Engineered Hardwood
Engineered hardwood flooring is basically hardwood flooring with layers. The top layer is genuine hard wood with veneer, so it looks and feels like a traditional wood floor.
The middle layers consist of sandwich construction of plywood or fiberboard and the lowest layer is usually more solid wood. Higher quality engineered hardwood has up to nine layers. Harder woods such as cherry, oak, or maple are most commonly used in engineered hardwood floors but you can find most every type of wood on the market.
Engineered hardwood is often preferred over genuine wood flooring because it is less expensive, softer, easier to clean and maintain, and is more resilient when exposed to extreme hot or cold conditions such as those often found where cottages abound.
When installing, engineered hardwood can be glued, nailed, or put in by the more modern floating flooring interlocking method.
When considering flooring for your cottage, engineered hardwood might be a good way to go if you buy a high enough grade so it doesn’t fade, buckle, or warp over time. It is more expensive than vinyl or linoleum, but less expensive and more practical than solid wood so the best thing to do is to figure in all the facts and see if it is the right fit for your cottage.