Wood floors are a great way into achieve the perfect look for just about any interior design. Whether you want to recreate the rustic feel of a log cabin or want to embody elegance, the secret is in picking the right wood and stain. Your local hardwood contractors will have the knowledge and selection to help you choose the right materials to match your lifestyle and decorating goals. From mahogany stain to cherry, from pine wood planks to birch, your local professionals will know how to make your rooms look their best without sacrificing functionality.

There are more factors besides great looks that make hardwood floor installation a wise choice. Hardwood floors have the benefit of being:

• Hypoallergenic- Unlike carpets, hardwood floors do not trap dirt, pollen, dust, and other allergens that can make you or family members sick.
• Easy to clean- Cleaning hardwood floors is as simple as running a mop or broom over the surface. The floor’s sealing finish helps protect against moisture and stains, keeping wood floors looking great with minimal effort.
• Durable- Hardwood floors are built to withstand heavy foot traffic, pets, furniture, and other various daily demands.
• Long-lasting- The durability of this great flooring option allows it to last year after year with little-to-no upkeep. And when your hardwood flooring does start to show its age, it can be refinished rather than having to be replaced like other types of floor materials.

Although hardwood floors are known for their ability to withstand a great deal of use and abuse, sometimes rough treatment or advanced age can cause hardwood floors to develop damage such as nicks, gouges, and scratches. But your floor can be rid of these unsightly marks with quality hardwood floor refinishing. Using dustless refinishing tools and quality sealant and staining products, your hardwood floor professional will have the floor looking like new again. Choosing to hire professional floor re-finishers ensures that your floor will be sanded evenly, that no dust or debris will become trapped under the sealant (which can cause undesirable roughness), and that every corner and cranny of your floor will be reached. Amateur attempts to refinish a floor could be disastrous and irreversible. Avoid disaster and call the experts.

Hardwood floors are a classic choice for a reason. Call your local hardwood floor contractors today for more information on hardwood floor installation and refinishing.

Does your home have curling or missing shingles? Is your roof starting to develop leaks? Are you 16 years into a 15-year roof? When the time comes to replace your roof, be sure to ask your roofers about architectural shingles. Also known as dimensional shingles, this type of roof can provide great benefits for your home. Although they were first introduced in the 1970s, it’s only in the last decade that these asphalt shingles have become increasingly popular. But with their beautiful appearance and durable performance it’s not hard to see why!

Appearance

While traditional three-tab asphalt shingles provide a flat, smooth appearance, architectural shingles bring your home a more textured appearance somewhat similar to a cedar shake roof. That’s because dimensional shingles have a raised profile that offers a high-end, striking contour line to any roof. Available in a full palette of colors just like three-tab shingles, architectural shingles are a beautiful complement to any style home.

Durability

But even better than great looks, dimensional shingles also provide superior durability and performance to protect your home better and longer than regular three-tab shingles. There are numerous reasons for this difference. For starters, architectural shingles are constructed with a heavier base than most traditional asphalt shingles. Then, additional layers of roof material are built up on the base to create the textured, cedar-shake look iconic of architectural shingles. This design means that many dimensional shingles can easily withstand winds up to 120 mph. And all shingles with this new, high-tech design are highly resistant to curling and other types of damage and deterioration. For a vivid illustration of the differences between three-tab and architectural shingles, ask your roofing contractors to show you examples of both side-by-side—and the contrasts will be more than obvious. For better performance, choose the more substantial shingle!

So if you’ve noticed that your home is in need of roof replacement, don’t just fall back on using old-school three-tab shingles for your new roof. Architectural shingles can provide you with the exquisite appearance and long-lasting durability your home deserves. Contact your local roofing contractor today to learn more.

Professional floor cleaning means more than just restoring your tired carpets, tiles, and hardwood to their rightful beauty and luster. It can also dislodge potentially harmful contaminants from your home while removing unsightly scratches, gouges, and other damage. Floor cleaning brings beauty and health for everyone to enjoy.

Sometimes it takes a little extra time, effort, and elbow grease to keep your floors free of dirt and debris to make certain they’re looking their best. Whether your carpet is looking dingy after a parade of muddy shoes traipsed through your living room or your beautiful cherry hardwood floor needs expert help to remove unsightly gouges, professional floor cleaning and repair services are the solution for complete, satisfactory cleaning and restoration. Your local floor installation and repair experts should be available to perform a variety of floor care tasks, including:

