In-Depth Review of Bella Hardwood Flooring

We've now completed two rooms with the Ash and Mesquite combination, so I feel somewhat qualified to offer up a review of the Bella hardwood products we used for these rooms.

Bella hardwood is available, to my knowledge, only through Lumber Liquidators. The ash and Brazilian mesquite we used were both solid hardwood, 3/4" thickness, tongue-and-groove flooring that was pre-finished.

Every pre-finished hardwood product I'm aware of has a small bevel on each finished edge. This bevel does a few things:

· It prevents the applied finish from pooling at the edge of the board, resulting in a more consistent finish and fewer drip-overs that might interfere with the fit of the next board.

· It helps to blur the fit between two boards just a little bit. When you sand an unfinished floor, the sanding process tends to help fill in small gaps between boards, or just make them disappear. Since this doesn't happen with pre-finished flooring, the bevel creates an illusion that everything has been nailed in tightly.

· It masks any height difference between boards. Again, with unfinished flooring, this is solved by sanding everything down once you’ve finished installing. Since this step doesn’t happen, the bevels prevent a sharp transition between boards and help keep the overall surface feeling smooth to your feet.

The bevel on the ash and mesquite was, overall, pretty consistent, and not any larger than it needed to be. I installed some bamboo flooring (also a Lumber Liquidators product) a few years ago where the bevel was fairly prominent. The large bevel actually made the flooring look like none of it was nailed together tightly. Additionally, the larger the bevel, the more dust it can trap, so it makes the floor harder to keep clean.

The tongues and grooves on the two different woods did not match up exactly with each other; the sales guy told me this would likely happen, so it wasn’t a big surprise. Additionally, the mesquite averaged about 0.02” thinner than the ash did, so even after adjusting for tongue / groove differences using the table saw, I had an unavoidable step at every transition between woods.

Joints between similar woods (ash-to-ash, etc.) were pretty consistent, though not perfect every time. Seeing some other pre-finished hardwood installed at a friend’s house, I believe that for the Bella hardwood, either the overall board thickness or the tongue and groove milling process is not as consistent as competitors might be. I don’t have any measurements to back this up, just observations with my eyes and toes. Still, I think that my floors feel flat enough not to notice the unevenness unless I’m really paying attention.

Overall board length was okay, I guess. Not having had a lot of experience with other manufacturers, I can’t really make too much of a comparison. Boxes were 7 ft in length. In each box of roughly 20 sqft, there were probably 5 or 6 full-length pieces. The next longest common length was around 5 ft, then more or less evenly distributed down to 3 ft. There were several short boards in each box (less than 2 ft). At first, I thought that this seemed excessive, but there are many places where the short boards come in handy. I also took a closer look at the red oak floor in my kitchen that was installed 20+ years ago, and realized that there were many short boards utilized in it as well. I have heard a rule of thumb that to have the “strongest” floor, the butt-end joints between flooring boards should be staggered by at least 6-8 inches between courses. Spreading out the butt-end joints also makes the floor look better. Given the distribution of lengths I got out of the flooring, this would have been difficult and time-consuming to arrange. I allowed for joints to be perhaps as close as 4 inches apart between adjacent courses, and didn’t have too much trouble finding boards of the right length to fit.

Over the course of two rooms, I made two separate orders of each type of flooring, separated by about two months in time. I found that the two different orders of ash blended together well; I didn’t see any discernable difference between the two groups. Variability between and within boxes was also consistent. I still believe that the best practice is to have at least a few boxes of flooring open at any given time, and to take from each box as you lay out the floor to mix them up. Ash has a fairly variable appearance to begin with, so I’m not sure if I would have noticed a difference if I hadn’t mixed boxes while installing.

Mesquite is less variable in appearance, though, and I am glad that I mixed those boxes. One box had, on average, slightly lighter pieces than the rest. Even within boxes, there was a pretty big difference between the lightest and darkest boards. By having these all out in front of me, I was able to avoid large areas of only light, only dark, etc.

Boards from both species were, on the whole, pretty straight. Some were bowed a little (when set down on the floor, they didn’t sit flat), but that isn’t too hard to deal with. I didn’t have any excessively crowned or twisted boards. I estimate that I had maybe 2 or 3 “dud” boards in each box. I discarded boards where there was any blemish on the surface finish (obviously), the tongue was incomplete for the majority of the length of the board (which would potentially keep the next board from fitting in tightly), or where there was any splitting (could leads to creaks or could split nastily when nailed). After finishing roughly 280 sqft of flooring, I had about 2/3 of a box of duds (guess 14 sqft, for a scrap rate of roughly 5%). In many cases, only part of the board was defective, and one end could have been used in a fit against a wall, etc. but I had ordered enough initially that I didn’t need to “dumpster dive.”

