag carpeting.
The damage is usually water damage or pet urine. Either way, hardwood is worth salvaging. So if you’re in the market for a new floor, think parquet. Any woodworker that wants to take his/her time can totally send home equity through the roof.
Just be sure to amend the homeowners insurance policy. Don’t be “too bad, so sad, day late and a dollar short.”
I’ve really been wondering about a curious thing lately. As many of you know, in addition to my own site, icanfixupmyhome.com, I’ve also been the home repair and renovation topic writer over at Suite101.com for just under two years.
So as you can imagine, there’s quite a bit of content up at both sites. From day one, the article I get more hits on than any other at S101 is about installing laminate flooring. Not surprising since it’s such a popular building material. It does have some advantages over hardwood.
Since about 90% of all traffic comes from Google, you would think that by ratio (since the two sites have different Google Pageranks), laminate content would score pretty high on my personal site as well. Not so.
In fact, on my site, my article on cutting and installing baseboard is king. Odd. Not that I’m complaining. I just find it interesting and also complementary. After all, the two topics are closely related. Eh? Baseboard isn’t even what it once was. You can still get it in pine or something more exotic, but it’s also increasingly available in repurposed green materials. Go figure.
A lot of building materials are now made from recycled or repurposed things. Remember when only trendy restaurants took apart barns and old gas stations to decorate with? And distressed denim blue jeans cost twice as much as “new” looking ones?
But I, for one, am glad to have the green movement finally make sense instead of only being about some nutball chaining himself to a tree. Sure, there’s still a lunatic fringe out there but at least most of it makes sense. I wonder what’s next…
