nathendo, what did you discover about the Johnson Brazilian walnut?? We are looking at the same floor, also the American Walnut. My experience is that the Johnson website photos are horrible! Even the salesman in the store said you definitely could not choose your floor from their website. This store happens to have a large installment of the BW in their store, and it is much closer to what we are looking for...a bit more warmth, good color variation, but some greenish tinges (which we are not sure if we like). Theirs has only been in about 3 months, so I don't think it's only age that adds the warm tones. We may be ordering a sample box as soon as tomorrow...but would love to hear what you learned. Adding photo of their installment--sorry for the glare of the overhead lights.

Many will say that over time, the scratches give the floor a patina. I'm not really into that patina look, but it's a given, scratches on a wood floor go hand in hand. That's why when we laid our floors, the question we had wasn't how much will they scratch, but how many times can they be refinished. We opted for 3/4 inch planks of Brazillian Walnut in our kitchen because they could be sanded several times over the life of the floor. Like the cherry this is a darker wood, but the planks are NOT stained, they are dark wood all the way through so refinishing just means, sanding out the scratches & putting on a poly finish. If you opt for a Brazillian Cherry that is a solid cherry 3/4 inch plank, (and not just cherry stained) you will be able to sand them several times over the life of the floor, not just once or maybe twice as is the option with Engineered Wood. I'm guessing you have, but if you haven't checked out Lumber Liquidators already, you may want to see what they have to offer, that's were we got our floors from and it was pretty reasonable. Also, maybe this is just personal taste, but for reasons of continuety, I would use the same plank size you currently have installed in the other rooms.

Wood is a very anisotropic material. That means it does not have the same properties in all directions. Wood barely changes dimension along the direction of the figure (what would be height in the tree). It does change across the figure (parallel to the ground) and if you are on a line that goes towards the center of the tree (radial) the movement is less than on a line more parallel to the growth rings (tangential). If you made a perect cube from solid wood, as soon as the moisture content changes it will no longer be a perfect cube. If the mopisture content returns to the same level as when the shape was cut, the wood will revert back to a perfect cube. These shape and size changes never stop in wood. They will occur over and over as the moisture content varies. If you look at Figure 3-3 in the Wood Engineering Handbook it shows how the shapes change, laid against a trees structure. There is not a lot you can do to prevent the movement, so a lot of things are done to accomodate it. By using large panlels ofg wood that have room to move, and smaller stronger pieces to make a frame to hold the panel the movement of the who;e structure is reduced greatly. A 30 inch wide frame and panel door is only going to widen as the thick stiles on each vertical edge change size. Since they are a fraction of the door width, the movement in this direction is greatly reduced. The panel is free to change size in the grooves it is trapped in because it is not tight. Extra room is left between the edges of the panel and the bottom of the grooves to allow for changes in size. If the panel expands excessively, it can simply force the doors rails and stiles (the thicker framing) apart. If you try to fasten wood to something that does not change the same way in the same direction (even cross grain construction) something is going to give. Trim moldings are often fastened at one place to allow movement of the material they are fastened onto without splitting the molding or the panel of wood it is applied to. Plenty of damage occurs as wood shrinks between fastened points. Wood is much stronger in compression than tension. When the wood dries out and shrinks between to fasteners that do not move it can split. Hardwood floor strips are only fastened on one side. The other side is held down by the tongue and groove of the boards. This allows each board to change width as the moisture content varies. Dry with open joints during heating season with low humidity, damper and tighter during a cooling season with higher humidity. Wider board move more since the movement is a percentage of the board width.

Hi jaluca, welcome! The floors are just a shade over 5" wide, they are all one width. DH and I had decided on random widths and when I went into the reclaimed flooring place I changed my mind at the last moment and went with all 5". I think both would have looked great, but I'm very pleased with the 5". We have a water-based finish on the floor. We opted not to go with a more typical oil-based finished in part for environmental reasons (and to reduce odour) but also because oil finished tend to yellow the hardwood and I loved the blonde/light brown colours in the birch. Hope this helps, let me know if you need any other info.