Bamboo Flooring...c'est fini!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I've been ruminating about sustainable flooring. While, I ordered 700 sq. feet of vertical (the way the strips of bamboo are laid) natural (referring to the finish) Silkroad Bamboo. We really liked the look of the vertical compared to the horizontal because the knots in the bamboo aren't as noticeable. Also, the vertical is a little bit harder. I was initially a bit concerned that there wouldn't be much difference in the color and texture of individual pieces of the bamboo, however I was reassured there would be variation.

The final room was completed just today, with the help of a friend. So, the main floor of our house now has tile in the kitchen and dining room, and bamboo in the livingroom, hallway, and three bedrooms. The bamboo looks like this when installed:

I didn't need to worry about variety in appearance, as the two pictures above attest.

Here's a shot of me in action, the used PowerFist cleat nailer I found on usedregina.com doing a dandy job.

The bamboo we bought came in 3' lengths only. I was a little bit concerned that the floor would end up looking like a click-together laminate because of this, but by staggering the starting row, I was able to avoid this. I started the first row with a full board, the second with a half, the third with a three-quarter length, the fourth with a one-quarter length, and then back to a full board again. Unless you look really closely, you don't notice that the boards are all the same length. Installing the 3' boards was really nice, because there were very few warps or bends in the boards. Any small gap that resulted after putting the board in place was quickly tightened up by the cleat nailer. My dad tells horror stories about installing really cheap maple hardwood, and having to wedge a screwdriver into the subfloor to hold the warped wood in place so a nail could be put in. This install went much more smoothly.

We chose the natural bamboo -- the other option was carbonized. Bamboo isn't stained, it is actually cooked. This means the color runs the whole way through the wood. The cooking burns the sugars in the bamboo, and this causes the darkening. The darker a bamboo is, the softer it is. A third type of bamboo available is strand-woven, which also comes in natural and carbonized. It is much harder (and much more expensive.) We didn't go with it, because even the natural is rather dark. (Though since then, my mom has put in the natural strand-woven, and I think it would have looked fine in our place.)
Here's what our living room looks like now that it's done!

We are very happy with the finished product - eco-friendly, non-gassing, sustainably farmed. I'll keep you posted on how it wears!