single use floor covers such as laminate and LVT

15 Apr

Engineered versus solid wood Floors

Misconceptions, Misdirections and Misinformation, Customer Bill of Rights

Searching the internet provides ads in disguise

Research and compare engineered versus solid wood floors; throw in LVT and laminate floor covers for kicks. As a buyer, online marketing and most local stores will have you buying covers not floors. What do we mean? Real wood is floor you buy whereas engineered and the rest, a floor cover. Comparing engineered versus real wood floors and you are comparing an investment to a product designed to fail. Yes, some are better than others, but all floor covers have planned obsolesce in the blueprints. Want to read more- Investment Flooring. No matter how you keep score, engineered versus real wood is an unfair comparison. Hailed as a great innovation for homeowners, engineered floors are more popular than ever. Flooring companies love them because of the repeat business, huge margins and time savings compared to real wood.

Solid versus engineered

Solid versus engineered wood floors should be rhetorical, but not today. The market has convinced buyers that veneers glued to composites are a better way to go than real solid wood. Plastics that will end up in landfills handle moisture better than real wood, give me a break. Repeat business demands reusable products and engineered floors are perfect in the role. Real wood last forever, engineered, laminate and others all end up in landfills.

Marketing in disguise

Remember, the “media” or resource pages such as Angie’s List are paid for by marketing dollars paid by people wanting to sell you LVT or laminate. Therefore, the research articles you read are 100% generated by someone with a product behind the posts, a sponsor of sorts.

Stop listening to them

Yes, you can have real wood floors, even with concrete sub-floors because, yes you can glue real wood. The solution is adhesive that moves like a nail, (Bostiks Best) but I digress. The reasons “they” tell that real wood is not the right choice for your home or business, are revolve around the old adage that ‘time is money’. Real wood takes time, has no big commissions or sales contest and does not come in […]

Antique reclaimed heart pine with saw marks

Baseball, Apple Pie and Southern Pine

It has to be real wood. Southern Pine, real wood, is the most Eco-friendly choice for your floor, period. The exceptions, of course, are endangered or illegal timber, but that is not relevant to our discussion. Our New Heart Pine is not farmed and take from private landowners. While our Yellow Pine is sourced from North Louisiana, farmed timber. That is great information but the reason the real wood is green? IT LAST FOREVER. In […]

Box Store Pine Floors

Box store pine floors are not as good as ours and they are more expensive. Let me repeat, apples to apples they way more expensive. And even their cheaper stuff is stupid expensive for what it is, or certainly what it is not. In world where laminate and hardwood are regularly used to market some floor cover, you might want to use a healthy skepticism when floor shopping. Rule number 1- or at least the […]

Dog Friendly

2024 Dog Friendly Floors Update Dog friendly floors are all about the finish. Of course, you will here that real wood is not good for big dogs or even dogs in general. This is simply not true, at all. However, before we talk about the finish, we should address the question of Southern Pine and if it is a dog friendly floor. There is so much confusion regarding pine because there are so many variations [...]

Girl laying on pallet while pine acclimating prior to being glued down and face nailed

How long does acclimation take?

How long does acclimation take? Asking how long does acclimation take has no honest answer only experience and product knowledge. Acclimation, sometimes called conditioning, is the process of allowing wood to reach its equilibrium moisture content (EMC) within “normal living conditions.” It is also one of the most important steps of hardwood floor installation. How long does acclimation take? My installer said 2 weeks! How long does acclimation take? Acclimation is not about time but [...]

The eco-friendly floor

Green, eco-friendly floors are about longevity Our company offers homeowners the power to choose an investment versus a product. The difference? An investment increases in value when a product is designed to wear out and then replaced. One outlives the house, the others on average, about 7 years. So I ask, which is the green floor? But wait don't you cut down trees to get real wood? Yes, once and it does not involved any [...]

12 Feb

Sustainable Timber

Misconceptions, Misdirections and Misinformation

Sustainable timber, i.e., timber that has been harvested and replenished which may occur naturally or farmed. ‘Sustainable Forestry’, however, involves more than just planting a tree when you cut one down. Sustainable timber management or forestry means doing no ecological damage to the surrounding environment.

Plant a tree

To those who want to help stop Global Warming- buy a real wood floor and plant a tree.

Healthy, sustainably harvested timber creates forest that become more resistant to wildfire, insects, disease, and the impacts of climate change. Like so many things, the message that the timber industry and sustainable forestry are contributing to climate change has gotten distorted. When you consider the replacement products we use instead of wood, i.e., petroleum-based vinyl, composites, and plastic the eco-friendly product is obviously real wood. What about concrete and steel? “As conservationists, we make building materials that store carbon and require far fewer fossil fuels to produce compared to steel and concrete.” (Forest2Market.com September 2022).

Sustainable timber means green

As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide CO2 from the atmosphere and release oxygen. We learned this in junior high. Not only do trees sequester or hold carbon, but they also put it to use. Great but what happens when you turn this tree into a floor? Wood flooring is about 50 percent carbon by dry weight. Wood products continue to store much of this carbon indefinitely. In the case of buildings, the carbon is kept out of the atmosphere for the lifetime of the structure—or longer if the wood is reclaimed and used to manufacture other products.

Plant more trees

In national parks and designated wilderness areas, the federal government is prohibited by law from sustainably harvesting and replanting trees. According to U.S. Forest Service-Forest Inventory and Analysis data, lands set aside from active forest management – such as parks and wilderness – serve as a carbon source because trees are dying at faster rates than they are growing.

