Originally Posted by Nancy1999
(Post 2597251)
It really not the wood that shows wear and tear, it's the finish, and some finishes are much better than others. Pine is a soft wood, and you can ding it if you drop something on it, but most wood that they sell for flooring is hard enough and won't ding or dent, the finish is what you have problems with. Some people think going with a harder wood, helps, but if you go too hard, you can have twisting and warping of the wood. There's pluses and minuses to every finish, and knowing what's important to you, will help you decide the best finish. For me, I wanted to be able to touch up spots or a well a traveled area, without doing the whole floor. So I looked into the Tung oil finishes. They don't have the advantage of being impervious to water, so I went with something called Water Lox, it's a great finish, and you can keep it looking like new. It's tung oil and polyurethane that you can just add layer after layer. With regular polyurethane finishes you have sand the floor to add a new layer, and this is a very labor-intensive costly job. You can't touch up spots without it showing. The prefinished floors have a great polyurethane coating that is baked on, but, they have the disadvantage of having the bevel between strips of wood, and junk can accumulate in that area. They are also guaranteed for 25 years, but that is for normal wear and tear, so the guarantee, is kind of worthless. If you get solid flooring, you are really adding value to your home, because it can be refinished quite a few times. There is also something called "engineered wood, and it's real wood, but not solid, so it usually can't be refinished because the top wood is too thin. You probably see this in more new homes, but I like sold wood better. There are some imported woods that have a natural oil finish already on them, like Brazilian Cherry, some are suppose to hold up to water really well, but I haven't checked that out. You will need a finish that water can dry on the surface with no damage to the wood. I agree that you should check out Lumber Liquidators.
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