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HGTV’d with Teragren

Patrick Byers — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:45:56 +0000

HGTV’s Antonio Ballatore uses Teragren’s Portfolio Midnight Black strand bamboo flooring as the foundation when he turn’s the Marshall family’s outdated basement into a high tech, high octane family game room.

Inspired by rock and roll and classic 80′s arcade themes, Antonio rips out the Marshall’s shabby decor, old fireplace and bulky closet to expand the space. He then gives the walls colorful paint and custom boom box wall paper treatments, creates a seating area with custom banquets inspired by the family’s vintage 1968 Ford Galaxy, builds a ‘road case’ media center that houses 3 TVs and designs an array of graphically personalized vintage arcade games to fill the space with life, love and energy.

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel. This episode and many more are available on the video page of the new Teragren website.

New Life for Old Flooring

Patrick Byers — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:26:10 +0000

Before your new bamboo flooring goes in it may be necessary to remove your existing wood floor. With just a little bit of time and care the old flooring can be removed in such a manner that it can be given a new life in another home.

Whether you are doing the work yourself or having a licensed contractor doing it for you there are many companies out there that are ready to reclaim those old planks. As a member of the Building Materials Reuse Association we can point you in the right direction. The BMRA offers great resources on their website including a Directory Map to help you find a salvage company in your area.

By choosing bamboo flooring and recycling your old wood floor you will be helping the planet and your community. Here are a few benefits to wood recycling:

Reduces the consumption of new resources
Avoids landfill waste and pollution
Saves energy as it takes less energy to recycle than to process virgin materials
Expands job opportunities and workforce development skills

For more information on the BMRA, their goals and objectives, visit their website at bmra.org. To find a salvage company in your area take a look at the Directory Map.

By working with the BMRA you are helping to increase opportunities for the recovery and reuse of building materials in an environmentally sound and financially sustainable way. By working together we can reduce dependence on dwindling timber resources by promoting green building.

Down is Up – Bamboo Flooring for Wall Treatments

Patrick Byers — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:36:43 +0000

In the last year we have seen our strand bamboo panels used as wall treatments on diy Network’s House Crashers – Kitchen Blow Up and Bathtastic – Mod Makeover. Having seen our flooring products used as wall treatments so many times over the years we thought it was time for us to do one of these projects ourselves.

We used our prefinished Signature Naturals flooring, which comes in boxes of four precise lengths. This assortment of lengths combined with various sizes of starter pieces that we cut made quick work out of staggering the butt-joints throughout the wall.

In our case we simply applied the flooring over the existing drywall using construction adhesive and brad nails to hold the pieces in place while the adhesive cured.

Tools required:

Miter saw, brad nailer, air compressor, hammer, nail set, construction adhesive, table saw or jig saw, level, tape measure, and pencil.

Steps:

Open several boxes of flooring and sort for color. It’s important to work with the natural variations in color to have a consistent look throughout the wall.

Starting in a corner of the room use a level to check the walls for plumb.

Use a six-foot plank to start the first row. This will make it easier to plumb and help ensure all subsequent planks remain plumb.

Apply two beads of adhesive on the back of the plank. Set the plank on the floor and against the adjacent wall at the same time being careful not to smear the adhesive.

Using a level check that the first plank is plumb and nail at an angle through the tongue on the plank.

Measure from the top of the plank to the ceiling, cut the next piece to fit and attach to the wall as you did with the first plank.

Continue this process being sure to stagger the butt-joints as shown in the image below.

Work your way across the wall until you reach the end and scribe the last row to fit tightly to the adjacent wall.

This was a simple project that took only a few tools and can easily be completed in just a weekend.

For more information on installing our flooring products visit teragren.com/installation. Let us know if you have any questions.

The Teragren Blog Remastered

Steve Tucker — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:46:01 +0000

The creative team at Teragren has unveiled a refreshing new look for our blog. The updated scheme complements our new website design—which launched last August. Let us know what you think!

Here’s what’s new:

• Redesigned look. Improved design and ease of navigation

• More at a glance. View our posts by row or grid layout.

• Slider feature. See the latest content from the blog.

• Featured videos. Learn more about bamboo and how our products get used.

• Social media. We make it easy to follow us or share content you find useful.

More beneath the surface

Besides the obvious aesthetics of the new blog, we have switched over to the WordPress platform. A huge benefit of WordPress is its ability to migrate blogs over from other platforms—making the process more seamless. Going forward, we’ll be adding new features, information about our contributors and providing new topics for discussion. We welcome your feedback and ideas for future content.

Stay informed

If you’d like to be kept up to date on our blog, please subscribe by submitting your email or use our RSS feed. For more information about Teragren and its products, visit our website.

Bamboo for High Yield in Cabinetry and Furniture Construction

Patrick Byers — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:51:00 +0000

One of the most important considerations when building fine cabinetry or furniture is the layout of the grain in the material being used. After the material has been sorted for color it is then best practice to lay out these parts on the sheets of veneer or plywood that is being used for the job. Matching grains and colors should be used on each elevation being constructed and just as important is centering the veneer joints or cathedrals in the grain on the doors and drawers–see images below.

This process takes a great deal of material and greatly diminishes the yield of the material being used when working with traditional hardwood plywoods. Working with bamboo, however, only requires sorting for color as the grains are consistent from one panel to the next. One simply needs to mark the door and drawer parts out on the panel and begin cutting–see images below.

Working with bamboo for cabinetry not only saves a great deal of time but virtually eliminates waste. In the diagrams below we can see how much waste is generated in the oak panel on the left when marking out for doors while on the bamboo panel on the right not only do we get one more door front of the same size but have all but eliminated waste.

By using bamboo for furniture and cabinetry there is not only the peace of mind of using a sustainable material that is 25% harder than red oak but the added benefit of saving time and material as well.

