Maple Floors, Please chime in on stability

11 years ago

So we have our hearts set on Maple finished flooring for our remodel. We are on the 2nd and 3rd floor of a two family and have an open floor plan. To keep things light we wanted to go with Maple and my husband is not a big fan of the grain with oak.

We talked with the floor guy today and he said that maple can be less stable and we could have gaps in the winter from contracting. We don't want that. He mention quarter sawn white oak. We have had oak and pine in the past and wanted something different, but we want a stable floor minimal gaps. All the stability/hardness charts I have seen puts maple just a bit above the oaks.... Please tell me that he may have been wrong about maple and it is a fine floor to use.

We want to go with 3 1/4 width on site finished with Bona traffic, no stain.

Thanks

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Comments (3)

ratrem
Original Author
11 years ago
We planned on using clear grade from lumber liquidators.
ratrem
Original Author
11 years ago
Sorry forgot to add we are in a Boston neighborhood
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dseng
11 years ago
A maple floor should actually not be any different with regard to its susceptibility to change (move) than white or red oak. But - how that wood is sawn CAN make a difference. Quarter sawn will tend to expand and contract less than plain sawn from the same species. As far as using maple for flooring - tens of thousands of school gym floors can't be wrong. You WILL (or you should plan on) getting gaps because solid wood flooring - any wood - does move. Using an engineered wood floor would give you a much better chance of achieving the "no gaps" goal as the plywood base layer provides inherent resistance to the normal humidity response movement shown by solid wood floors.