Wood floors

The foreclosure house has really ugly flooring on the main floor. Some is laminate and some is carpet (including the dining room...). So we are going to rip out all the ugly and replace it with hardwood. I found a place with some great, fairly inexpensive options. Here are some of my thoughts.

Yellow Pine
Wide-plank yellow pine floor is lovely. The room in the picture has a beautiful wide plank floor. The problem with pine is it's soft. We just aren't sure if our dog-cat-heels lifestyle is gentle enough on floors to make pine work.

Red Oak
This is a more classic choice for a floor. I don't like the yellowish hue that oak can take on as it ages, but red oak seems like it would trend away from that.This wood probably fits our lifestyle better (high heels, dog nails, etc, don't ding these floors up as much). And I think the color is pretty--oak has a lot of natural grain variation, which can be good and bad. A darker stain will minimize it.



Engineered Floors
These floors are made with a layer of real wood on top of specially-designed plywood. They are very durable and are a good choice for wet areas (bathrooms, kitchens). If you want under-floor radiant heating, you pretty much have to go with engineered floors. They are beautiful, but can only be refinished a limited number of time because the layer of real wood isn't very thick. Usually refinishable 2-3 times, it's fairly moisture resistant.

Here is a link to a very useful wood-hardness table:
http://www.woodfloorsonline.com/techtalk/hardns.html

Prefinished vs Unfinished
When i think about finishing an unfinished floor, I get nervous. Doing it right requires extensive sanding, then careful stain application, and then coats of poly ... the more I think about it, the less I think I'd be able to do a good job. So, we've decided to go with a pre-finished hardwood. I think it's the perfect solution! Instead of install-sand-sand-sand-base coat-stain-stain-poly-poly-poly it's just install.
This is a pretty "butter rum" oak floor.

Hand Scraped
One option for long-wearing floors is to choose a "hand scraped" floor. That basically means "pre-roughed-up in an artistic way". It's like pre-torn jeans. They have a lot of texture and are interesting, so we will also be considering these. I can't decide which would drive me more nuts: wrinkly floors, or the occasional scratch on smooth wood floors.

Have you installed hardwood floors before? Did you find it easy to get the hang of? Any pro tips? What do you think of the hand-scraped floor?

We will keep you updated as we go along!