This article analyses the compatibility between the 20 mm thick prefinished engineered hardwoodflooring and the solid unfinished border and medallion inlays.
The hardwood floor border inlay (also called ”wood
floor borders” or ”parquet borders”) shown in the left side of the image has
a 10 mm (around 3/8 in) thickness. This border is built as solid (top-to-bottom from a single
piece of solid hardwood as you can observe in the image) being compatible with surrounding flooring
preferably built
the same way (whether they are hardwood floors or parquet floors). The inlays*(*-we
talk about our inlays in this case)
are delivered unfinished (no finish applied to the surface). The
installation is done in the traditional way, finish being applied in
the final
phase to provide protection from tear-and-wear and air bound moisture.
In the right side of the above image there is a two layers prefinished, engineered
hardwood flooring - a plank with a 180mm (7 1/4 inches) width. This
engineered flooring is composed from a sandwich of two layers. The top layer
is made of the precious wood (in our case it is 6 mm thick Oak) and
the below layer is a
plywood (usually used is the Birch plywood) whose function is to provide support and dimensional
stability of the product. The fact that this hardwood flooring comes
prefinished (with a layer of factory-applied finish) makes it
usually incompatible with the unfinsihed inlays.
Note: to install such a prefinished
hardwood floor with the
unfinished border or medallion inlay
for a quality finish outcome it would require the sanding of the entire installed surface
including the inlays, obviously. To obtain uniformity the prefinished's
factory finish will be removed and replaced with the one applied at the
installation place. A process not impossible but that usually doesn't
happen. Our conclusion is: not compatible with the inlays.