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Michael Reimer

Visit Our Showroom

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For those who haven’t visited our new showroom, you may be unaware of how much of Estes Park history we have hanging as our walls.

We all know that during the time of the flood, the town was building the new Events Center at the Fairgrounds. They needed to demolish some of the old stables in order to make way for the new building. Being the recycler that Garth is, he asked to be able to recycle the barn and use the materials in the new showroom. The town was thrilled to be able to recycle the old barns.

Now our walls have the stall doors as the wainscot and the corrugated metal of the barn roof as the rest of our walls. Come in and see! It looks great!

Park Flooring is located at 860 Dunraven Street in Estes Park, Colorado.

Our showroom is open:

  • Monday – Friday 9 am-4 pm
  • Weekends by appointment only

Call us with any questions, 970-577-9855.

Know Your Supplier

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The recent unveiling by 60 Minutes of Lumber Liquidators’ formaldehyde and illegal lumbering issues is a good reason to know your suppliers.

Here at Park Flooring, we believe all our wood flooring is from U.S. suppliers using legal wood and manufacturing.

This is a good  video and article about the 60 minute expose: Whistle Blower Whitney Tilson talks about 60 Minutes’ expose on Lumber Liquidators

Somerset Hardwood – Why Do We Sell This Brand?

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I’m sure there are times when you’ve walked into a store and wondered why they chose the brands they have displayed.  Somerset Hardwoods is  second in a series on the brands we’re displaying, so you will know our thoughts on the products displayed at Park Flooring.

Since Estes Park is a small town, obviously, the number one reason we chose the brands displayed is customer satisfaction. We really don’t want call backs, and word gets around too fast in a small town 🙂 Our installers are local and have great reputations, as well.

One of the beautiful pre-finished solid and engineered hardwood flooring lines we carry at Park Flooring in Estes Park, CO, is the Somerset line. Somerset is a “green” made in the USA product.

All Somerset flooring is manufactured in the USA in the heart Appalachian country. They have tripled their size in the last 14 years due to customer satisfaction. They employ many dedicated, hard-working US employees- many of whom have been with the company since it started. They employ a full-time forestry staff to sustainably manage the forests they own- all within a 150-mile radius of the manufacturing facility. The woods used in their flooring are: maple, oak, and hickory.

Park Flooring is proud to display and sell pre-finished solid and engineered hardwood flooring for such an environmentally responsible company. They have a “waste not” philosophy of using every part of the tree.  Excess wood fiber gets used to fuel their manufacturing plants or the make the Somerset Wood Pellet bio fuel. Somerset manufactures 1/2″ engineered flooring with a 3 mm (!!) thick wear layer that is cut from a block of Appalachian hardwood. Lumber that would produce just one 3/4″ solid piece of flooring (which they also manufacture) now produces four to five solid sawn wear layers for the engineered flooring.

This flooring is primarily a smooth finished traditional look with various stains. They do not have hand-scraped or distressed products. However, the Appalachian Oak flooring does come in a lightly textured surface, while the Appalachian hickory and maple are considered “exotic” North American species. The variations in grain and color, natural knots and markings give these floors a beautiful character.

Come see the Somerset line in the showroom, or visit their website.

Florida Tile- Why Do We Sell This Brand?

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I’m sure there are times when you’ve walked into a store and wondered why they chose the brands they have displayed.  We’ll be running a series on the brands we’re displaying, so you will know our thoughts on the products displayed at Park Flooring. Since Estes Park is a small town, obviously, the number one reason we chose the brands displayed is customer satisfaction. We really don’t want call backs, and word gets around too fast in a small town 🙂 Our installers are local and have great reputations, as well.

Our primary tile company that we display is Florida Tile. Florida is an entirely “made in the USA” company. This is important because the quality assurance is what we would expect in this country. A typical problem with inexpensive imported tile is the gauge. This is the thickness of each tile. If the gauge isn’t uniform, different sides of the tile will  sit at different heights. This makes for stubbed toes. Ouch! All of Florida Tile’s different styles of tiles are evenly gauged.

Also, if the tile isn’t exactly square, not only is it a tile installers worst nightmare, lining up the grout lines becomes impossible.  For those of you who have seen those handy spacers for the grout lines, without square tiles, those spacers are useless and you need to count on the good eye of your installer- who will then charge you considerably more for having to put up with that.  We can count on Florida Tile for having equally squared tiles. Even if it’s 12″x 18″, all of the tiles will be the same size.

