How to choose parquet fittings

It is logical that for us, the average man in the street, parquet flooring is parquet. In this regard, the following associations and concepts arise – piece oak or beech parquet, scraping, parquet varnish, herringbone and checkered patterns … But the phrase “parquet accessories” is already familiar to a narrower circle of people. In general, among the people, this wisdom is perceived as an excess and raises objections such as: “All this pampering, toys for those who have crazy money”.

Nothing of the kind: without accessories, any floor, even laid with the most expensive parquet, will look lonely and sloppy. And besides, “accessories” for parquet have not only aesthetic, but also a direct functional purpose. I explain: the wood swells from moisture, and if the room is dry, on the contrary, it dries up. In short, parquet “plays”, so it is laid “freely and widely”: when laying parquet, good craftsmen always leave gaps at the junction of the floor and walls (as well as columns, thresholds, central heating pipes, etc.). So the accessories are just designed to cover these gaps, otherwise valuable and dear things to your heart – jewelry, keys, coins…

What are parquet fittings? Today these are skirting boards, rings and sills. To begin with, the skirting boards are different. The main thing in a skirting board is to choose it correctly. If, say, you have 3.2 m high ceilings in your apartment, then the height of the plinth should be at least 5 cm. Otherwise, it will “get lost” in space, and no one will pay attention to it. In total, there are three types of skirting boards in nature: solid wood, veneered and for columns.

The skirting boards are attached where the floor ends and the wall begins. Domestic solid wood skirting boards (left) are two or three times cheaper, and the quality is not inferior to imported ones. Skirting boards with decorative inserts (right).

Solid skirting boards can be matched to your parquet, both by the type of wood and by the color. If you want – choose a plinth to match the parquet, if you want the opposite – play on the contrast. It all depends on the features of the interior of the apartment and the taste of its owner. Solid baseboards, however, have one drawback: in a humid room, they can lose their flawless shape and bend.

Prices for skirting boards made of solid natural wood are different, they mainly depend on the type of wood and the quality of processing. Of course, imported skirting boards are more expensive than similar domestic ones, although ours are no worse! The price of foreign skirting boards is from $ 4 to $ 16, domestic ones – no more than $ 5.8 per linear meter.

The advantage of veneered skirting boards is that they do not buckle from moisture, like their solid brothers..

Veneered skirting boards are much cheaper than “massive” ones, but they look almost the same. Their base is made of inexpensive types of wood – spruce or pine, and veneer is glued on top of it on special equipment – the thinnest cut of some valuable species. Veneered skirting boards are produced by the German company “KGM” (KGM). They will cost two to three times cheaper than imported solid wood skirting boards. For example, you will pay $ 3.5 for a running meter of mahogany veneer skirting board. But if you need not one meter of plinth, but a dozen or more (usually this is the case), then you will get a significant difference in price.

The range of veneered skirting boards is extremely diverse. Believe me: for any parquet, even the most unusual and exotic, you can choose the appropriate skirting board.

In our market, there are also skirting boards for columns produced by the German company Wagner. By the way, they are much more expensive than even the most sophisticated solid wood baseboards: one running meter of a 6 cm high “column” baseboard will cost $ 55. But there is something to pay for: compared to these skirting boards, ordinary straight ones are just banal planks. It is clear that there is no way you can put a straight plinth around the column, and the fibers of the Wagner plinths are so cleverly cut that they bend like table aluminum forks.

There is one more piece of parquet accessories – rings. Why are they? Elementary Watson. Take a look around your apartment and you will surely see heating pipes. The gaps will be made by professional parquet flooring masters. But they will not be able to close them with an ordinary plinth, that’s for sure. This is where the rings will be needed, and they are specially made of two halves. It is necessary to “surround” the pipe with these halves and glue them, which, if desired, can be done independently.

These rings are placed on the parquet floor around the central heating pipes. They cover the raw edges of the parquet.

This miracle of human ingenuity is made from the finest types of wood – oak, beech or ash – by the craftsmen of the Swedish company Bona. The rings are sold at $ 9 per pair (about 230 rubles). On average, an entire apartment will need 6–8 rings. In principle, it will not turn out very expensive, but very beautiful.

