Well what a timely post crazyhouse6. I just love my floor, I'm glad we chose it BUT it is showing gaps now after a year. I was also told that Cumaru is notorious for shrinking and expanding with humidity and temperature changes. But they told me this AFTER we installed it. Gee, thanks! LOL! Anyway, I still love it and we have filled in the gaps where they were getting too big with wood filler. It looks fine where we filled it and no one notices the smaller gaps unless I point them out.

As far as it holding up well with children and pets...it's been great in that department. We have the sweedish finish and there's not even one scratch that I can see. Very hard, very durable.

Lindy

Thanks Lindybarts for the follow-up. Your floors look spectacular.

I'm hoping to hear from a few others too.

We have BT almost everywhere in our house. It was installed three plus years ago and so far, no problems. We are in the Toronto area so have lots of weather changes too.

peachieone, glad to hear that! I was singing the praises of BT to so many people and I was afraid I might have steered someone wrong. I wonder if our gaps we are experiencing have to do with the amount of rain we get here?? (Portland)

I haven't heard Gardenchick say she's had any problems at all (I think she's in the South??) Vfish and Polkadots just got their floors less than a year ago, so maybe too soon to tell.

I will say again that despite these small gaps, we would choose this floor again. We love it!

Cumaru has moderate movement. Not a lot but definitely some. If you have humidifiers/dehumidifers/ac to keep a consisten temperature/humidity through the year that's a good thing.

I mentioned this to floorguy before but got no response. Not sure if he is confusing brazilian teak with real teak (tectonis grandis). There is a large disucssion with legal harvestation of real teak - with the sustainable teak being "plantation teak". The best teak(true teak) in the world is from burma. Unfortunately burma and the us don't get along (sort of like cuba) - therefore anything from burma is labeled 'illegal'. Now, not getting into whether its forested correctly or whether the political powers that be in burma are right/wrong but the rest of the world use burmese teak - just not us. We'll use a lot of other woods that are harvested in much worse conditions than burmese teak but because us nd burma are politically at odds - burmese teak is 'illegal'.

Brazilian teak is harvested similarly to brazilian cherry - and its whole issues in the brazilian/south american rain forest. they are two distinct woods with the "teak" common name (brazilian teak is not teak, just a common name for us to associate it with a desirable wood that isn't as widely available).

The moisture content of ANY hardwood flooring MUST be checked and recorded before installation. Find out what is considered acceptable for Cumaru and DO NOT install it until it is at or below this number. Not sure how you're going to drive the moister meter pins into such a hard wood however :-)

Thought I'd share my Brazilian Teak pictures. This was just finished yesterday - the Bona Mega finish (water based) is just dried, and this is not completely cured. I had two rooms done one was done in brazilian cherry (not shown in the pictures) and the other done in cumaru. The cumaru cupped a bunch after the 2nd application of Bona Mega. The Cherry didn't have this problem. I didn't install this wood, but this was the same house and the supplier of the wood was the same place. I'm not sure why. But the cupping problem seems to be resolving on it's own right now. I hope it doesn't become a problem in the future.

Here is a link that might be useful: Brazilian Teak / Cumaru pictures