So, there you have it. I was satisfied enough with the flooring that I bought it a second time, and I will buy it a third time when it comes to finishing the living room.

Finished the Floor

December 5, 2009

I measured all of the border corners out so that the last course of ash would

be ripped just shy of the 2 1/4" width.

Better to have to cut the last course by just a little than to have to stretch it by just a little. As it was, I shaved about 1/16" off the groove side, which was little enough that I didn't need to increase the depth of the groove at all. This made for a relatively easy cut.

Once that last course of ash was placed

, the rest of the mesquite border went into place just like the previous courses, with the exception that I was now running into the wall. Once the flooring nailer didn't fit anymore, I went back to the previous method of using the finish nailer and various methods of prying, praying, and cussing to nail the last courses in place. Once I had to start face-nailing the boards, I tried to put the nails in the most strategic locations to hide the marks.

Finished floor! Now just the baseboards and door trim remain. We haven't decided what those will look like yet.

Progress on Flooring

Thanksgiving 2009
Once the border was laid out and I got a little ways away from the wall, I could begin using the flooring nailer, and things started going fast.  I was hoping to get halfway through the floor by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  By Saturday night, we were almost finished with the whole thing.

The flooring nailer was truly a pleasant experience.  The force with which it could nail boards together far exceeded my ability to push / pry boards together and hit them with my finish nailer, as I had to do for the first few rows until I got far enough away from the wall.  I was able to keep the boards together with the finish nailer, but only with one person prying / pushing / cussing and another person nailing.  Needless to say, having one person nailing and another person laying out rows made things go much faster.  At this point, installing the flooring began to resemble playing a game of Whack-a-Mole.

I could definitely supply more prying / pushing / cussing force, so my helper was the one who was nailing.  She was pretty good at picking out boards, though.
This picture was taken only a couple of hours after the previous one, so you can see that despite my obvious divided attention, I was making progress relatively quickly.  Because of the border and orientation in which the tongue-and-groove was cut on these boards, I had to chop the tongue off each end that butted into the border by the cabinets and turn that end into a groove.  Then, on the other side of the row, once I got to the border, I had to cut the tongue side of another board off and custom-fit it to length between the next-to-last board of the row and the border by the French doors.  In addition to these cuts, I had to make an adjustment to either the tongue of one board or the groove of another any time the mesquite and ash came together, because the mesquite was about 0.02" thinner than the ash, and their milling was different enough that the mesquite would get pushed even further under the ash if no compensating cuts were made.  Otherwise, I could have gone even faster.

Getting the piano onto finished floor was a momentous achievement.  You see that the Pepto-colored carpet came to good use once again.  I also used some 18-ish inch wide strips of the carpet to roll the piano over the new floor without creating indentations.  We're currently searching for a rug that will both go under the piano and supply enough extra length to safely accommodate the bench.

Once we had the piano moved, I had my helpers come in and make me a few more reference lines to make sure that everything was going in straight.  Actually, it was at about this point that I had to measure and snap a line that would be where the border must go.  The goal was to push the mesquite border out to just where it needed to go so that it left just barely short of a full width of ash to close it out.  The strips were 2 1/4" wide, and I measured it out to make the last row 2 1/8".

Here's the side of the border closest to the cabinets completed.  Each one of those strips was painstakingly measured and fitted before nailing it in.  Notice the chalkline that marks the last row of mesquite.  It took me probably three hours to get this corner and the corner on the other side of the room just right so that we could finish out the ash.

Installing Flooring (Finally!)

Thanksgiving 2009
I won't bother describing the process of taking out the carpet.  Suffice it to say, we were more than happy to get the Pepto Bismol color out of the room.  The only part of the carpet removal process worth mentioning is getting as many of the carpet pad staples out of the floor as possible.  I hammered down any I couldn't remove so they wouldn't cause any weird bumpage or prevent something from going into place later on.

