The first thing to be said about carpet cleaning is that the surface should be vacuumed regularly. This is also good for the fibers as well as for cleanliness because sharp sand edges can cut the carpet fibers. In reality carpet is a destination for everything that gets dragged into the home including insects. This is why it should be treated with the same respect that you would a favorite sweater or pair or sports coat. So instead of going bare-footed put on a pair of slippers.

Take Out Old Shampoo

Just like rinsing your hair you have to rinse a carpet. Liquid carpet cleaners leave a build-up and this is a magnet for dirt. If you are renting a machine mix 1 cup of vinegar for every 2 1/2 gallons of water and clean the carpet with this first. Now go back over the carpet with just warm water. This will take the shampoo out and leave the carpet softer.

Stains

Never rub a stain, just blot it.  most stains come off with shaving cream. leave it on for 15 minutes and blot with white vinegar.

Club soda or a 30/70 mix of peroxide to water: This will work for red wine stains and orange popsicles.  Apply and wait 30 minutes. Then rinse with a vinegar/water solution.

Brake Fluid: No kidding, This will remove food stains. it contains the same chemicals as the professional dry cleaners use. Just dab it on a clean cloth.

Baking Soda: Animal spills and other stains

Cleaning

If you love your carpet a professional carpet cleaner works the best. They have the best tools and the exerptise to get all the dirt from the bottom of the matt and out. The store-rentals work to a point but just wet the rest down. And the pros will not leave a soap residue for you to get out later.

Travertine is a sedimentary rock which is one step above limestone. It forms near mineral springs and the bubbles from the escaping gases became encased in the rock forming colorful voids. The Romans found it to be a stronger building material that limestone and used it extensively. The Colosseum in Rome is the perfect example of travertine used as a structural material. Many flooring companies fill the imperfections in travertine but when it is used on walls and other surfaces the pitted look gives a natural appeal.

Like its metamorphic cousin, marble, travertine has wonderful coloring from pale creams to deep browns and coral reds with mineral coloring throughout. It is not as hard as marble and will react to acids but properly sealed it will provide a lifetime of service as a flooring.

For flooring and walls travertine is available from small mosaics, to 36″x36″ tiles and large slabs. Flooring experts lay out the tile first to get the coloring right before cementing them in place. For outside patios and garden walkways the stone can be placed on a sand bed. These stones will be tumbled or scored and not the homed finish of the inside tiles.

For a unique look, many types of travertine are mixed-and-matched. This works well if there is one type that forms the theme. For example, if half the tiles are beige they can be set up in a checkerboard manner with the other squares being filled by travertine of differing colors.

For more information on travertine contact you local flooring expert.

Before you paint the floor decide on your color and design scheme. Then prepare the floor like you would any painting job. The floor should be dry and dent-free. Use a wood filler or floor leveler but not a caulking as it is too soft. Then sand the floor until is it smooth.

Wood, like plywood or oriented strand board, should be primed with a special sealer that hides wood grains and imperfections. this is usually a think, pasty-type material that is self-levelling but check with the instruction to see if it works on the material you will be covering. Concrete floors will probably need a concrete primer but make sure the floor is dvoid of peaks and voids beforehand otherwise the floor will look bumpy. If you are going to use a faux finish it is best to practice on a piece of plywood first. Oil-based paints tend to stick better so go with these.

For finishing it will take three coats of urethane to get the floor smooth but wit three days so that the undercoats will harden first. Try for a “non-yellowing” urehthane because, obviously, not every surface would look good as a yellow.

Stripes: One of the most endearing qualities of tigerwood is the color which varies from a dark yellow to a more neutral brown. However the capping achievement of the wood is the pattern that rides on the color. Dark brown and black stripes resemble the stripes of a tiger or zebra. With random planks this makes and amazing pattern which will deepen during the maturing process.

Hard: Tigerwood has a Janka hardness rating of 1260 which makes it 170% harder than Red Oak and harder than all the North American species. However, even if there are dents or scratches over the lifetime of the floor they will be hidden because of the unique pattern. The planks usually come quartersawn for an alternating color pattern and straight grain.

Decking: Tigerwood is also a great decking because it is almost impervious to water and rot.