Sustainable timber create floors that last forever

No matter what else you hear while shopping, solid 3/4 floors should outlive the house, i.e., be salvaged one day. On the other hand, all ‘floor covers’ with very few exceptions, everything else ends up in a landfill. Seriously, the bathroom counter-top you see here was produced by a novice salvaged decking.

No clear cutting

To be clear, we are not talking about clear cutting or harvesting non sustainable forest. Anti-forestry activists cling to the flawed assumption that old trees will sequester and store carbon. As if old trees are immortal and should be forever untouched. Not so fast! The science is that younger trees sequester carbon at higher rates than older trees, yes. Even worse, when older trees die, they emit carbon and methane.

Failing to clear dead trees causes wildfires

Conservationists are not to be confused with anti-forestry activists, even though the media often gives them that label. Anti-forestry activists reject Indigenous knowledge and experience that comes from thousands of years of managing forests, while raising millions of dollars to perpetuate the idea that the United States risk deforestation. Far from scarce, many western landscapes, “have overstocked stands with more trees than the forests can support”.

22 Aug

Wood siding and accent walls

Walls and Other

Beadboard, V-Groove and Shiplap wood siding

What is Beadboard? Old-fashioned beadboard cladding consists of individual, generally narrow, boards with a routered “bead” edge on one side and beveled edge on the other. In Louisiana, they called this New Orleans bead board, but it is really the same as the stuff in North Carolina or Montana.

V-Groove Popularity

Today interior designers might tell you that V-groove adds soul to a room. V groove has become so popular a design style has been centered around it, “Shabby Chic”. Compared to bead board V-Groove is less ornate and has “cleaner” lines. This, in my opinion, allows it to work in more modern setting. Painted V-Groove can be used in large spaces, or you can finish it to suit your imagination. See Burnt V Groove.

What is Ship Lap?

Shiplap shiplap boards are joined with an overlapping “rabbet” joint, which usually creates a 90 degree-angled gap in between the boards. At SYP Direct our Shiplap comes in two options; Nickel and Penny. The difference? You guessed it, the width of the “L gap”.

Smooth All Four Sides aka S4S

S4S means no profile smooth all the way around. Our Reclaimed Pine S4S boards can make a great accent wall, and so much more. For more information check out this page and the pictures below.

Burnt V Groove

Tongue and Groove

Tongue and Groove always works for your walls,ceilings and of course, your floors.

17 Feb

Why use VOCs?

Misconceptions, Misdirections and Misinformation

Why Are VOCs Still Used?

What a great question? The answer is that very few of us know they exist in almost everything manufactured for mass merchandising. Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) can be used to produce products and created as biproducts. VOC’s can be harmless; they can be dangerous but the majority of just the “unknown” as is not enough information to make a determination. Paint, wood-finishing products, lacquers, hydraulic fluids, petroleum fuels, adhesives, pesticides, cleaning supplies, building materials, furniture, and electronic equipment such as printers all contain VOC’s.

The footprint of fake wood

If you listen to most “enviromental” warriors, logging and timber is the equivilent of fossil fuels when accessing a carbon footprint. This is ridiculous. Managed timber doesn’t lend itself to wildfires and real wood doesn’t end up in the landfill. If every house only had one floor over its lifetime, how many tear out and installations would that save, the house? Real wood floors will outlive your house. In fact, one day they will be reclaimed or salvaged as they are reinvented a century later. Try that with laminate.

Real is good

Wide plank solid real wood floor finished tinted oils

'Pure' on CHP

Caribbean heart pine with monocoat pure finish — Moncoat "Pure"

Do not blame others

The manufacturing process no longer occurs in the United States and there is no possible way to regulate the number of vendors sending VOCs into the U.S. However, do not blame the countries doing the manufacturing because they are not the sellers! Consumers depend on the manufacturers to protect their health, first and foremost. Unfortunately, a large majority of retailers continue to use VOCs despite their harmful effects. Why do they continue to use VOCs? Demand for cheap goods always gets the blame, and while it plays a part; that demand was created by the cheap manufacturing processes not vice versa.

Real wood flooring becomes antique reclaimed

16 Feb

Real equals green

Wood Floor Shopping

Salvaged pine decking using skins 1/2 thick

25 Mar

Harmful chemicals or VOC’s

Finish and Install

Eco-Friendly

Engineered versus solid wood Floors

Searching the internet provides ads in disguise

Solid versus engineered

Stop listening to them

Baseball, Apple Pie and Southern Pine

Box Store Pine Floors

Dog Friendly

How long does acclimation take?

The eco-friendly floor

Sustainable Timber

Plant a tree

Sustainable timber means green

Sustainable timber create floors that last forever

No clear cutting

Failing to clear dead trees causes wildfires

Wood siding and accent walls

V-Groove Popularity

What is Ship Lap?

Smooth All Four Sides aka S4S

Burnt V Groove

Tongue and Groove

Why use VOCs?

Why Are VOCs Still Used?

The footprint of fake wood

Real is good

'Pure' on CHP

Real equals green

What other floors are green, aka eco-friendly?

Reclaim for Green

The King of Green Finishes

Monocoat Finished New Heart Pine

Any floor you buy that is not 100% real will end up in a landfill. A real floor will be salvaged one day when your house falls down- there is no comparison.

Make new look old

LVT- The new Carpet

Harmful chemicals or VOC’s

Why Are VOCs Still Used?

What are volatile organic chemicals?

Environmental Impact LVT and Laminate

Real wood is Green

Monocoat by Rubio