Wood Celebrates Life

This post is a continuation of the blog I started before the Christmas madness set in.

This article is aptly called Wood Celebrates Life. As we look forward to the new year and new possibilities and beginnings, I say we should all celebrate life. Life has it's ups and downs - 2009 was definitely a year of downs for our family as we lost two very important people. These people touched my life like no one has or maybe will in the future. Our business also was not immune to the downs of the year either, as I'm sure other construction companies can attest to. But we have made it through and will continue to thrive and prosper through the new year! New year, new beginnings, LIFE!

Whether wood is in its natural state or in your home, wood records history, right down to those "marks of experience" wood picks up along the way. Life is in every piece of wood. When you think about it, life, including yours, is reflected in every piece of wood in your home. From the moment it starts growing and for all the time it's in use, wood has history in and on it... naturally spaced grains, growth rings and the color are all affected by the seasons and the minerals in the soil... character brought on by aging, weather and the environment.

A wood floor continues to celebrate life and living as it passes through the generations and each succeeding owner. There is a quiet grace about a wood floor that projects the universal sense of permanence that can never be diminished. Can another flooring do that after 30, 50, 100, 200 years or more?

Moreover, from the moment you, a family member or a guest steps through the door, a wood floor projects a truly warm welcome along with your personal sense of creativity, as reflected by the color, grain and size of the flooring pieces and the manner in which they are installed and finished. That uniqueness carries throughout the home and makes your design and your lifestyle an integrated whole, with every decor element working together.

Yes, life changes. People grow, enter and leave the family. Our tastes change, too, often with the times. A wood floor helps you celebrate those changes because it is versatile, so capable of immediately adapting its incredible, innate style to shifting home furnishings and evolving color and fabric palettes. It's so easy to maintain as you celebrate life, and it's so easy to decorate around. It may be only a change of the seasons, but consider this simple example. Winter into spring - away go the rugs, pillows, throws, heavy draperies - your floor is sparkling, dynamic and reflective of the new life in the spring. Your wood floor celebrates with you; it happens every season if you wish.

Designers look at a wood floor as a large, neutral palette, even with all its color, grain and texture. That's one reason wood is timeless. As one designer said, as you begin your plan, look at the floor like life, in broad strokes, for it is the floor that should be what you focus on first; from there, everything else in your scheme springs to life!

WOOD IS A CELEBRATION OF YOUR HOME!

International Design Guide, Fabulous Wood Floors, a publication of the National Wood Flooring Association, 2009.

Now This is Exciting!

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Green Flooring

For stylish flooring, you can't get much more environmentally friendly than wood. That's a bold statement, but true. The environmental responsibility applies not only to solid wood flooring, but also to engineered formats.

HARVESTING
Let's start with the fact that the wood in your floor is completely renewable. Better yet, at least as much wood can be grown as is harvested. In fact, for every 100 trees harvested for wood flooring, 166 are planted. Because of responsible forestry practices, the number of trees standing in North America today exceeds that of the 1950's, and standing hardwood alone has increased by about 90 percent to nearly 328 billion cubic feet. Want more? Research by the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials declares that solid wood flooring has less environmental impact than other flooring options it studied. Not only are most professionally managed forests in North America responsibly harvested, a growing number worldwide are, as well. Because only a specified percentage of trees are removed, the ecosystem remains intact.

MANUFACTURING
From a manufacturing perspective as well, wood flooring is quite "green." Hardwood flooring uses less water and energy in manufacturing than other flooring alternatives.

The Wood Story

Today's wood story starts with the fact that, contrary to popular belief, wood is quite affordable. Modern, efficient manufacturing techniques mean wood floor decor can become part of a home at any time, no longer optimally at the time the home is built. Wood flooring says "This home is built of quality." No other flooring type actually INCREASES in value over time and for a variety of reasons: The popularity of designing with wood continues to grow as people discover its timeless allure. Wood lasts and lasts, and it also develops its own character in the home. Like your best pearls or silverware, quality wood flooring takes on a patina that is unique to its environment - your home.

Wood is the most versatile floor covering there is. Professional designers will tell you that wood is a material superior to other manufactured substances in terms of its innate, natural beauty and prestige. And for practical considerations, such as ease of maintenance and long-term durability, and the ability of a wood floor to "give" a bit, making it easy on your feet when you walk on it.

If you think you know wood flooring, unless you are "in the business," chances are you aren't familiar with how far wood flooring has come in recent years. They're definitely not your grandmother's wood floors. Today there are more styles, colors, species, formats and finishes available to everyone, many of them carrying exotic names you've never heard of arriving all the time from far-flung corners of the world.

With the world marketplace constantly supplying new species in more styles and colors than ever, yours can be a floor that begins its journey in any part of the world and brings to your home four priceless qualities: Warmth, Beauty, Responsibility and Value.

International Design Guide: Fabulous Wood Floors, Publication of the NWFA, 2009, The Wood Story

Fabulous Wood Floors = Fabulous Information!

I recently received a copy of a new magazine called Fabulous Wood Floors. It's a publication from the National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA). This magazine is FABULOUS! It's geared toward educating the customer about wood floors and all of their boundless possibilities. In the next few days, maybe even weeks, I will be taking excerpts out of the magazine and posting them on this blog. The information presented will enable wood flooring customers to make an educated decision regarding the type, style, species and function of wood floors.

The NWFA is an important resource for both the flooring professional and consumer. Their website is at www.woodfloors.org or www.nwfa.org. At these websites you can find all sorts of information including a search of all professional contractors and retailers in your area. If you're serious about installation of wood floors in your own home or business, check out the site and find a service provider that will answer all of your questions and do the job right the first time. Wood floors are an investment in your future and you want that investment placed in the right hands!

The Importance of Hardwoods

The US House of Representatives recently recognized the importance of hardwoods, in H. Res. 81 the legislation recognizes the importance and sustainability of the United States hardwoods industry and urges that the United States hardwoods and the products derived from United States hardwoods be given full consideration in any program directed at constructing environmentally preferable commercial, public, or private buildings.

Representative Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) sponsored the legislation, which was supported by the Hardwood Federation, a coalition of more than 30 associations, including the National Wood Flooring Association, representing the interests of the United States hardwood industry.

The US hardwood industry employs millions of families throughout the country, representing thousands of jobs in nearly every state and hundreds of Congressional districts. This legislation recognizes the sustainability of United States hardwoods in a global marketplace that is giving increased emphasis on the procurement of hardwood from sustainable, legally harvested forests as a result of the US Lacey Act and an increased interest in green building.

Information from NWFA December 2009 The Log.