|
Distressed Hardwood Flooring
Distressed hardwood floors are made to have the look and feel of a worn or reclaimed hardwood floor despite being brand new. With the variety of hand distressed and machine distressed floors on the market it’s possible to find a wide variety of textures to achieve a unique result suited to your taste and the décor of your home. The end look will also depend somewhat on the darkness of the finish used, with darker finishes showing the scraping more than more naturally finished floors. True hand scraped is just that – done by hand. When properly done, this method creates a truly unique floor. These floors differ greatly in the amount of the texture added to the floor and the skill of the person scraping the floor.
For the most customized look possible for this kind of flooring, hand distressed flooring is excellent and won’t ever disappoint. Hand scraping and distressing is a very labour intensive process involving denting, scooping, roughing and even creating wormholes, splits and other markings that are normally only achieved by extensive use and the passage of time. All manner of tools such as chisels, planes, wire brushes and even ice picks are used to achieve a worn look, and each individual plank is hand distressed separately.
Hand distressed flooring gives the most truly unique look and is a popular choice for many of today’s upscale homes. Some manufacturers will also give you the option to choose between heavy, medium and light scraping, giving you an even wider range of options to achieve the desired effect. It still pays to carefully choose the manufacturer of your hand distressed flooring because the quality and look of the flooring depends greatly on the skill of the artisan, as is true of any hand-made product.
If hand distressed flooring is a little on the expensive side, there’s of course also the option of machine distressed hardwood flooring. Admittedly machine distressing is a cheaper imitation of the real thing and can result in repetitive markings throughout your floorboards, but the old, comfy, lived in feel can still be achieved with this cheaper option.
Distressed hardwood floors are an excellent way to add atmosphere to any area. The lived-in, antiquated look of distressed hardwood flooring gives a home a warm, welcoming glow and that extra little touch of class. As with most things in life, the real thing is hard to imitate, and most people know a fake when they see it. A true hand scraped floor will give a unique, warm, rich look to your home and will be an item of conversation of your friends and guests, but machine-distressed floors are excellent budget choices.
|