Another useful thing in the household is the sills. This is also a little-known thing for most of my compatriots, because ordinary thresholds at the entrance to a house and “parquet” sills are not at all the same thing. Although the sills are laid, of course, at the threshold, but not outside, but inside the apartment – in front of the entrance to the rooms, bathroom, kitchen…

It looks like a narrow decorative strip – metal, wood or cork – and is needed to close the joints between different types of flooring. For example, you have parquet in the living room, beautiful ceramic tiles in the bathroom, carpet in the nursery and in the bedroom, and linoleum in the kitchen. Everything is wonderful and wonderful. But the joints! If you do not hide them with sills, then, firstly, there will be no completeness and unobtrusive elegance in the interior, and secondly, if you do not secure the joint with sills (for example, between parquet and linoleum), problems will surely begin over time.

Wooden laths. They can be matched to parquet, preferably of the same type of wood as the floor.

Why is clear. Especially for those who moved into the apartment five or ten years ago and never made any repairs there: so much dust and dirt was jammed in the gap at the junction between the parquet and carpet that no vacuum cleaner could withstand it. And the linoleum, the bastard, certainly climbed up on the edge so that every day (and especially night!) There is a danger of stumbling and breaking your neck! Than to bring the matter to self-harm, in my opinion, it is wiser to go to a good store of decoration materials, buy these very sills and install them for a small fee.

They explained to me that both metal and wooden sills are good in their own way. Wooden ones, for example, can be matched to the type of wood you need: they will harmonize well with wooden furniture, doors, frames … A mounting rail is always sold with the sill (it is she who is screwed to the floor with screws, and he himself is glued to it nut). Over time, the varnish on the sills, of course, will be peeled off, but it is easy to restore it with one stroke of the brush. The range of prices for these useful products is quite large – from $ 20 to $ 60 per set.

Metal sills are made “in bronze, silver or gold”. They are in perfect harmony with, for example, decorative door handles and will also successfully fit into the interior of an apartment or office. Metal strips are sold separately from the mounting rails. This was not done by chance – if the paint is erased from the sills, then they will have to be thrown away and a new nut bought. And nothing will happen to the rail screwed to the floor (even after many years), and, of course, it does not need to be changed.

Metal tracks. Looks impressive when door handles and sills are of the same color.

Fastening rails can be bought for 180-230 rubles, and more expensive sills for about 200-380 rubles. Accordingly, they are cheaper than wooden ones..

But that’s not all. Wooden and metal sills, in turn, are of three types: straight, leveling and finishing.

Leveling sills are placed at the junction of parquet with carpet (linoleum, tiles) to hide the raw edges. Straight sills are needed at the junction of parquet from different types of wood. The final sills are placed at the front door.

Straight lines are used to close the joints between two different types of parquet in adjacent rooms or to design a transition from one type of flooring to another. But keep in mind that straight sills will come in handy if both covers are on the same level..

If the coatings turned out to be at different levels (this often happens when switching from parquet to softer coatings – carpet, linoleum), then wooden and metal leveling sills come into play. Both those and others will make the transition from one room to another neat and beautiful.

The final sills are mainly needed in the hallway or near the balcony, that is, in those places where there is a difference in floor level. In the resulting gap (between the parquet and the threshold) and lay the sill, which closes it with its “body”.

But the most versatile, in my opinion, are cork sills (price per running meter – $ 20). According to your order, they can be made in any shape – for example, a semicircle or a zigzag. Moreover, these sills can be both final and leveling and straight at the same time. They consist of three layers: between two vertical thin strips a layer of cork is clamped. So: when the parquet “plays” (dries up, dries up), the cork will “work” like a spring. Moreover, on these sills, you can still save money perfectly – no fastening rails are needed for them. They need to be glued to the same substrate as the parquet and they blend in perfectly flush with the parquet.

The only negative is that these sills cannot be glued at the junction of parquet with linoleum or carpet, since technologically they cannot cover the raw edge of the coating.

Well, my dears. I hope now you agree that without parquet fittings your interior will not sound like a complete piece? And I convinced you that without all these baseboards, rings and sills, dear to my heart, your apartment looks as ridiculous and wrong as a symphony without the last chord?