Timber flooring species

royalblue · Sep 25, 2009 11:44 am

Not that unusual in WA Duke. Yes its not a real hard floor, (and we do have a few gouges here & there from things being dropped) but we love the grain and tone of the sheoak.

We had the kitchen in and lived with concrete floors at first, til the boys got older and we could afford the timber floors. When it came to looking around at all sorts of timbers, we kept coming back to sheoak, so went with it.

Ash.

Dukekamaya · Sep 25, 2009 10:12 pm

I guess there is a much bigger range of east coast hardwoods compared to west coast.
Sheoaks along with silky oak and radiata pine are among the biggest plantation timbers in Oz

guest · Oct 07, 2009 10:45 am

Hi Guys I have attached a photo of my timber flooring. Can any one guess what timber it is?? The reason why am asking you guys to guess is that it come out different to what i thought it should.

JilaMint · Oct 07, 2009 11:00 am

borg

Hi Guys I have attached a photo of my timber flooring. Can any one guess what timber it is?? The reason why am asking you guys to guess is that it come out different to what i thought it should.

That looks amazing.

Blackbutt ? Stringy bark ?

Great to see you are putting the skirting boards on after.

guest · Oct 07, 2009 12:57 pm

Hey Jilamint, thanks.
Yes they are Blackbutt. Not too sure if your monitor shows this but the floors have come are lightish caramel brown colour.

I thought they would come a littlre more blonde.

JilaMint · Oct 07, 2009 1:59 pm

borg

Hey Jilamint, thanks.
Yes they are Blackbutt. Not too sure if your monitor shows this but the floors have come are lightish caramel brown colour.

I thought they would come a littlre more blonde.

You don't seem disappointed though ... do you ?

I like the brown - it adds a real earthy warmth to the room.

guest · Oct 07, 2009 2:01 pm

i am ok with it. Its my partner lol. She choose the timber. She thought it woudl come out lighter.

JilaMint · Oct 07, 2009 4:14 pm

borg

i am ok with it. Its my partner lol. She choose the timber. She thought it woudl come out lighter.

if anything like mine she will probably have to buy new shoes (and possibly a handbag) to match now ::stop::

Dukekamaya · Oct 07, 2009 4:43 pm

Looks pretty spot on for blackbutt. Wrong choice if she wanted a light blonde.

guest · Oct 07, 2009 5:41 pm

Dukekamaya

Looks pretty spot on for blackbutt. Wrong choice if she wanted a light blonde.

she choose the species too lol

D.Embelton · Oct 22, 2009 1:24 pm

Quote:

"There seems to be a lot of conjecture about 'hardness'

Hardness rating: the hardness rating of a timber species is measured by the Janka Test. This is a standard test which measures the penetration into the timber of a common load and projectile. The results relate to a hardness capacity of the material and are expressed in kN. This information is useful where the timber may be subject to potential damage from impacts e.g. a dance floor. There are 2 sets of published figures; one for 'Green' or freshly felled timber and one for seasoned timber - i.e. timber with a moisture content of 12%."

Re Hardness, Bamboo is a great alternative to timber, strand woven bamboo has a Janka ranking of 14.

Tellsth · Jan 28, 2010 10:50 pm

Many of the flooring pictures are not clear. But I can find some of them are cherry flooring, some of them are walnut flooring. Their color difference is obvious.

smitty · Feb 01, 2010 8:18 pm

gday, after 20 years in the building industry laying & seeing most hardwood floors, imo that qld spotted gum floors turn out the best especially when the colours vary a lot. The key is to mix up the colours as much as possible. When done right qld spotted gum floors have a warmth like no other. Have photos but wtf 256kib?

jaelee · Mar 08, 2010 7:03 pm

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I am after opinions on the difference between select grade spotted gum and feature grade.

Have been offered a great price for the feature grade wide boards, but a bit nervous as I haven't seen feature grade layed. Just posted a thread to see if anyone has any pics.

I love the colourings of spotted gum, but don't like a lot of the black veiny lines you get on Marri, would these be the lines you would get on spotted gum feature? Or will it be more knots??

Thanks.

Dukekamaya · Apr 12, 2010 2:15 pm

You will get a fair amount of gum pockets and insect trails etc in feature grade spotty

Bozza · Apr 15, 2010 11:59 pm

ooo we just ordered spotty gum select (boral classic grade) - floor will be laid 27/4-1/5 then will post photos

bladellium · Feb 09, 2011 1:41 pm

Hi All

I am deciding which type of flooring to use for the top floor of our new house. We have been looking at Kempas can anyone give us feed back if this a good timber to use ?

thanks

weshollett · Feb 12, 2011 8:35 pm

Hi guys, I'm new here but I have been a timber floor sales rep for almost 10 years now and it is what I do everyday. I am currently located in Perth WA so my answers are mainly related to the Perth market although I am in touch with Eastern State Reps all the time.

Kempas has been popular as a flooring choice for many years but is definitely now on the decline. It really depends on whether you are after a floating engineered floor, prefinished solid or a solid raw T&G overlay floor. In Perth you will be hard pushed to find any of the large wholesalers running raw T&G Flooring anymore. The days of Malaysian/Indonesian solid floors are really over as more people turn back to Australian species. Its not to say it is not a good material but rather you need to be wary of who is importing it and unfortunately as the US$ gets high there is a lot more importing going on and some questionable quality.

Kempas as a engineered board is a better choice, you can still get 3.2 and 1 strip flooring and the quality generally will be more consistent. I prefer Kempas a couple of years ago when the colours were a mixture of lighter oranges and golden hues but most recent samples of Kempas is rather pink in colour. You will still find good suppliers of Kempas out there but you need to love the colour. If you search around I know first hand you can get many 1 strip Australian species ie Blackbutt, Jarrah, Spotted Gum, Syd Blue at around the same price.

Prefinishing solid kempas (14-19mm) is now becoming available more in the marketplace but feedback from installers is the quality can be a little hit and miss so be wary again.

Are you going to float it/ direct stick it?? being upstairs
If so what type of underlays do you have in mind?
Are you going to be going for Scotia / Skirtings?

Cheers

m_shawry · May 06, 2011 1:01 pm

I used tassie oak as it helped keep my budget down. Wouldn't use it again, it goes yellow over time. Sydney blue gum is my pick. I think thats whats its called.
Also, feature grade and epoxy resin filled is more important that the species.

Broom · May 27, 2011 10:12 pm

Bozza

ooo we just ordered spotty gum select (boral classic grade) - floor will be laid 27/4-1/5 then will post photos

Looking forward to seeing those pics, we've selected the same, we're still getting through the boring paperwork stage of our build so our floors are a long way off

although it is one of the features I'm most looking forward to seeing!