Knowing when it is the right moment to replace your flooring can be difficult. If you renovate too early, you may be missing out on life that your flooring still has. Waiting too long will make you unhappy with your space and may even lead to a more expensive replacement job. Here are four signs that it is time to renovate your home and install a new floor.
1. Noticeable Gapping
It may be time to replace your flooring when you can see visible gaps between the planks. Though this may be possible to repair, it is almost always a sign of aging flooring. You will most often see gapping in laminate flooring, and occasionally older vinyl flooring.
New materials are made with much better interlocking systems, and the chance of a newer floor having gaps between the planks is much much lower.
If you do see gaps in your floor, and you wait to get it replaced, you may end up seeing chipping or lifting at the edges of the planks. Once this starts to happen, it is almost impossible to repair.
If gapping starts to happen to your flooring, it is best to call a professional to assess the state of the floor to decide if it really does need to be replaced.
2. Warped Planks
Another sure sign that you need to think about renovating is warped planks.
Warping usually only happens to older style hardwood floors, since they require a lot of special maintenance and a controlled humidity environment. When a home with hardwood gets too humid or suffers water damage, warping is nearly inevitable.
If you are seeing any warped planks in your flooring, you can be sure that it is time to go with something newer. If you are still set on the look and feel of a hardwood floor, newer engineered hardwood does not require as much rigorous maintenance as the solid hardwoods of the pervious generation. This is especially great for the climate that we have here in Alberta.
3. Outdated Appearance
If any one trait should be considered a sign that you need to replace your flooring, it is the visual age of the material.
If your flooring looks older than your parents, it may be time to upgrade. Even if you are going for a retro-look for your home décor, that doesn’t mean you need to suffer with the outdated quality of your existing floor.
If you aren’t sure if your flooring is too old, try to look up the same style that you have, and find out what year it became popular. If it was popular more than 10-15 years ago, it may be time to renovate.
Most flooring nowadays has a warranty of 15-25 years for residential use – older materials did not have such a long life ahead of them when they were made.
4. Scratches or Sun Damage
Any flooring that was made longer than fifteen years ago does not have the same durability as flooring that is made today. So much technology has been invented and perfected in that time, and a lot of it has to do with the product’s overall durability.
Sun damage and scratches are common issues with older flooring, and are a sure sign that replacement is warranted. As much as we may like it to be fixable, it is not.
When you use a newer flooring material in your home, you can rest easy knowing that you will never see it fade or become dull due to the sun. Most decent flooring products these days are made to last, and their resilient wear-layers do most of the work in prolonging its lifetime.
With the durable wear layer comes greater scratch resistance – so great, in fact, that people with pets such as large dogs often choose a modern vinyl or laminate flooring when doing renovations.
Conclusion
Now that you know a few signs that it is time to replace your old and worn-out flooring, you can come to us and be confident that you know what you are looking for. The only thing you need to do now, is pick colours!
