Before you bought a house you had no idea how complicated this flooring thing was, am I right? Heath concerns, environmental concerns, installation, price, and above all style- these are all swirling around, vying for your attention.
Do you want tile? Concrete? Wood? So many choices. We’re here to help. This review specifically talks about your options for hardwood and the Mullican company, which is a relatively new, up-and-coming brand based in the American Appalachian Mountains.
Here, we’ll help you consider the key benefits of hardwood, and how those relate to what Mullican has to offer. We’ll go over their main products and choices, and then give you a summary of what people are saying about their flooring.
Finally, we’ll give our verdict on what the biggest pros and cons are for Mulligan flooring, so you can go out shopping and buy with confidence!
Why Choose Hardwood Flooring?
Hardwood flooring, in general, offers some advantages over laminate or concrete. These advantages can be summed up in three categories: health, style and eco-friendliness.
Health Benefits
Flexible flooring that has some give to it is better for your knees, back and all your joints. The repeated impact of the weight of your body on a hard floor such as ceramic tile or concrete wears on your over time.
Hardwood floors can also help those who suffer from seasonal or environmental allergies or asthma. If you have allergies or asthma, one of the key things to consider in floor covering is how much your flooring is going to attract and hold dust particles and allergens (tip: invest in a good hardwood floor vacuum).
Hardwood floors are better choices as they have been shown to actually improve indoor air quality. The Environmental Protection Agency has studied the matter and found that hardwood attracts and holds less contaminants like dust, mold and animal dander.
Eco-friendly
Choosing hardwood floors can also be more eco-friendly, and better for the environment.
Wood floors use less energy and water to produce than laminate or concrete, and the trees from which they are harvested provide significant environmental benefit in cleaning air and generating oxygen. The production of hardwood for floors can mean that many more acres of trees.
Style
Finally, buyers and residents love hardwood floors for the style they provide.
Hardwood adds a touch of class and a timeless appeal to the space it occupies. Because of this, installing hardwood flooring adds not only beauty but value to your home, making it a great investment.
Mullican Hardwood Floors: The Difference
So now that we’ve looked at the list of advantages of hardwood floors in general, let’s take a look at the Mullican line in particular.
Mullican offers three kinds of hardwood flooring- prefinished solid hardwood flooring, prefinished engineered hardwood flooring and unfinished hardwood flooring. The prefinished flooring comes in hickory, maple, oak, red oak and white oak, all available in smooth, hand-sculpted or wire-brushed textures.
Engineered
In their engineered hardwood line, Mullican has 11 different species and color choices, including such fun exotics as amendiom, birch, Brazilian Cherry and Tigerwood.
The engineered line also offers two additional texture choices: rustic and whitewash. Overall, there are lots of color and style choices, which is an advantage for consumers trying to visualize the perfect look for their home.
Unfinished
The unfinished hardwood line offers the same species choices as that of the finished line, but customers have the option to pick from seven different grades and qualities, offering more price points to choose from. For go-getting DIY-ers, this is a great value.
Advantages
Mullican products have two big advantages in terms of options. Firstly, in each of the three categories, customers can choose to choose from a range of “Made-In-the USA” products, which is especially valuable to those who want to support American businesses and workers. In fact, Mullican recently pulled production from overseas to manufacture their engineered products in Tennessee.
In addition, Mullican offers a wide range of width and size options, and includes the ability to choose “random board lengths.” This can be especially attractive for customers who want a truly unique and rustic effect. The variability of length creates really nice texture on the floor of a room.
Warranty
In terms of warranty, for their finished and engineered products, Mullican also offers a variety of choices, from a 15 year choice in their aluminum oxide finish, up to a lifetime warranty, if the product is installed with their “Aqua Shield” System.
Mullican touts its environmentally friendly and sustainable production process, called the “Responsible Procurement Program” that ensures that consumers can see that the wood for the products has been harvested from non-controversial hardwood sources and where timber growth exceeds loss. This is a nice feature, as it helps us feel good about the future of the forests and the planet.
Review Round-Up
Mullican’s site makes an effort to present themselves as an environmentally responsible company that seeks to support American labor and offers a wide range of some great styles and options. But what do the reviews say?
Firstly, the jury is still out on Mullican’s unique square edge milling format on the end joints. Some people like it, some don’t. The disadvantage to this format is that you can get some board edges that are higher than others.
This is the major complaint about Mullican from reviewers- both installers and home owners. The material is good, but many point to consistency in milling of size and ends as an issue. More than one reviewer pointed to up to a full 1/8 variance on width and length in boxes of flooring that were supposedly all the same size/length.
On the other hand, on price, Mullican is sometimes called a “buyer’s choice,” because they are a middle-of-the-road, quality producer. The consensus is that this is a good product- not the fanciest, but a moderately-priced choice that offers value for the money.
Both installers and consumers are generally pleased with the colors and finishes available through Mullican as well. The diversity of the options available from the company mean that homeowners searching for something in particular have an easier time finding just what they were looking for.
Our Conclusion: Good Options, But Beware the Milling
Overall, it seems that Mullican offers a good product with lots of attractive options in style, color, length and origin. Buyers have the chance to feel good about the sustainability and the labor sources of the flooring.
However, there seems to be a consistent problem with Mullican’s milling and quality control. While some of this can be attributed to their unique milling system for ends, the inconsistency of width and length, even in boxes that contain supposedly identical pieces, is a real problem.
If the attractiveness of the brand’s advantages appeals to you, we recommend that, upon purchase, you (or your installer) open every box immediately to compare sizes so that you can immediately either return or exchange your product before you get too far into the project.
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