Bamboo Hardwoods

I talked on the phone and exchanged a few emails with this company and like them a lot so far. Very informative and I like their web site too. We even decided to visit their showroom today and am still very impressed. The sales guy knew who I was and took the time to explain their products and what makes bamboo a good option. He even went into what makes them different from their competitors when I asked him to be honest. Unlike some of the other stores I visited ... he didn't feel it necessary to bad talk the competition in order to make their product seem better. I think Empire was the worst about this! The Bamboo Floors guy did mention some negatives about other companies but only after I brought them up and again I didn't get the feeling that he was trash talking them but it was more like a friendly warning to be cautious.

Now the true test is to bring some samples home and see how I feel. We were initially drawn to the vertical natural style since we thought it would be the most neutral with our furnishings. Bamboo generally comes in two varieties -- horizontal or vertical grain -- and two colors -- natural and carbonized. Basically, the bamboo is cut into thin strips and then laid down either horizontally or vertically, glued together and milled like hardwood planks to get the "boards". With horizontal grain, you see wider (maybe 1cm?) stripes and darker tones where the "knots" of the bamboo are. The vertical grain has much thinner (maybe 0.5cm?) stripes and the knots are harder to see. We not only liked the look of vertical natural but we discovered that it is slightly harder than the horizontal grain and even more harder than the carbonized (a coffee/caramel color) style. We are very concerned about durability because we have a dog and a kid and we know they will be hard on the floors.

Then we get introduced to strand woven bamboo. It is more than two times harder than all the other versions! It is made by shredding the bamboo into strands and combining them with a glue/resin mixture to create boards. The pattern more closely resembles a wood grain and the color is a blend between natural and carbonized. That was one of our biggest issues with the bamboo ... natural was almost too blond/pale and the carbonized was almost too dark. This strand woven seems to be between the two colors. Perfect!

We were also impressed with BHW's "tropical" species of bamboo which is significantly harder than the standard Moso variety that most bamboo floors are made from. I also like the different color variations it had and if I didn't love the strand woven, this would have been our second choice. I also liked that BHW has an exclusive contract to harvest this variety of bamboo because they helped create it. Sweet.

Now they need to come to our house and measure and get the estimate closer to what we actually want. When I spoke to them initially, I gave them 100sqft more than we are actually covering and with a slightly less expensive material. Even so, their quote was on the lower end from the other two companies and if I compared the quote to the one store that had Teragren which I felt was almost identical to BHW ... then the quote was at least $2k less! I am excited to see what they can do for us!

~Monica~