Cork flooring is a great flooring choice. There are many reason more and more people are choosing cork flooring. Cork is a natural renewable material. Cork is considered to be a green choice for your home. For those who have try to be green and care for our environment, cork flooring is a top choice in flooring. When the cork is harvested every seven years it does not kill the tree. The cork is simply peeled from the tree. We have used cork flooring in many different application for our clients. We have installed cork flooring in commercial jobs, living rooms, kitchens, game rooms, exercise rooms, and through out people?s homes. To many peoples surprise, cork flooring is extremely wearable. Cork flooring has a urethane finish that can be restore if needed.

Cork flooring is a great product to use to match up to existing hardwood floors. Some people consider cork floors when match up to the existing hardwood floors because cork is in the wood family. Sometimes it is best to find a contrasting product verse putting a hardwood floor that does not exactly matching the existing hardwood floors. Cork flooring can look very nice connecting to a hardwood flooring. Cork flooring comes in a multitude of patterns and selection. So you can get the unique look that you might be looking for. The cork floors are manufactured in square tiles or click system planks. The cork tiles are made to be glued down and the click system plank is installed as a floating floors, much like laminate floors.

Carpet padding basics are explained in this article.

Many people are told that the carpet padding makes the carpet job. The carpet padding is extremely important. Carpet padding has lots to due with how good your carpeting will wear. Although carpet padding does not improve the quality of your carpet. It just makes the carpet feel better and gives the carpet a good foundation. It is still very important to pay attention to the quality of the carpeting you choose if you want to be happy with your overall job.

There are many choices in carpet padding. There are carpet padding designed for many different applications. The most common type of carpet padding used is the re bond padding. The re bond padding are normally made with scrap foam from the furniture and auto industry. Some re bond padding are special made of virgin foam. Overall most rebond padding are relatively economical. The difference between a nice quality rebond padding and a total piece of junk padding is only about .05 cents to .10 cents per sq ft. It is such a disservice to the customer to offer a bad grade of padding. We believe it is best just to offer nice qualities with the difference of upgrade features. A true 6lb padding is a nice quality that the manufacturers recommend. The only times to use anything less is perhaps when you are doing a very low end rental property. Some carpet padding upgrade would be a upgrade in density such as a 8lb padding or a padding with a Spill guard feature. The spill guard will prevent spill from penetrating into the carpet padding. This is a great feature if you have pets or lots of spills. There are even carpet padding with built in enzymes that will activate when a pet urinates on the carpet.

Porcelain and ceramic tiles can be a great investment for your home. A good grade of tile; whether porcelain tile or ceramic tile, should last the life of the house. That is why it is important to try not to pick something that will date the house. It is always best to find a tile that has a timeless look. One that will last the test of time and fashion changes.

You may ask what make one tile better than another? Or you may ask what classifies a tile to be a good product that will not wear out over time? Ceramic and porcelain tiles basically has a group rating that will tell you what kind of wear ability the tile has. The group a graded from a 1 to 5 rating. The group 1 and 2 are the least wearable, they are normally used for wall areas or areas with little traffic. Most people use a group 3 or better for their floor areas. The group 4 and 5 can be used in a commercial area due to the higher wear qualities.

The wear qualities of a ceramic tile is not the only detail you need to consider. Many people ask us what the difference is between the ceramic tile and the porcelain tiles? The porcelain tile is basically has a more dense hard core and it is less porous. The ceramic tile is a clay body tile that is easier to cut when installing and normally does the job with no problem. A few down sides to the ceramic tile would be that if something was dropped on it, the ceramic tile has a greater chance of chipping.

The clay body ceramic tiles are sometimes not compacted as well and may have air pockets in the tile. This down side can be a rare occurrence. Also the ceramic tiles are not as ideal for outside use in areas that has climate that drop below freezing. Some people in the Wilmington, N.C. area find the ceramic tile that they love and chance it. Wilmington N.C. is normally a fairly mild area for coldness; but if you decide to put a ceramic tile outside here, make sure it has a dense body. The best thing to do is put the porcelain tile outside to insure no cracking. The porcelain tile will not absorb the water like the ceramic tile.