• Carpet cleaning - Did you know that your carpet could be harboring contaminants such as dust, pollen, mold spores, dander, bacteria, and dust mites? You don’t want to let your children play on top of a surface like that! Professional carpet cleaning services can pull up even the most deeply embedded contaminants from carpet fibers and restore your carpet to the attractive, fresh appearance you enjoyed back when they were first installed. The powerful encapsulation method of cleaning ensures that your carpets are cleaned fast, without toxic chemicals or excessive moisture. When you want a stain removed quickly or need your carpets cleaned before the big family reunion, contact your local floor cleaning professionals today.
• Tile and grout cleaning – Carpets aren’t the only floor surface that can trap foreign contaminants. Grime and dirt can also become lodged in the porous, textured surface of your kitchen and bathroom tiles. Without leaving brush marks, swirls, or other damage, your local floor cleaning experts will use professional, efficient tools to not only remove grime from tile and grout, but they can even wax your floors to bring them to a beautiful shine! Your local floor experts should be able to work with many different types of tiles, so it doesn’t matter what type of tile you have in your home or office. When it comes to germs, the last place you want them is your kitchen or bathroom. Call an area professional floor cleaner to learn more about how your floors can be sanitized and beautified.
• Hardwood floor repair - Whether your hardwood floor is cupped due to extreme moisture imbalance or has suffer deep scratching, your hardwood floor repair specialists can ascertain the best approach for erasing the problem and returning your floors to top-notch appearance and safety. From floor tightening to spot scratch repair, no job is too big or too small. Never trip over a buckled floorboard or suffer a splinter from a cracked board again! Hardwood flooring repair can get your floors looking great and performing their best again in no time at all.
• Hardwood floor refinishing – Has your floor lost its luster due to years of wear and tear? Don’t let that gorgeous floor fade into an eyesore. Call your local hardwood flooring refinishing specialist to get the job done right the first time!

Your local floor cleaning experts may also be available to perform services such as upholstery cleaning and floor installations, including laminate floor installation and hardwood floor installation. Don’t put up with dingy, dirty, or damaged floors or home furnishings any longer. When you have a clean home, you and your family are safer from potential health threats and can enjoy attractive floors and furniture. Call your professional floor cleaners today!

Installing hardwood flooring adds beauty and value to any home, but custom hardwood installation can make your house look even better. Get the absolute most out of your home with custom wood flooring!

Whether you’re building a new home or exploring options for a major remodeling project, installing custom wood flooring can put the finishing touch on your space. Offering the elegance of natural wood and the distinctive appearance of one-of-a-kind beauty, custom hardwood flooring installation can create visual interest, emphasize architectural details, and all around make your home look it’s absolute best. While hardwood installation of any kind will add value and beauty to your house, custom wood flooring will take your home’s style to a whole new level!

Custom hardwood flooring is a catchall term for several types of unique wood floor looks. The two most popular options are stencil staining and combining several wood species to create attractive patterns. The more traditional of the two, the latter uses contrasting wood types inlaid into the main wood floor to create borders, patterns, and medallions. Often mixing distinctive woods like cherry or the more exotic purple heart wood with paler woods like oak and maple, custom inlaid wood floors are a permanent, gorgeous way to highlight architectural features like fireplaces and window seats as well as create focal points in foyers, hallways, and other rooms.

Custom staining is an affordable way to get the look of inlaid wood floors for less. This type of custom wood flooring uses stencils and stains to create the appearance of inlaid woods: by essentially painting borders and medallions on a floor that’s made from one type of wood species, you can create the illusion of several wood types. And, in addition to the reduced cost, custom staining also means that if you ever tire of your custom border or medallion, all you have to do is have the floor sanded and refinished and you can start over fresh. (With inlaid floors, you have to tear out the whole floor if you ever want a change!)

No matter what type of custom hardwood floors you choose for your home, they’re sure to add that special finishing touch that sets your home apart from the rest. Take your decor to the next level with custom hardwood flooring installation.

Changing your furnace from oil burning to gas burning is a smart investment in your home–and in the planet. A more affordable fuel source for residential heating, natural gas is also the cleanest of the fossil fuels. That means you can cut your energy bills and polluting emissions all at once. If you’re ready to upgrade your home heating system, contact your local furnace company. These professionals can help with all of your oil to gas conversion needs.

With today’s high fuel costs, a gas furnace can help you save some serious cash. Did you realize it costs around one dollar less to produce 100,000 Btus with a gas furnace than with an oil furnace? It may not sound like much at first, but over the course of the entire fall and winter, that will really add up. In fact, oil to gas conversion can help you save hundreds of dollars in just one year.

But that’s not all you’ll be saving! Gas furnaces can also help you go green. As the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, natural gas creates very little pollution. When you switch from burning oil to burning gas for your residential heating needs, you’ll be greatly reducing the amount of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides your home emits. That means cleaner air and even a cleaner furnace (and no build-up means no need for annual furnace cleanings). For a cleaner, greener home, gas furnaces are the way to go.

