This post has come to life again, so for anyone seeking it out because they have the same problem, I wanted to jump in with some personal experience. After the oak floors in our new-construction house began cupping and buckling (the builder had rushed the build, since he was trying to finish a spec house on the same deadline, but had since decamped to another state due to a sex scandal), we saved for a few years and replaced it with engineered cherry flooring. This probably would have been about the same time as the OP's post, which as of this comment is 13 years old; the manufacturer was a Swedish company called Kährs, and since our local distributor had just started carrying it, there were no red flags in terms of bad reviews or negative customer feedback. That cherry floor looked great--for about ten minutes. EVERYTHING scuffed and scratched it. A puppy just innocently living its life? Scratches galore. Someone dropping anything heavier or sharper than a pillow? A guaranteed ding. A kid running a toy car over it? A tell-tale track of scuffs. Anyone wearing shoes (and I'm not talking stilettos)? Scuffs, scratches, and dents. It was ridiculous, like, we couldn't believe how quickly and easily the floor accumulated damage. Whatever finish was on that cherry, it did absolutely NOTHING to protect against ordinary wear and tear. We tried everything to clean, protect, and rehabilitate that floor. Shoes, even slippers, became forbidden in the house. We had a network of rugs from one end of the house to the next. Every chair not only sat on a rug, it had felt floor protectors and ugly wool socks on its feet. We swiffered like mad. For ten years, all the measures we took were futile, and just ended up causing us added aggravation and frustration. Finally we gave up, realized we were going to have to bite the bullet and install our THIRD hardwood floor in fifteen years, and replaced every square foot of the cherry. This time, we went for a harder wood (hickory), though the major problem with the Kährs had obviously been the finish. We put in a fairly pricey but beautiful hand-scraped wide-plank floor (Baroque Flooring Bavarian XL) and it was FABULOUS--everything the Kährs wasn't. It was gorgeous, it was tough as nails (pets were no problem!), and it was easy to clean. The moral of this story: Sometimes there's just no way around a bad product, except to replace it. The sooner you can afford to do it, the happier you'll be.

I would ask them if they glued it. In old instructions for a lot of engineered hardwood, mfgs instructed installers to glue each piece together using wood glue in the groove. If you're getting a lot of cracking noises, I'll bet that is your problem. Wood glue can always be re-hydrated from humidity and washing the floor. Then it dries out again and you step on the floor and break the glue again. I live in Maryland and its always humid here too. I used to have a floating floor and it would have been fine had they not glued it. The dealer-installer swore up and down that it was the only approved method, but I ended up calling the manufacturer who said it could have been laid without it.

I think a color like this would work.. But I can't give any specifics because what we see on our monitors won't look anything like in real life...probably what I see of your floor isn't anything like it is, too...but hopefully your monitor will read similar to mine..

Well, some people who live in newer houses with currently adequate electrical for a kitchen and a reasonable layout that they like will just do a like-for-like exchange with new cabinets and countertops, and that may be a fairly straightforward project: minimal changes to electrical, disconnecting and reconnecting plumbing and gas hookups in the same locations, no changes or repairs to floors needed. I know someone who has just done this, I will ask how much theirs cost. The kitchen we just removed in my house was done the same way. Take out the old cabinets, put in the new, insert new three piece appliance package (stove, refrigerator, DW). It was not well done, and I think it was done in a matter of days at a very low cost to put the house on the market. I am not recommending that, I am just commenting that there is a lot of road between a basic cosmetic remodel and a full gut renovation. I think my countertop cost is going to exceed the entire cost of the previous renovation, for example. And I am not sure that a lot of this cosmetic type renovation data gets reported because a lot of it happens under the radar, either DIY or handyman, without permits, because in some areas you don't need a permit to install cabinets or change out appliances. It may not be a well-reported because it occurs, in part, outside of the standard kitchen and bath design build industry.