Hey. Matt Capell here with Capell Flooring and Interiors in the Boise area. Hey, I'm gonna try to tackle this question we get asked pretty much on a daily basis when people are shopping for hardwood. It can be a little bit confusing. So, hey, if you have any further questions just comment below. Be sure to like or share it, and I will address it further, okay? So the question is, what's the difference pre-finished hardwood, engineered hardwood, and sand and sealed hardwood. And it's a really good question, and there's definitely pros and cons to each type of floor. And so I just wanted to kind of talk through some basics. And like I said, if you have any further questions feel free to ask below, and I will answer them for you, okay?
So the biggest thing is what pre-finished engineered hardwood is, and this is an example of one right here. It's a nice pretty color, is that the best way I can think to describe it is the top layer right here is the actual hardwood. So it's kind of like a veneer, right? And the rest is usually some sort of pressed board. When they do it like this it actually adds a lot more stability to the floor. But this part right here is the actual only hardwood, hardwood part of the floor. In this case it happens to be a hickory, and this hickory happens to be stained.
And so then as far as pre-finish goes, it just means that it's been finished at the factory or at the plant or the mill. Okay, so it comes finished. And then you can also get pre-finished wood that is a solid. This is an example of this. We saw a lot of it. It's really pretty. But in this case the wood is all the way through. So it's a full three-quarters of an inch. In this case, again, it happens to be a hickory. But this is a pre-finished floor. You could technically say it's engineered, too, but not really. Engineered is usually mostly when we just have the veneer. This is more what I call pre-finished.
Pre-finished wood usually tends to have bevels in it, chatter marks, or imperfections like this. The reason for that is if you make it completely flat and smooth at the plant or at a mill, it tends to almost look fake. And so this adds a lot of characters and things to it. And then the last part is you have hardwood where we install it raw, and we sand it, we finish it. In this case, this wood has been stained. And so this happens to be a white oak that's been stained a chestnut color. And this tends to be more flat, although you can hand scrape it or change it. But this has been stained, so this isn't the natural color.
Some of the pros to the these different types of woods and just different characteristics, the nice thing about a three-quarter inch one that we install ourselves is that it can be refinished very easily. I like to joke that depending on the type of wood, white oak takes stain really, really well. Let's say in 10 years everybody wants a purple floor, you never know, right? You could make this purple. And this will last a long, long time. Th
