Yes, I believe they are a fad, and I'll tell you why. They're virtually impossible to screen and recoat. That's basic maintainence every 5-10 years. You bring in a heavy duty buffer and "rough up" the floors and then reapply a finish coat. With hand scraped, you have to do all of the screening by hand if you're going to get "down in the hollows" as well as hit the high points. That's a lot more maintainence intensive, as well as expensive. If you don't do the screen and recoat, and now you have to refinish, then you have to machine sand, although I suppose you could pay exhorbitantly for someone to hand sand the whole floor. Sanding will take off the high spots and even the flooring out. That hand scraped look will be gone. They'll be flat and smooth--which was the goal of most of our forefathers who put in wood floors. Rustic plank floors weren't meant for upscale homes. THose were workman's homes. They were just waxed cheap pine boards that if they were lucky got stripped and rewaxed every couple of years. Nice wood floors in more upscale homes, such as oak or mahogany, were sanded smooth, shellaced, and waxed, and kept buffed to a high shine by paid help. It's a peculiar reversal of status to have hand scraped and rustic floors now rather than smooth high shine ones. It's much like during the old days when pale skin was considered beautiful and desirable by the elite and if you had a tan, that mean that you had to work outside and thus were of a lower social status. Then that reversed, and the social elite were the only ones who had the leisure and money to travel to exotic locations to acquire a tan, and the pale folks were the ones in the factories out of the sun.

I would look for a floor that matches the dogs, personally. If you had a couple of black labs and pale maple floors, you would see every dog hair ... Just like if you have a Samoyed with ebony stained floors. Go for a light oak (white oak is nice, and inexpensive) or the hickory or even a bamboo that isn't too dark. Also, have you looked into the premium polyurethanes, like Bona brand? They make some semi-gloss and satin finishes that are really beautiful and supposedly hold up well. We are getting the final coat of Bona on our floors tomorrow, so I can't say how it holds up yet, but we didn't spring for the super durable version of it either (this is for our second floor, but I might pay the up charge for Bona Traffic when we do the first floor). Last suggestion ... When your darling pups get older and start to slip, you can get some inexpensive indoor/outdoor carpet at a big box store and just replace it every couple years. We put that stuff in all the "runway zones" in our house when our shep mix was getting older and his hips were starting to bother him. Also, I know this isn't the right forum, but IF your dogs have hip issues we found that Sea Jerky from Coastside Bio Resources made a huge difference. It made it possible for him to start stealing food off the kitchen counters again :). Our vet suggested it instead of the human grade supplements we were buying for him, he felt dogs digested it better. It was even more effective than the adequan shots we tried. I really believe it gave us an extra couple of years with that dog :) And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming ...

remodelqueen - I soooo agree with you! My brother was ready to re-do my entire kitchen plan on what "he" wants in his kitchen remodel...claiming that he "knows" what look I am going for & HE has already had it & it would be better if I scrap it & do something completly different... huh? Budget? Oh, is that what we were supposed to do? ;-) Actually DH & I are quite stubborn when it comes to something we want. What usually ends up happening is we find a way to get it cheaper (did some labor ourselves, bought some scratch & dent items/clearance ~with a 4yr warranty...you get the idea) or we do without until we can find a way to get what we want. This board has been a GREAT resource. I returned a double oven that was sitting in my living room for a month after reading some reviews of loud & long fan times & other issues. I returned a sink for another (it was actually cheaper~gasp!) after seeing one on here I had never heard of before. I was very careful selecting our (prefab) granite after reading things here. I was thrilled when I actually found a couple with some movement in them! I never would have thought to tell the granite guy what to do without having seen what I like on this board. Yeah, the granite was a bit of an upgrade in pattern, but the overall price was only a couple $100 more...not a lot in the grand scheme of life. We may have gone overboard on the appliances. I will admit that. DH fell in love with a fridge (42" counter depth) that fits beautifully in the kitchen. Did we "need" it? Probably not. But he really loves it. I have NEVER seen him break out a rag & clean something so often before ;-) So, in some respects we were "good" with a budget...on others, well, we agreed to sacrifice other expeditures for a while to get what we really loved. "Forgotten" the budget? No... I just try not to think about it right now! LOL!

Just thought I would chime back in... I can hardly remember my thoughts from this thread-LOL but I ended up with Indusparquet Brazilian teak. On the upper 2 floors we did solid wood 3 inch boards or so? They look like Steve's just a narrower plank and in the basement I have the same look with engineered wood. I love them and get so many compliments on my floor-