Parquet Flooring – A Flooring Type That Has Withstood the Test of Time
Parquet flooring is essentially composed of a patterned wood inlay used to cover base floors. The flooring type is made by interlocking layers of wood in different design and decoration forms.
A very old style of flooring, parquet flooring used to be installed with certain varieties of wood materials in the past. The wood used normally included walnut, pine, maple, cherry, lime and oak. On occasions, mahogany and other hardwood materials from tropical countries would be used for parquet flooring. Different types of parquet flooring would be used in the past. The usual geometric shapes that you can see in the patterns on parquet flooring are triangles, squares and lozenges. You can also use curved and angular patterns in parquet flooring.
In modern times, you can get to choose parquet flooring in any of the three kinds - solid parquet flooring, veneer parquet flooring and laminate flooring.
In the solid parquet flooring, the wood that is used for inlaying patterns onto the floor is made entirely of actual wood. Typically, the solid parquet flooring extends up to 1.5 cm from the base floor. You can sand the solid parquet flooring over as and when you feel your floor needs to look polished.
In the veneer parquet flooring, a more inexpensive wood such as plywood is layered on the base floor, on top of which a solid layer of wood is fixed. The solid wood layer is around 5 mm thick and you can the layer for a polishing effect. You need to keep in mind that in veneer parquet flooring, sanding should not be of a heavy or hard type.
In the laminate parquet flooring, the base floor is covered with plywood. On the surface of the plywood, a layer of imitation wood is fixed and stuck with adhesives. Finally, a thin layer of transparent protective material is applied on this flooring material. This type of flooring is accepted as being the lowest in price among all types of parquet flooring. Now, due to the inferior quality of the flooring material that is used, this kind of flooring gets fragmented and breaks up. Then, you will need to remove the entire flooring and lay a completely new floor.
You can see examples of well-laid and elaborately designed parquet flooring installed quite sometime ago, with appearances that often belie how old they are.