Hard Surface 101

Welcome to Hard Surface 101. Click the hyperlinks on the left hand side of this page inside the frame for almost anything you would want to know about Hard Surface. There are many choices when deciding which hard surface to choose to cover your floors. For residential homes one of the best vinyl floors you can buy today is Armstrong’s Inlaid 6ft. sheet vinyls. They feature Inlaid Color™ construction, an exclusive Armstrong process which creates a handcrafted look. The floor is built from the backing up. Millions of color granules are carefully sifted and layered through as many as ten hand-cut stencils, as seen below. Your floor pattern emerges color by color, shade by shade, enriching its extraordinary depth.
Laminates are the toughest and easiest floors to take care of. That’s why they are so popular. Plus a lot of do it yourselfers are installing laminates themselves to save money. Laminates will cost more than regular vinyl flooring, but when installed properly will give you many years of low maintenance freedom. We can think of better things to do than to scrub floors. Few other materials offer the range of colors, patterns, and finishes offered by the laminate industry. Most laminates are not affected by common household bleach and paint thinners. (If these chemicals are left on for an extended amount of time, they may begin to have some effect.) Think of your desk at school, the dining table you grew up with, the first time you stumbled into a dinner for coffee and eggs, your teenage french fry attacks....laminate was there with you every time.

With commercial flooring there are many choices to think about especially if you have a large budget. If your like most people your project has gone over budget and now the last thing to finnish is the flooring and you don’t have much to play with. Carpet Cave can still dial you into a great commercial floor for a reasonable price. Vinyl Composition Tile is the most economically durable way to cover a floor. If you can spend the money, pure rubber or vinyl luxury tile is awesome. Ceramic tile is very durable also if your budget permits. There are high grade commercial laminates made for heavy traffic. If you have a commercial building with stairs you need rubber stair treads. Burke Rubber makes some of the finest stair treads in different color choices. No commercial job is not complete without wall base. Burke rubber base is one of the best rubber base in the industry. There are many colors to choose from and come in 2 1/2 in. 4 in. and 6in. heights.

Also Burke has a new product called Emerge.
This patent pending enhancement to your safety lighting system uses two continuous photoluminescent strips that guide the observer to a safe exit. Installation is quick and simple by attaching the track to the wall or floor       and snapping in the glow strip to fit. BurkeEmerge is designed to allow for the capping of baseboard (of any kind) as well as framing of doors and windows. Used in conjunction with    our stair treads and handrail covers, a dark stairway becomes outlined in light at all critical surfaces.
Transitions between different surfaces is sometimes overlooked but very important to the look of the overall job. Almost any transition is covered by Burke Rubber Transitions in a wide variety of colors.