HARDWOOD
The floor that earns the room over decades.
Engineered, solid, and wide-plank options across a curated range of species — chosen for grain, hardness, and how the floor reads three years in.
What to look at
Characteristics that decide the spec.
The properties below shape every hardwood consultation — what we narrow on, in roughly the order it comes up.
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Construction
Engineered planks handle radiant heat and humidity swings; solid hardwood refinishes more times across its life. We match construction to the subfloor and the climate, not to the catalogue.
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Species
Oak, walnut, maple, hickory — each ages differently. We narrow to two or three candidates that fit the room rather than walking you through the whole range.
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Grade
Select reads clean and quiet. Character shows knots, mineral streaks, and figuring. Neither is wrong — they're different rooms.
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Finish
Pre-finished installs faster and arrives factory-consistent. Site-finished gives unlimited stain colour and a seamless surface, at the cost of dust and a longer schedule.
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Hardness
Janka rating is part of the story. Oak and maple sit in the everyday-use range; walnut is softer and shows life. Finish toughness often matters more than species.
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Refinishability
Solid hardwood sands several times across its life. Quality engineered planks once or twice. Thin-veneer ranges generally don't refinish — worth knowing before the floor scratches.
How we work with this material
What good looks like.
Hardwood demands a stable subfloor and a stable humidity range. We test moisture in the slab or subfloor before any install, acclimate the planks on site for the days the manufacturer specifies, and quote prep work — vapour barriers, levelling compounds, transitions to adjacent rooms — as part of the spec rather than as a surprise mid-job.
What "good" looks like is consistent: tight, even gaps between planks; transitions at doorways and stair noses that read as designed, not improvised; end-grain at perimeters cut clean. The right floor in the right room ages into the home — five years in, you should be hard-pressed to tell when it was installed.
If you're choosing hardwood, ask about wear-layer thickness on engineered planks, the warranty terms (residential versus commercial), and the moisture-testing plan for slab subfloors. Honest answers to those three questions tell you more about the install than any product spec sheet.
Suppliers we work with
- Mohawk
- ShawContract
- Olympia Tile
Talk through your hardwood project.
Tell us a little about the room — square footage if you have it, timeline if you have one, and what you're starting with. We'll come back with the next step.