We chose to use pre-finished 3/4" solid hardwood.  Pre-finished was necessary because of the piano; because I can't (no, more accurately, I refuse to) take the piano out of the room, I couldn't easily sand an unfinished floor, nor could I have consistently applied any finish to the whole floor at once.  Pre-finished was the answer.  We used Bella hardwood, which comes only from Lumber Liquidators.  I will provide a more extensive review later, but I have to say right now that we weren't disappointed.

Though this picture shows a little bit of jumping ahead (Meridith getting excited about laying flooring out), our first step was putting down a moisture retarding layer.  I used 15-lb tar paper, overlapped a good foot.  Below this room is an unfinished basement, and summers here can be pretty muggy.  The next step was installing a layer of 1/4" plywood.  The hardwood floor in the entryway leading into the kitchen also has this 1/4" layer (not quite sure why), so in order to match heights we had to follow suit.  This layer did help to smooth out the small bumps from joints in the subfloor, though.

Before doing ANYTHING else, I made several careful measurements to determine how square my room was.  In this corner, I had just installed the cabinetry and had made sure I was square to the exterior wall when I did.  Lo and behold, the wall of cabinetry was still square with the exterior wall with the windows.  As it turns out, the wall with the French doors is not square with the exterior wall (about 3/4" across the 13'4" span), so it was a good thing I didn't just make an assumption and start laying flooring.

Spending however much extra time you need to determine a square layout for your flooring is worth every second.  It will help prevent you from having to make odd cuts later on, will keep your joints tighter, and in the long run make your job go faster.  In this case, I was doing a border using a dark wood (Brazilian Mesquite) in contrast with the lighter wood (Ash).  If I had an un-square corner, every joint shown here would have been slightly askew, leaving gaps (nemesis of a flooring installation).

The entryway has an existing red oak floor.  I selected ash boards that were close in color to blend in.  If you look closely, you can probably tell where the oak stops and the ash starts, but it's not obvious.    Because this wall wasn't square, and because the other floor has used something else as its square reference point, the old and new floor do not line up perfectly.  They're not too far apart, but askew nonetheless.  We will cover the gap between the two floors with a T-molding piece.

I had to install the mesquite border about 2/3 of the way across the room.  That way, I was able to finish enough of the floor to move the piano onto the finished section and then complete the last 1/3 of the room.

Finishing Touches on the Cabinetry

August - October 2009
Even though I had done as much as I could to paint the carcases before installing them, I knew that I was still going to have to paint after installing the blocking, moulding, and other trim pieces.  Now the semi-illusion of columns is starting to take shape.

For the blocking, I used MDF, but for the routed pieces, I used maple for the eye-level pieces and select pine for the not-so-obvious pieces.  Since I knew I was painting everything, I needed a hardwood that would shape well with a router and also paint nicely.  Maple fits both of these requirements.  Poplar also works, but will dent more easily.  Pine shapes easily, but sometimes does not take paint so well.  I picked out good pieces with no knots, and sanded each piece before installing and painting.

Before doing the first finish coat, I had a whole bunch of nail holes to fill and sand.  Once that was done, I tried to hand-paint the first finish layer, which was a mistake.  I only use oil-based paint on projects like this; latex-acrylic just doesn't give a smooth enough, durable enough finish.  That being said, even oil-based paint left paintbrush lines on these smooth surfaces.  I also saw that my carcases could really use another coat.  So, I pulled out the plastic  sheeting and room fan and got ready spray my next finish coat of oil paint on the whole upper half of the wall.  I ended up cordoning off that half of the room with the plastic sheeting and using the fan to keep air pressure from the house pushing any paint residuals out the window instead of back into the room and onto my piano (which I also covered so as not to be stupid).

I ended up spraying three finish coats of paint to get the silky smooth appearance I was after.  Another great benefit of oil-based paint is that, once you've given it enough time to dry, it sands very easily and smoothly.  Latex-acrylic paint is actually a film on top of your surface when it dries, so it will gum up pretty easily if you try to sand it. When oil-based paint dries, the solvents are completely gone and only the pigments are left behind.  A 200-grit sandpaper will give you a very smooth surface, which means your next coat is that much smoother.

Once that finishing was completed, Meridith came back and touched up the corners.  I finished the doors and drawers (again, all out of MDF, except the mitered decorative trim pieces, which were again maple), and got them installed.  Voila, the cabinets are complete!

