A STICKY SITUATION

by Jeff Blackburn

Adhesive: a substance (such as glue or cement) that is used to make things stick together. In the flooring world in simple terms it is known as glue. We use it to hold down wood, vinyl, carpet, vinyl tile and numerous other things. When you walk into a hardware or supply store and walk down their adhesive isle, how many of us are blown away by all there is to offer? Caulk tubes, squeeze tube, buckets, white, clear, colored, two part, single part, water proof, water cleanup, epoxy based, resin based, super, extreme, monkey, glue your head to a steel beam, etc. etc. etc. What adhesive to use where and why can cause mass confusion.

Gone are the days of school glue, super glue and wood glue and that’s all you had to chose from. Now you need to know what you are gluing, where you are gluing it and under what conditions it will be used. So it goes with flooring glue today.

Gone are the days when one glue did carpet and vinyl and another for wood. Now days there are just as many adhesives in our store as there are in hardware stores. Let me enlighten you on just a few of the basic adhesives you will need to be aware of if you plan on installing any of your own flooring. Using the wrong adhesive can result in costly mistake and replacement. 

Carpet Adhesive

For most carpets a general multi-purpose adhesive works well, there are a couple varieties that will affect the tack and drying time allowing for a little more working time, otherwise they are pretty much universal.

Hardwood Adhesive

Wood adhesive has come a long way over the years and is now made with a moisture barrier built right in it. The older versions did not offer this protection and moisture was sometimes a major concern when doing wood jobs. Moisture still does play a role in floor installation, but that subject is much more in depth and will be addressed in a later blog.

Vinyl Adhesive

Vinyl adhesive is where major changes have happened over the past few years. Vinyl sheet goods flooring design itself has changed and so too has the adhesives. When the majority of the vinyl being sold was a paper or felt back variety, a basic multi-purpose did the job. Nowadays vinyl is being made of felt or paper backing as well as fiberglass, rubber and other materials. If you were to use a basic multi-purpose adhesive under these it would result in air bubbles the size of watermelons showing up under your new floor, not the most desired results for sure. This is caused by the curing procedure of multi-purpose adhesives. Nowadays every vinyl manufacturer offers their own special adhesives to use under their products. Many of these are considered pressure sensitive adhesives that activate after installed by using a heavy roller on them. You can also use these same adhesives to do a removable or permanent installation based on drying and tack time. The best procedure is to know the brand of vinyl you are installing and buy the matching adhesive and seam sealer. The key for vinyl installation is, based on however you plan on installing, as either a permanent or release, follow the instructions on the bucket in detail.

Indoor Air Quality

Another nice thing to know about flooring adhesives is that they have stopped using chemicals that can be hazardous to your health. Most all of them today use very little or no V.O.C's (Volatile Organic Compounds), so they are safe for air quality and have very low odor.

As always if you have any questions feel free to ask your Floors To Go sale professional for assistance.   

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CARPET WARRANTY

By

Ben Laslett

   Carpet is still one of the most common types of flooring you see in homes today. Trends come and go such as shag carpet, rich colors, neutral colors, but the fact still remains that no matter what is in style, people are still purchasing carpet for their homes. Because this is the case you, the customer, need to be aware of what the warranties on a particular carpet are.

   I like to talk about warranties because so many times a person will buy a product knowing it has a warranty but has no idea what that warranty actually is. Well if you read my blog you will not have that excuse when it comes to floor covering.

   Carpet warranties are usually broken down into these three categories: Abrasion Resistance, Resilience, and Stain Resistance. Now let's break each one of these categories down.

   Abrasion Resistance: Abrasion is when a fiber loses some of its mass, but because synthetic fibers such as Nylon and Polyester are made of plastic this does not happen very much over the life of the carpet. Most warranties cover about 10% loss of mass which means they guarantee that their carpet will not lose more than 10% of its mass for the life of the warranty. Your carpet will definitely ugly out before it ever wears out, this is where the next part of the warranty comes in at.

   Resilience: This is what I like to call the carpet's bounce back ability. Every yarn has a memory built into it, and the resilience is this carpet's ability to bounce back to its original form after it is walked on. The better the resiliency in the carpet, the longer the carpet will keep from crushing or matting. So basically this part of the warranty is telling you how long the manufacturer promises the carpet will keep from matting down or uglying out so to speak.

   Stain Resistance: This part of the warranty is pretty self explanatory; here the manufacturer is saying that for a certain amount of time this carpet will not permanently stain. But what you need to find out is what type of stains are covered in that particular warranty because trust me, all stains are not covered.