For  a flooring different from the ordinary tigerwood will fill the bill.

Recycled Leather

In the early days of car making Rolls Royce, Cadillac and other high-end cars sported leather seating. In fact that was one of the reasons people bought these expensive cars. However, these days every car manufacturing label, even the Korean cars, have the leather seat option. In fact even minivans and pickup trucks have this luxury. With the life of a vehicle judged as less than 10 years junked cars produce recyclable leather and plastics but have you ever wondered what happens to all this leather?

Recycled leather is fast-becoming a fashion statement in the flooring industry. When you think of all the leather sofas, jackets and automobile seats that get thrown out every year it makes sense for someone to reclaime these items and turn them into another product. However, the leather does not come back as a re-dyed or polished version of its old self. Instead it goes to a mill where it is ground up. This powder is then mixed with natural glues and rolled into a hard surface with tecturing that makes it look like a grain leather. From here it is made into planks or tiles with a natural backing like cork.

Whatever leather product you choose, tannery or recycled you will be on the cutting edge of flooring technology while using a renewable resource.

Rectified tile looks great but requires a more skilled hand than for laying down regular tile. Large tile is hard to lay anyways but with tiny grout lines the positioning is difficult especially on the walls where the weight of the tile means it has to be supported at exactly the right spot until the mastic takes effect.

To show the differences between how ceramic tile and rectified tile are made, ceramic is made made larger because in the kiln it will shrink to size. Rectified can be made two ways. The first is that it begins as a large sheet that is cut to the exact size after it comes out of the kiln. The second is that it begins as a standard ceramic tile that is machined to the exact size after drying. So if a standard ceramic tile has a variation of 1.25% of its size, a rectified tile will only have between .025% and .05%.

Installation has its own set of problems that have to do with warping on large tiles. If the substrate is immovable, like concrete, this can pose a big problem because the edges will stick up. Granite and marble tile are classed as rectified because they too are machined to an exacting size. If these are not put down right then the sharp edges can have an effect on walking in the home whereas regular tile has honed edges and the inexact manner will compensate for this.

As installers become more familiar with rectified tile new techniques will emerge to make large tile easier to lay down. Smaller tiles, like 12″ x 12″ , are still small enough to move with the substrate and are not as subject to warping during the manufacture as the large variety.

In order to sell this tile many of the tile stores would advertise the product as “quick to install.” In their minds, more space meant that the floor filled up faster with less tile. However, in many cases the opposite was true: larger tile took more time to set up and get level than the smaller ones. Today, it is not unusual to see 18″ x 18″ squares and even 24″ x 24″. But what does this mean for the installer?

What larger tile means is that the subfloor tolerances cannot be too great or else there is a risk of breakage. In other words if the large tiles are not set down on a flat surface with the right amount of mastic then the weight of the tile, traffic and lack of support may collaborate to break the tile. For example, if the floor level is out by 1/4″ over 10 feet an 8″ x 8″ tile will not have a problem with this. However, as we go bigger we see the differences. A 12″ x 12″ tile has a small enough surface area to compensate for the uneven surface but pressure on the 18″ square might cause it to break in time. And few people will carry spare tiles of that size.

The key to the successful placement of large tile is a level floor. I fact it must be level from one side to the other. To gauge this stretch a chalk line from one side of the room to the other and gently snap it so that no heavy chalk will hit the low areas.  Do this every foot across the room and then do it again putting perpendicular lines down. You might have a partial checkerboard effect but where the chalk is heaviest is where the floor is the highest.

If there are a just a few high spots you may be able to sand them or plane them out depending on the material. (With oriented strand board you will have to use a leveling compound on the low spots) Once you get the floor leveled put down a thin subfloor like 1/4″ plywood. This will fortify your changes and give a smooth surface on which to install your tile.

If there is a basement the low spots may be raised by shimming between the joists and floor in the low places. The key is too get the floor as even as possible.

1.  Shellac: This is an insect secretion from India and Thailand that forms a hard, golden finish on wood. It’s drawback is that is it not impervious to stains and can water-stain. This made it unsuitable for flooring after the new urethanes came in to style. It was also hard to get off when refinishing.

