Hardwood Flooring in Tiburon, CA

The flooring we install in Tiburon runs toward the higher end of what is available, wide-plank white oak most often, walnut and hickory after that. Larger rooms carry a wide board well and most homes here have the square footage for it. Wide plank is also where engineered earns its keep, because a seven-inch solid board has considerably more room to cup than a seven-inch engineered one.

The other thing Tiburon homes have is glass. A lot of these houses were built for the view, with big south and west-facing windows, and that much direct light fades a finish unevenly over the years. You end up with a bright patch where the sun lands and the original color everywhere else. It is one of the more common reasons we get called out to refinish a floor that is not otherwise damaged at all.

Call today for a free estimate on installation, refinishing, or repair in Tiburon.

Wide Plank and What It Needs Underneath

A seven-inch board is less forgiving than a three-inch board in every direction. It moves more with humidity, it telegraphs any dip in the subfloor, and it needs a flatter surface underneath than a narrow floor would tolerate. So on a wide-plank job most of the real work happens before any finish flooring shows up. We check the subfloor for flatness against a standard, usually something on the order of a fraction of an inch over a six or eight foot span, and where it is out we either sand the high spots or fill the low ones. On a big open Tiburon room that can be a day of work nobody sees. Skip it and you get boards that flex underfoot and a hollow sound when you walk across them, and the fix at that point is pulling the floor. Estate houses over in Ross raise the same issue on old subfloors that have moved for a century.

Slowing Down Sun Fade

Every wood floor changes color under direct sun, and in a house built to face the water it happens unevenly, so you get a lighter or darker patch where the light lands. Some of it is the finish yellowing and some of it is the wood itself, and which one is happening decides what helps. Finishes with UV inhibitors slow the first part down. They do not stop the second. Species matters more than most people expect, since American cherry and Brazilian walnut shift dramatically while white oak is comparatively stable, which is part of why we recommend white oak as often as we do here. Moving rugs and furniture around every so often keeps the line from setting in hard. Window film is the one intervention that actually addresses the cause. None of it prevents the change entirely, and a floor that has faded unevenly sands back to uniform color, which is why we see this as a refinish call rather than a defect.