I think the misinformation was about screening and recoating a site finished and doing a board replacement. On site finished if you have a problem its much harder to do a single board replacement and have it blend. Most times you would have to resand the entrire floor to make it look good. With factory fiished a single board could be replaced without resanding adjoining areas. Either could be screened and recoated without sanding. Comments about factory finishes scratching are sometimes due to the fact that with multi coat products the almunium oxide is left off the top coat. It tends to look milky and the idea is to make the top coat easy to repair when scratches occur so its often pure urethane with the AO below the top coat.

I have not heard of that brand but we purchased the Bella Cera Ruscello flooring and when the boxes showed up it said the dreaded "Made in China" on them. What could I do at that point? We had it installed and are very happy. There is not one piece in the 1100 sq ft that has a flaw. Now, it has only been a few months, but no problems so far... And we also did about 60 sq ft of LM St Laurent flooring in our vanity area almost 2 years ago, it was "Made in China", which I did not know until later, no problems with it either.

Has anyone installed PG Hardwood oiled flooring - colour "Hangar"? If so I'd love to see pictures of how it turned out. Also looking for thoughts on oiled vs. Urethane coating. I love these boards, but it's only available in oiled finish...

Ok...first things first. Janka hardness ratings only apply to solid hardwood. Engineered planks do not work with Janka because the plied layers underneath are often 'soft woods'. Considering Janka measures how much force it takes to imbed a metal ball into the wood, it isn't possible to offer Janka scores for engineered. They just don't compute. The next thing I'm going to point out is the oddity of trying to match the ENTIRE HOUSE to a single room of existing hardwood. You have a small amount of hardwood that is dictating the rest of the house. It's not impossible but it is HIGHLY unusual. In other words, you are trying to put down more than a thousand square feet of flooring by trying to match 150 - 250sf of dining room (I don't know the size of your dining room so I'm only guessing here). That's a little like putting the cart before the horse. Usually we see this the other way around. Usually we have a house full of hardwood (big amount) but the bedrooms have carpet (small amount). The homeowners then agonize over getting a match for the smaller area. That is normal. As for your price range that you are looking at, they are too low and a little thin. The gold standard is 3/4" thickness (solid or engineered). An engineered product with 3mm or more of wear layer is the base level. The thicker the wear layer the more times a floor can be refinished. The Gold standard is 6mm wear layer (usually in the $10/sf range). If you are having a hard time finding floors that you like, you might want to think about replacing the dining room at the same time. This takes away all the pressure to work with low-grade hardwoods just to get a match to a small amount of hardwood. Solid or engineered should be more than what you are looking at for price. Prefinished wood flooring should be in the $7/sf just to start and they go up from there.