Green floors? You bet. Whether you choose to refinish an existing hardwood floor or to start fresh and install something new, you now have wonderful green options that allow you to decorate with style and at the same time protect your child’s health and the environment.
Refinishing Hardwood Floors
Many homes have solid hardwood flooring that is either battered or hidden under carpets. If that’s the case in your house, refinishing this old wood is a very green choice. The beauty of the original wood lies hidden beneath years of wear and grime, but it’s there to be discovered anew.
Refinishing hardwood flooring, however, can be a dirty and toxic job. Every step of the way—stripping, sanding, sealing, varnishing, and polishing—can fill the air with pollutants that you want to avoid during your pregnancy, even if you use one of the new generation of sanders that do a better job of containing dust. So if you do decide to refinish the old wood, someone else should do it while you’re out of the house entirely. In fact, it would be smart to make plans to live somewhere else during the entire refinishing process.
Eco-Friendly Floor Finishes
Beautiful natural floors made of such raw materials as wood, bamboo, and cork will need to be finished for lasting beauty and care. Unfortunately, the green quality of these materials can be diminished by the traditional finishing products that contain solvent-based polyurethane, known carcinogens that can be toxic to humans and pets.
Fortunately, today there is a comprehensive range of eco-friendly natural waxes made from sustainable raw materials that can be used for both interior and exterior applications.
The following are nontoxic alternatives to solvent-based polyurethanes:
- Water-based polyurethane. Water-based polyurethanes provide a clear finish and have low odor. If you start early enough in the day, you can apply the recommended four coats and sleep in the room that night. (Oil-based polyurethanes, in contrast, require fewer coats. But there is a five-hour wait between coats and then, due to the strong odor and fumes, you need to wait twelve hours after the last coat before you can live in the room.)
- Drying oil. This is an organic oil, such as tung oil, used as a binder in paints and varnishes. It dries into a tough elastic layer when appliedin a thin film and exposed to air. Avoid the oil vapors before it dries completely.
- Hardwax oil. There is a whole range of hardwax oil timber floor finishes. Treatex and Osmo, for example, are highly accepted and widely used global brands. They are said to enhance the natural beauty of wood floors, are extremely durable and also safe to apply and easy to maintain and repair. Products like these are produced through an environmentally friendly manufacturing process and allow for safe disposal of used wax after sanding.
New Wood Flooring
Natural wood flooring can be green if it is manufactured and installed in environmentally sensitive ways. Otherwise, like other conventionally produced wood products, its use will increase the destruction of our forests and, by creating gasses from VOCs and formaldehyde, contribute to the air-quality problem.
If you’d like to use hardwood floors in your baby’s room, this is a good time to look for FSC-certified wood. As explained in the section about wood furniture later in the chapter, these flooring materials are harvested according to the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council, which certifies environmentally managed forests the world over. ....read more
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