Nothing about your dream kitchen should be ordinary—that includes your cabinets and shelves. Upgrading your cabinetry and shelving is crucial when taking your kitchen’s luxury and style to the next level.
When it comes to flooring options for your home, there are clearly many choices available. While some homeowners prefer the soft feel of carpet, or the look of tile, most homeowners choose hardwood flooring. Hardwood flooring is not only the easiest to maintain, but it is also the most versatile and is suitable for almost every room in your house.
Two types of hardwood flooring installed today are: pre-finished hardwood and engineered hardwood.
Pre-finished hardwood is the most common type of wood flooring. It is milled from a single piece of hardwood depending on which type of wood you are using. When the factory applies the finish treatment to the wood, they are able to use very powerful chemical sealers, which are applied by a commercial processes not available to on site installers.Typically this consists of aluminum oxide crystals embedded in a UV cured urethane coat. While site applied finishes warranty for 3 – 5 years, factory applied treatments will often have warranties of 5 – 25 years or more. The only downside to solid wood flooring is that it expands and contracts with changes in your home’s relative humidity. However this is easily compensated for by leaving an expansion gap between the floor and the wall, which is then usually covered by base molding.
Engineered hardwood flooring is quite different than regular wood flooring and is more popular especially in areas like New York where temperature and humidity are constantly changing. Contrary to pre-finished wood, engineered wood flooring is comprised of three to twelve layers of hardwood. Each layer is stacked in a cross-grain configuration and bonded together under heat and pressure. As a result, engineered wood flooring is less likely to be affected by changes in humidity and can be installed in all levels of the home. Engineered wood floors are also generally easier and less expensive to install.
Because of these properties, engineered wood flooring is a great option to lay over radiant heat if wood is your choice of flooring. While tile flooring can crack and become displaced due to the heat produced by radiant heat, engineered wood can better sustain the heat and moisture.
Below you can see the difference between the two types of hardwood flooring:
Here is a recent radiant heat project that is nearing completion in Larchmont, NY. These homeowners decided to install radiant heat flooring in their kitchen and lay engineered hardwood flooring over:
Learn more about our flooring installation, refinishing and restoration services here.
I was thinking about home remodeling today and realized that some of our most beautiful remodeling projects included elements of custom carpentry. Custom woodwork brings a room to life like nothing else can. You simply can’t buy that kind of workmanship from your local hardware. As I flip through our online portfolio and the custom carpentry gallery, I’m impressed all over again by the imagination of our clients and the talent of our in-house carpenters.
Kitchen Remodel with Custom Cabinets
Custom kitchen cabinets lost popularity with the big McMansion boom. Why purchase more expensive, albeit better quality, cabinetry when you could mass produce homes using materials easily available from the local hardware or home store? Today’s builders and homeowners are going back to custom elements like kitchen cabinets when remodeling an existing kitchen or building a new custom home.
Wine Cellar Design and Build with Custom Elements
Not every home houses a wine cellar. I love working on custom wine cellars because of the custom woodwork involved. All wine connoisseurs have two things in common – a love of wine and high quality workmanship. Some of the wine cellars we’ve built have display space for thousands of bottles while others are more intimate.
Built-in Bookshelves
Built-in bookshelves are another design element that lost popularity during the big building phase. There was no reason to take your time to build custom elements when you had potential homeowners hanging on your every move. Now, however, home buyers are on the lookout for specialty items such as custom woodwork.
Built-to-Fit Storage
Custom designed, built-to-fit storage is quickly gaining popularity in today’s housing market. Many homes are built with odd angles throughout the home. These spaces, like the space below the staircase, may be used for storage, bookshelves, or even pet houses.
Custom closets offer homeowners the ability to store more clothing more efficiently than a standard closet with only hanging space. Closet customization isn’t difficult at all when you stand back and look for the opportunity to build custom storage options based on the homeowner’s use of the closet. Adding shelves and drawer space, and expanding hanging space offers the homeowner a much more usable closet area.
Custom Porch Posts
Anyone can go to the local home store to buy porch railing, there’s nothing special about it. Simply install it, paint it, and you’re good to go. Custom porch railing, on the other hand, draws immediate attention because other homeowners stop to take a good look.
Custom Woodwork Throughout the Home
Don’t settle for ordinary when you can shoot for extraordinary. Yes, you can go to your local home store and purchase a pressboard bookshelf system that will serve a function. Next year you can go to the same store and buy a similar bookshelf because the last one fell apart under the load of books and breakables. Oops.
Custom woodwork built by Gerety’s master carpenters is high quality and built to last a lifetime. We don’t skimp on materials or use cheap alternatives to save money. We build, for example, a bed frame or a desk that will grow with your child through childhood, teen years, and into adulthood. We focus on quality workmanship that can eventually become an heirloom piece, passed from generation to generation.