Cabinetry Taking Shape

July 2009
Once the weather got good enough to do some work on the exterior of the house, I had to spend some time getting our three-season porch repaired.  But again, that's another story.  Anyway, once I got that out of the way, I was able to get back to the piano room.

I had already finished the drywall, and while I was on a business trip, Meridith picked out a color and painted the room.  We had discussed general colors, but I was still a little surprised when I saw it.  I was thinking of something a little more on the lighter, grayer side of blue, but this looked good too and the painting was done, more or less.  I'm not complaining - I'm happy that Meridith likes these projects too and helps out where she can.  In this picture, you can also see the 2x4 frame I built to support the cabinets and get them off the floor.

 That back wall measures 13'4" and change, so a full wall of cabinetry is a good amount indeed.  I built and painted all the carcases in the garage.  The carcases were done almost exclusively out of MDF, which is nice and flat, dimensionally stable, and cheap.  It takes paint well, and if you're planning on painting something anyway and you know it's not going to be subject to a lot of moisture, MDF is a great material choice for cabinetry.

I rabbeted in the shelves to give them some extra stability; everything else I just glued and nailed with a 16g finish nailer.  I know these cabinets aren't going to move a lot, otherwise I would have used more robust joinery (and probably not MDF).  I used some pieces of maple for cleats to support some of the longer shelves (which you can't see in the picture).  I fit the countertop (also MDF) in place after installing the lower cabinet carcases, then put the upper carcases on top of the countertop.  I also wired in a 120V outlet into the side of the upper cabinetry and inserted a fishline that goes down to the basement so that we could pull up a coaxial cable for a TV connection later on.

I wanted to create the semi-illusion of columns in the cabinetry, which is why I have the gaps between carcases.  Two added advantages of this approach are 1) I didn't have to do much to fit the carcases in place, and instead could just shave down the blocking pieces between them to the dimensions I needed; and 2) I didn't need to have the carcases line up perfectly along their faces.  On the lower cabinets, I was able to anyway, but on the upper cabinets this came in handy because the carcases had not stayed 100% square during glue-up and one of the walls actually leaned in a little bit near the ceiling.  If I had tried to have "perfect fit" carcases, I would have been re-dimensioning at least a couple of them.  Oh, I guess I should mention that we got those can lights in, too.  The right amount of light (which is a lot more than a lamp in the corner) can really transform a room.

I should also mention a design element that we used.  There is an infinite number of possible cabinet sizes that I could have used to put all of this together.  In the end, we knew that we wanted the countertop to be 36" tall, so that dimension was already specified.  We knew that we wanted three columns of cabinets / shelves, since odd numbers tend to look nicer on the eye.  The rest of our dimensions were dictated by the idea that, although we didn't intend to put one there, we wanted to be able to put a 50" flatscreen TV in the center space.  Using this as the main dimensions, we based everything else on the The Golden Ratio (1.618), which was determined by some wise ancient Greek mathematicians.  For just about every space in the cabinetry, the width / height ratio (or vice versa) is 1.618.  This is supposed to be the most visually appealing ratio.  So, tell me, do you feel yourself being soothed just by their appearance?

French Doors Make a Comeback

April 2009
We spent most of our spare time over the winter working on getting the golf room back into usable shape.  But that's a different story.  I want to talk about the piano room.

Fast forward five months, and we're back at it.  At this point, all I have done is cover the framed wall that used to be the French doors with drywall and one tape coat.

The piano room used to have just an opening from the front entry, no door.  I pulled out this opening and re-framed in a space for the French doors.  What you can't really see in this photo is that I also re-wired the light switch in the wall to the right of the doors.  It used to turn on an outlet just inside the room (that is sooo 80's!!), and we wanted to install can lights in the ceiling.  You can also see the sweet Pepto-Bismol pink carpet that adorned the room, as well as the office / dining room, stairs and much of the second floor.  Lovely!

Here's the room with drywall hung and ready to tape and finish.  Not a big job, but messy nonetheless.  At least I won't feel too bad about glopping mud onto that carpet.  You can also see the electrical wire coming out of the wall, ready to go into the ceiling once we install those cans.

What you can't see is the piano, a 3/4 grand, that has been pushed into one corner of the room.  I couldn't move the piano out of the room (wouldn't get through the front entry), and didn't want to put it back on the piano board (pain in the $&@%), so I had to just push it away from any work being done, cover it when necessary, and take extra precaution that I didn't leave out any tools for the kids to pick up and "fix" the piano with.