Oil to gas conversion is a relatively simple, easy process. Your furnace repair contractor should be able to help with oil furnace to gas furnace conversion from running the necessary plumbing to ensuring your chimney is safe for use with gas. You can either replace the oil burner in your existing furnace with a gas burner, or get an entirely new, energy-efficient gas furnace. But no matter which oil to gas conversion option you choose, you’re sure to save money and help the planet at the same time. Contact your HVAC contractor today to get started!

If your home has been impacted by flooding, chances are your heating equipment has been impacted too. Water heaters, boilers, and furnaces are important appliances to have checked after a flood. However, you can turn your disaster into a great opportunity!

Just when we thought the rain had passed, it turns around and hammers us again. And climate authorities in Boston, Mass. don’t suspect that we’ve seen the end. With the climate rapidly changing, it is suspected that flooding will only increase as the years advance. So where does that leave us? With a lot of water damage!

While people are throwing their saturated sofas and waterlogged wood to the curb, some smart people are calling to get their water heaters, furnaces, and boilers repaired. Furnaces and boilers are especially susceptible to water damage for two reasons: often located in basements and crawl spaces, these appliances are simply more likely to be affected by flood waters. Also, because they have complicated electric and gas valves/controls water can create major issues. Even if the system looks unaffected by water damage, it is vital to have a professional verify that it is in good condition. Often times, corrosion can build up on the valves and controls, which can be hazardous to your furnace and your family. A furnace or boiler with corrosion problems will not run properly, leading to major reliability issues. If the problem is left unchecked, it could even catch fire or explode! If your house has experienced recent flooding, call a licensed furnace company for boiler, water heater, and furnace repairs today. A qualified professional will clean, dry, and service your system, ensuring it will work properly and keep your home safe.

The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute recommends playing it safe by replacing your system, rather than repairing it. A professional water heater, boiler, or furnace repair specialist will be able to make the call for your individual case. If the repairman tells you that you need a new system, it is not necessarily bad news. New boiler installation, water heater installation, or furnace installation can provide you with opportunities to go green and save money on future heating bills. If 10% of the population switched to energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, the result would be the equivalent of taking 1.3 million cars off the road. Help prevent global warming and improve air quality all while maximizing your home’s energy potential and saving money at the same time! Not only will your furnace turn a profit, but the federal government is also offering a tax credit to anyone who installs an eligible energy-efficient product in their home.

If your home has been the victim of flooding, contact a licensed heating professional today for repairs or replacement furnaces and boilers.

As an interior design element, windows and window treatments
are instrumental in drawing the look of room together. Well-designed window
treatments serve form and function and can easily increase the aesthetic and
economic value of your home.

Custom designed window draperies, blinds and shades define
and streamline the appearance of your windows, which makes your home more
attractive and increases its value. These same treatments can also serve to
insulate, both in warm and cool weather, to help offset home energy costs. No
need to choose between looking good and feeling good – both are possible with
the right window treatment choices!

Customized Look

There are as many types of window treatments as there are
windows. When you are ready to update the look of your home with new window
shades, blinds or draperies, home decor experts can help you determine what
the right choice is for your windows, your style and your budget. Most blinds
and shades come in a variety of materials that allow you to customize the
appearance of your window area and
the amount of light you let in. If you want a window covering that preserves
your privacy without blocking all the light, fabric roman
shades are a great choice. If you have a formal room that needs a finishing
touch of elegance, custom window draperies might be what you’re looking for.
Or, you might just want the ease and function of traditional horizontal
blinds to complete the look of a room. Once you’ve decided what you want,
the experts can measure and install your new window treatment and you can begin
enjoying the look and comfort they provide.

Energy Savings

Simply by being in place, most window treatments convey a
certain amount of insulation. However, if you are particularly
energy-conscious, there are a number of options to choose from in order to
maximize the energy-efficiency of your window coverings. Cellular shades, also
known as honeycomb shades, utilize two layers of pleated fabric to form air
pockets that insulate your windows, and your home, from extreme temperatures in
both summer and winter. Blinds that are made of wood, such as wood horizontal
blinds, make use of the natural insulation properties of wood to keep your home
warm or cool as needed. Some vertical
blinds are designed with an air-trapping construction that keeps cold air
out in winter and warm air out in summer. Depending on where you live and where
your windows are located, your window treatment experts can advise you on the
best insulation options for your home.

Being able to tie the look of a room together with the
perfect window treatment is extremely satisfying. When you add to that the
economic and ecological benefits of the insulation provided by window
draperies, blinds and shades, you have a win-win situation.