We are often asked what makes some tiles more expensive that other. Often times the complexity of the ceramic tiles has a lot to due with the cost range the product falls into. The more times the manufacturers have to screen the tiles and bake them, the more the product normally cost. Again the quality of the body of the tile, the more costly the product might be. It is preferable to have a higher rated, more dense body tile. Many times the ultimate decision to buy a tile is the look, texture, and value.

We have seen people look for the perfect area rug for years without finding what they really want. There are challenges that come into play when looking for an area rug. To name a few, there is size availability problems, the right colors and textures, the prices you can afford, and so on. Again as we speak of often, you must find what fits you and your home the best.

Some of our pain relief to find the right area rug is to open up all the options to our clients. With an on site rug making center we are able to eliminate the cost hurdle that many of us have. We have an outlet full of remnants of all types of different carpeting that make for beautiful area rugs.

Sometimes we will bind up some standard sizes of pattern carpets, sisal carpet, Berber carpets, and so on. Being that the carpet outlet stocks product that are 30 to 70 percent off this is a economical way to make an area rug.

Also making the rugs from the rolls of carpet in stock it eliminates the problem of nonstandard sizes. We can make a rug to about any size or shape.

Many interior designers will have rugs made from some of our high end carpet stock from mills like Stanton, Kane, Couristan and so on. We have even gone out on site and designed area rugs shaped to look like a green on a golf course.

We are also able to fabricate cotton borders and tapestry fabrics to the borders of the area rugs. For this custom area rug look, it is still fairly inexpensive to make on site. All the on site area rugs ultimately saves you money.

As for being limited by color, sizes, textures, and the amount of area rug inventory a store might carry; you should take a look at some of the styling and endless amount of choice offer by some of our custom mills. We have about ten large manufactures that offer a custom rug program.

Some of them in which will say if you can dream it, we will make it. This takes care of finding your dream area rug. Also because it is less expensive to have thousands of carpet sample than to have thousands of area rugs in stock, we can show you so much more selection. We will continue to add to our great selection so stop by to see us for your next area rug.

Matching hardwood flooring is not always a easy task. Many people do not understand the difficulties of matching up hardwood floors to your existing hardwoods. There is a lot to consider. How old is you existing hardwood flooring? Do you plan to refinish your existing hardwood flooring? Does the area you want new hardwood floors connect to the existing hardwood floors? How much hardwood floor area does your existing floor count for? If doing a patch or small repair, is there attic stock of the original flooring or is there a closet area you can take up and use?

Some might think you can add some unfinished hardwood floors to your existing hardwood floors, then refinish them and they will automatically match up. Hardwood that is grown in one area of the world will not necessary match up to another hardwood grown elsewhere. Sometimes you get lucky and get a satisfactory match. There are many different circumstances we come across when matching existing hardwood flooring. There are many interior design tricks that will help you get a satisfactory solution. Here are some different thoughts from designer when matching up to existing hardwood floors.

It is better to not try to match the existing hardwood than to try and miss.

Sometimes if you can break your eye with a transition or threshold in the doorway it help if the match is not perfect.

When adding a different room of hardwood to the existing hardwood it can look stunning with a extremely different color hardwood flooring. Sometimes it looks custom done when you add a boarder that matches your existing hardwood floor inside the contrasting different hardwood flooring.

If matching in the middle of a big room, you must finger joint with a unfinished hardwood and pretest stains prior to installation.

Sometimes if there is not a lot of existing hardwood flooring it is just best to take up the old flooring and start from scratch. Sometimes this way will pay you the most return when you sell the home.

You can consider turn the direction the wood flooring is running to give yourself a different look.

Many people do not consider how much of the hardwood flooring will be covered up by furniture and area rugs.

There is much to think about when you want to try to match up to some existing hardwood, so take your time. Remember whenever you put in some new flooring make sure you save some to put in the attic encase you may need it later. If you have put in some hardwood recently that does not match up perfectly, remember over time most wood tone will deepen and may match better over a good length of time. If you a considering to match some hardwood floors, we suggest you really take your time and weight all your options. There is many things that could cause you some dissatisfaction if you are not careful.