About Oak, again .. Written by : Reiki Sanctuary Date : Sunday, June 22, 2008

We have decided to drop off the idea of having oak wood for all the bedrooms floor.  After considering the yellowish-orangey matured colour change of oak, and most temperate woods such as ash and maple, we decided to go for a tropical wood Teak instead.

We do like oak cos it is real hard wood, nice and light.  We are in favour of wood of a lighter shade as it will make the bedrooms brighter and spacious. This is an important criteria, other than providing the bedrooms a wood cozy feeling which we both like, we do not want to turn the rooms dark.

Oak before it matures [if only it will stay this forever]:

Solid oak

As teak is a tropical wood mainly native to India, Burma, Thailand, Indochina and Indonesia, Chiauw feels that there will be consistency and non drastic in the colour change down the years.  It will not be as yellow-orange as compared to temperate woods.

The matured colour of oak under our local temperature - which is too much for us:

Oak Matured Colour 2

We will settle for teak.  Guess the next question will it be Indonesian or Burmese teak.  As opposed to lay the longer strip, we will opt for the shorter ones as to keep the smaller uniformity of the different teak shades and grains.  Teaks have different machined showing blotches and streaks of various shades with straight grain, sometimes wavy and texture coarse and uneven ring porous.

Therefore, the wide spectrum of teak with smaller stripes is evenly dispensed.  We intend to keep the floor semi matte.

A picture taken from a friend's place with semi-matte teak - short stripes:

Teak wood 1

[PS:  It is not so dark as we saw it.]

Though we feel that teak may be a little dark for our liking, it would be a better choice in the long run.  Guess, we can only hope for the best.