Florida Tile is an entirely porcelain company now. Being that it’s US made, we know the formulation of the porcelain and that it doesn’t include any toxic fillers. Their high definition photography of slate, travertine, limestone, and other stones is superb. When you buy a slate look tile, there is over 100 pieces before you get a repeat. The end result is quite natural looking. Even their wood-look is quite natural looking. You can check it out for yourself at The Inkwell & Brew downtown. These are great for parquet patterns as they’re all equal “short board” size (if they were wood).

Another big benefit of Florida Tile is that since you can find this brand throughout the country, you can choose the tile in Houston and know it will be the same in Estes Park. The dye lot may change a little, but not by much. Also, should you run out of tiles or decide at a later date to tile another room to match, this company is large enough that we can typically find more.

If you would like to view Florida Tile’s selection of tiles, click here.

LUV RUGS

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Well, the love bug bit at Park Flooring. We decided in honor of Valentine’s Day and all the local lovebirds, that we’d put together some Luv Rugs. One is a deep red plush 3×4 and the other is a luxurious 3×4 shag in deep red with white and gold other shaggy parts. According to Tuftex, shag is very hot right now and one of their best sellers. We think it looks great as an area rug; but of course, would be happy to install it in whatever room(s) you’d like. We do custom binding, so we can cut and bind an area rug any size for you. This would definitely be a unique gift for your Valentine.

The Luv Rug Plush - $49.95
The Luv Rug Plush – $49.95
The Luv Rug Shag - $99.95
The Luv Rug Shag – $99.95

 

 

What to Look For in Hardwood Flooring

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Besides the beauty of having a hardwood floor in your home, a hardwood floor adds actual value to a home. The amount of value depends on the species of wood used, the quality (length of boards, finish and acclimation) and the installation.

A truly authentic wood floor will be primarily long boards with a few short boards here and there. When a tree grows, it only grows a certain height. The lumber mills will cut the tree into 10 foot lengths and the left-overs will be in a separate pile. The 10 foot lengths are then sawn and planed into boards, have the tongue and groove profiled and then are readied for the finishing process. Solid hardwood will be finished into primarily 8 foot lengths, and engineered flooring is finished into primarily 6 foots lengths. Most of these floors will have random lengths varying from 4 to 8 feet with some upscale custom mills providing some 10’ lengths.

All those smaller than 4 foot lengths are still sawn into boards and finished, but are sold off significantly less expensively than the “regular” boards. Being that the short boards are sold inexpensively, they also are not cured to only a 6% water content before being packaged. In this mountain climate you need to be very aware of the water content when looking at hardwoods, as well as knowing what percentage of the bundles are short boards. The less expensive the bundle/carton of wood is, the more chance that you’ll be getting primarily short boards. If you are putting in a parquet floor design, or have a very small room that would be fine. Otherwise, it looks non-authentic and inexpensive, which would certainly void adding actual value to your home.

When the raw board are sawn into sizes for engineered wood, they can be straight cut or rotary peeled-like an orange. When they are rotary peeled, the veneer is much thinner and is more apt to de-laminate due to it’s natural curl.

So rest assured that when you shop for a hardwood floor here at Park Flooring that we will not even show you a product that is primarily short boards or any rotary peeled engineered flooring. We enjoy being able to warranty our work and have worked with enough products to only show you what will hold up beautifully for many years to come.

How To Protect Your Wood Floor from Your Christmas Tree

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Real pines trees for Christmas bring the wonderful fragrance of the holidays into your home. But watering them can create many problems for a wood floor should you accidentally spill. Watering is always a challenge with the skirt hiding your view and all the presents in the way. Not to mention the cat. For safety reasons, you need to water your tree in order to not make kindle out of it. But unattended water on a hardwood floor will cause the wood to swell, cup and stain.

We, at Park Flooring, love to buff and recoat hardwood floors whenever you need (at least once every 5 years- depending on traffic); but why rush things at Christmas? So here’s our tips:

  • Be sure you can see under and around the tree stand  when you water. Should you spill, you’ll be able to see where to wipe it up.
  • It’s best not to use anything under your tree stand. The reason is that water can be trapped under a piece of plastic and hold the water underneath. Should you use a piece of fabric  or newspaper that would act like a sponge and hold the water, you’ll have the same problem. You may even get some interesting colored stains.
  • At some garden centers, you may be able to pick up a large plastic garden container tray that’s larger than your tree stand. So long as you don’t get water on the outside of this, it should capture all your spills.

All of us at Park Flooring wish you a very Merry Christmas on whatever type of flooring you have! We’ll be here in the New Year to help you out with your new flooring needs.