2.  Varnish: Varnishes replaced shellac as the premier floor finishing product but it too would not stand up to heavy traffic and has to be re-applied frequently.

3.  Wax: The only drawback with wax was that it had to be applied frequently. This entailed stripping the wax which was a long, arduous job. Otherwise, a newly waxed floor looks spectacular.

4.  Urethane: The first hard finish was urethane but it required a professional to coat to the surface. Unlike the new polyurethanes it did not stand up well and tended to yellow quickly. Water-based urethanes improved the usability of the product because there was no gaseous odor.

5.  Polyurethane: The products that revolutionized modern wood flooring were the polyurethanes. Easy to apply and fast-drying they form the bulk of the floor protection process today.

6.  Aluminum Oxide: The best possible finish comes from heavy solids suspended in an aluminum oxide resin. The solids are the wear agent for the flooring while the resins help it penetrate and seal the wood fibers. These should only applied by skilled floor finishers as they dry quickly.

Because of the new technology in floor protection it is possible to have softwoods like pine that can take the punishment of a harder floor.

However, pressed-concrete relies on pigments and these will fade over time. In addition these types are porous and, unlike brick, can discolor because of mildew, oxidization and staining whereas real clay brick will hold its color.  Some people will not be bothered by this because they have pressure-washers and feel that natural aging fits in well with the yard rather than the fiery red of brick.

Whether you are putting in a brick paver or paving stone patio the preparation of the ground is the same. With a paving stone pad you will not have to worry about sloping the land away from the home because excess water can drain through. However, even if you are sloping it away a 4″ drain tile underneath will make sure that water does not get underneath the sand base and either erode the base or, in cold climates, cause frost heaving.

Once the area are has been cleared a gravel base is put in just like of you were putting in a driveway only not as thick. About 4″ will do and level this out. Then, with a rented compactor, flatten the gravel and fill in any depressions. Next use a 3″ covering of sand or, even better, crusher dust as a base for the pavers. Compact this, level it off, fill in the depressions and compact again.

Before laying the stones get a pattern set up. If it requires cobblestones in different sizes take your design and measurements to the patio store so they can check the amount of the pavers you need. If you are doing an intricate pattern it might be best to pay a professional to come in and lay the stones. If the materials are there and the pad set up it would only be a couple of days’ pay for a good job.

For a rectangular patio at a 90 angle from the home start with a “soldier course” to frame the area. This is like stacking the brick sideways at a 90 degree angle to where other bricks will go. After the edge is completed start in the exact middle and work to the outside. The last edges will have to be cut with a diamond saw, also a rental.

The point is that if you have the base set up you can put down any pattern you want. After the pattern has been put down compact again to seat the bricks. To grout the bricks use a special opaving sand. The sides of each grain are sharp which enables them to lock to each other and hold the pavers tight. Our on the pavers and, using a garage broom, sweep into the crevices. Compact on last tijme and sill the voids with more sand until level with the surface.

Also, keep extra sand available to fill in the gaps. This should not be a common occurrence but it’s good to have a pail around.

One of the most unique flooring ideas is wood tile. These can be be from many species of wood from soft pine to exotic zebrawood from Africa. The one thing they all have in common is that they are cut into tiles instead of planks. In most cases these tiles are “end cuts,” sawn off the end of the log instead of ripped like the usually flooring is cut. This shows up the rings of the wood and gives a “radial” dimension to the floor. Some are squared off pieces of regular hardwood. Cork is a flooring product that works well as a tile product.

What makes the end cuts unique is that they offer a unique perspective of wood on a floor. The “tiles” are usually 3/4″ think and can be left natural or stained. In addition they can be made in almost any shape as a ceramic tile. In fact one of the most popular shapes is the 6-sided tile which gives a honeycomb-look to the floor.

Other wood includes planks reclaimed from old houses and barns. These old lengths have been aging for over a hundred years and, because deforestation wasn’t as bad back then, they are very clear.

One method of placing wood tiles is to put them down raw and then have them smoothed with a sander. The sawdust is then vacuumed up and saved. The floor is then stained and left to dry. Meanwhile the sawdust is reintroduced to the floor and brushedinto the cracks. When the floor is coated with a urethane finish the sawdust becomes a natural grout which sets off the stained wood.