Rescue Renovation – Synergy

Patrick Byers — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:27:00 +0000

DIY Network’s Rescue Renovation installs Teragren’s Synergy® Java wide-plank flooring as a decorative
border around slate tiles in the loft of Ken Walker’s house.

Ken built his house ten years ago to his own specifications. Now his girlfriend, Michelle, is ready to move in but the house is not designed for two people to live in. This couple needs help. Since Ken is a big gamer and movie watcher, they need a room that will block sound from traveling through the whole house. Kayleen is on the case to build a new soundproof room that will make both of these homeowners happy and allow Michelle to feel right at home.

Synergy® highlights at the 17:00 minute mark.

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel. This episode and many more are available on the video page of the new Teragren website.

Understanding Bamboo Colors

Patrick Byers — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:51:00 +0000

Last week we discussed the differences in bamboo grains and the fact that, unlike the hardwood industry, there are no defined rules for grading and naming bamboo. With a few diagrams and brief descriptions of the manufacturing process it’s pretty easy to make sense of the different grains. But with bamboo colors it’s not as straightforward.

The natural color of bamboo is a light blond. When these same slats cut from the culms are put through a pressure-heating process the sugar compounds, which are naturally present in the plant, become a warm amber color. This is known as the caramelizing process and gives us the term caramelized sometimes referred to as carbonized.

Both natural and caramelized bamboo, the most descriptive terms, go by many names in the industry and both are used in manufacturing Traditional and Strand bamboo products. Being a natural product there are variations in color just as there are in hardwoods, and this contributes to the many names and descriptions of bamboo products.

In Strand bamboo products natural and caramelized strands can be combined to create wider variations within each plank as in Teragren’s Brindle or the light and dark strands that are combined in Teragren’s Java.

Beyond this there are stains applied to both natural and caramelized bamboo such as those used In Teragren’s Signature Colors.

In addition to this range of colors there are bamboo products such as our Portfolio Collection, all strand products, that add new grains, textures and colors.

There are many names out there but understanding the basics of colors and grains, and knowing the difference between Traditional and Strand bamboo should make it easier for you to choose the bamboo that’s right for you–and your home.

Understanding Bamboo Grains

Patrick Byers — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:01:00 +0000

With bamboo becoming the go-to material for sustainable design there can still be a great deal of confusion in understanding all of the terminology used to describe grains and colors. Unlike the hardwood industry there are no defined rules for grading and naming bamboo.

Though there are many disparities in the many manufacturing processes being used to make bamboo products there are essentially just two types of bamboo, but they can go by many names in the industry.

Traditional bamboo is a type of construction in which one-inch bamboo slats are laminated either vertically or horizontally. The horizontally laminated slats are also referred to as Flat grain. Strand bamboo, also referred to by some manufacturers as woven or strand woven, is made from a construction method in which fibers of shredded bamboo are intertwined and compressed. In both cases the quality of the finished product varies from one manufacturer to another.

Both processes begin the same way. Bamboo strips are cut out from the culm. In the case of Traditional bamboo these strips are then machined to uniform size and are laminated to form either Flat grain or Vertical grain blanks as described above. For Teragren’s Strand process the strips are semi-shredded and intertwined in a pressure-treated adhesive base to form a high-density, homogenous bamboo plank without internal voids.

Traditional bamboo products:

Strand bamboo products:

From Forest to Floor – Our Manufacturing Process

Patrick Byers — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:49:00 +0000

Carter Oosterhouse, of HGTV’s Red Hot & Green, video blogs about one of his favorite materials – bamboo. In this episode Carter narrates a tour of our factory and explains how bamboo goes from forest to floor. Learn how Teragren bamboo is harvested, milled and manufactured into flooring, panels and worktops that are more durable and sustainable than wood.

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel or on the video page of our new website.

You can also learn more about our manufacturing process by visiting the Manufacturing Process page on Teragren.com.

Floor Store Field Trip

Patrick Byers — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:11:00 +0000

Earlier this week Teragren’s Creative Director and I left the office to visit some local flooring stores. We caught a morning ferry and spent the day over in Seattle getting the feel of what it’s like to be a consumer shopping for flooring. It seems to me that the process involved in choosing a new floor could be likened to shopping for a new car.

Working for Teragren we are, of course, familiar with bamboo and all of the differences in colors, grains, textures, manufacturing processes and how our products compare with those of other manufacturers. But it does take some time to learn all of this. Depending on your circumstances and design taste, not all of the information that you come across will be necessary for you to understand or even know.

So, where to begin? There are a few terms that you might come across when shopping for a new floor–some of which can be used arbitrarily and may be of no concern to you. It might be helpful to make a list of your wants and needs. This will help you narrow your options and also help prepare you—prior to visiting a flooring store. With this defined list you can confidently let the dealer know what you are looking for and why. This will you save you time and turn the process into something that is exciting rather than just a great deal of work.

Here are some questions to answer before leaving your home:

Do I want pre-finished or site-finished?

Do I want to install the floor myself?

Is the flooring being installed on, above, or below grade?

What installation method do I prefer, nail, staple, float or glue?

What type of subfloor do I have, plywood, particle board, concrete?

Is the flooring made from a renewable resource?

What types of adhesive are used in the construction process?

What type of finish is used?

What are the indoor air emissions of the flooring?

Does the flooring have any certifications to support the manufacturers claims?

What is the manufacturer’s reputation for technical support?

What is the warranty, both structurally and for the finish?

What is involved in the care and maintenance of the floor?

With these questions answered you’ll be able to focus on the look and design of your new space and sooner than later you will be back in your home enjoying your beautiful new floor. If you need help answering these questions or any others just visit teragren.com or leave us a comment.