   After reading this you will hopefully no longer be in the dark about carpet warranties and you also know the right kind of questions to ask once you are in the store before you buy. Make sure you know the details before the purchase so that there are no hidden surprises later on down the road.

   

WHAT TO EXPECT ON INSTALLATION DAY

By

Ben Lasslett

   When you have an appointment for our professional installers to come to your home and begin putting in your new floor, you may be a little uneasy. This is not uncommon; most people feel some reluctance when strangers are coming into their home. At Floors To Go we want to remove all forms of uneasiness before our installers ever cross your threshold.

   First of all we want to assure you of the fact that our installers work for us and we know them all personally. If we would not trust someone in our own home we would not send them to yours. All of our crews are very professional and will take the very best care of your home that you hold dear to you and your family.

   The first thing you can expect is for our installers to arrive promptly between the hours of nine and ten AM. When our installer enters the home he will look over the job and see where the best place to start and once that is decided he will start moving furniture. If there is not a place that all the furniture can be moved to he will empty one room at a time. Once the furniture is carefully removed from the room he will begin to take up the old flooring. This includes hauling it off for you to avoid any unsightliness to the outside of your home.

   You guessed it; the next step is installing your new flooring. It will be put down along with any needed trim work. Once your flooring is professionally installed, all furniture will be replaced as it was and you can carry right on with your life.

   At Floors To Go our goal is to give you the most professional looking job you can get at the speed you want it done in. We know it is not fun having your home in disarray, but we promise we will make as easy for you as possible and have you going again in no time.

   Just to give you even more confidence in shopping with us you will also receive a lifetime installation warranty on anything we install for you. You shouldn't have a problem but rest assured that if you do it will be taken care of. Come to Floors To Go today and shop with confidence!

CARPET AND VINYL SEAMS

Chuck Allen, Floors To Go Sales Professional

In an ideal flooring world every room would be either 12 or 15 feet wide, where every installation would be seamless and easy to install. Instead we live in a world where rooms come in all shapes and sizes. Just when you think you have seen them all you walk into a house or business and see something new. I have measured rooms that are in the shapes of triangles, circles, trapezoids and shapes that have no names. The idea people want their homes to be different from their neighbors has contributed to this trend. While making odd shaped and sized rooms makes your house unique it also adds a challenge. Considering that the majority of roll goods flooring such as carpet and sheet vinyl comes in 12 foot. Some carpet comes in 15 foot goods and some vinyl in 13’2” goods. This being the case like it or not there will be seams.

Take a look around your room almost every item that is made of fabric has seams, your shirt, your couch, your curtains. Some seams are more noticeable than others and this is due to how they were sewn, type of material and placement. So the same holds true for flooring. Our professional installers strive to do the best they can to make that seam invisible but this is not always possible. Let’s take a look at what helps to hide that seam.

The seaming process of carpet is done by cutting the edges of the carpet to match and then using a carpet seam iron and seam tape to adhere the carpet together. This process has taken the place of the old hand sewn seams. For vinyl again the edges are cut to match, adhesive applied to the back side and a seam sealer used on the top to complete the seam. While this sounds very simplistic that is the basis of each seam.

The material you chose will have a huge factor on if seams are visible or not. If you chose a thick plush or frieze style carpet the seams will be much easier to hide and a lot less visible due to the fibers being able to mesh and blend together to hide the seam. Short knap or loop style carpets such as berber, commercial or an economy grade plush will be very difficult to hide seams in. This is due to the lack of fibers standing up to mesh together and camouflage the seam. For vinyl if you chose a style with no pattern line, such as grout lines or wood grains, it is almost certain that you will see this seam. The key for vinyls is hiding the seam in a pattern line and this will help but does not always promise an invisible seam.

Placement is a key factor in making that pesky seam disappear. When we look at seam placement we look at several things. Furniture placement, if we can hide the seam under a bed, couch or other piece of large furniture it helps camouflage it in a room. The whole out of sight out of mind idea works here. Another thing we look for is traffic patterns; we do not want to place a seam across a major foot traffic area unless there is no other way to do so. Doing so could cause unnecessary wear and cause the seam to show up. One other consideration is lighting. Sometimes a seam will be invisible at one point of the day but show up at a different time due to either the sun highlighting it or shadowing it. Putting a seam in direct sunlight will often times expose it at certain times of the day.

Seams are a fact of life in almost all fabrics. We at Floors To Go try our best to make sure you are aware of when and where seams will be necessary for your floor installation. Hopefully this will give you the home owner an idea why you may see those seams and what we do to try and prevent that from happening. If you have any questions please feel free to ask your Floors To Go sales professionals that’s what we are here for.