oh lazygardens - you have nailed my fear and outlined more than I want to tackle, I'm afraid. This has been sitting outside in pieces for almost 2 days now - bright sun both days so it's getting a good airing and drying. With a little work it may be good as a storage piece in the new garden shed we are planning. But I'm not going to tackle a re-make on this - my project list is already a mile long. If I can get it stabilized, the drawers all working properly and the odor contained with some shellac, I'll probably do a paint wash on it and call it done.

I happen to be someone who installed both BR111 (Timborana) and Bellawood Bloodwood and Bolivian Rosewood. The ground floor is slab so I needed engineered wood. I am super happy with both. The Timborana is much softer than both Bellawood. The Bloodwood and Rosewood are about 3X harder than Red Oak so this is not a surprise. You can literally drop anything on either of the Bellawoods and I challenge you to see any dents. The BR111 Timborana is absolutely gorgeous and looks better than mahogany. We are super careful so in spite of both floors being 16 years, they look great and I still get compliments on the Timborana. It literally looks like fine furniture wood. I would not use it if you have children and pets or you are super rough on your floors. We almost never walk in with outside shoes and as a result it has held up well and only a few deeper dents and scratches. If you are not on slab and can use 3/4" planks in the heavy traffic areas, then by all means go for the Bellawood. I think it will outlast the house by another 50 years .... it is that good. The only advise I would say, if you have a Bellawood plank that is bent significantly, do not attempt to push it into shape with the nail gun, just set it aside and use another. I am not talking about slight misshapen, rather about ones that are 1/2" because sometimes they will resist so hard, you will spend 20 minutes on one plank. Luckily there is only a tiny percentage that are not straight. Overall both are great but pick the best according to your intended use

LL gone down hill? Hmmmm. That would imply they were on the "up and up" at one point. Go ahead and google Lumber Liquidators and lawsuits. You should get thousands of hits....because that's roughly how many lawsuits they are going through. Many of them are class action level - because there are SO MANY of the same issues. Remember: in the court system the concept of "reasonable person" is an odd one. And there have been several judges who have pointed to the NAME of the company and said, "THERE (Liquidators) is your 'Caveat emptor' warning." and then reduced the amount of money given to the homeowner. Implying that a reasonable person should be able to imply, by the NAME of the company that the products are "less than perfect". Good luck.

Despite not liking how dark my Brazilian Cherry floors became in my home office, I loved them so much in my family room so I have been so disappointed they were ruined in my flood recently. I have tried so many sample big boards from a local store and I am realizing that the wide board just does not look good in my home office and I do love my floors despite the color change. I am not back into deciding which exotic wood floor but in the 3.25" or 3.5" wide depending on which engineered width is being offered. All the really wide boards in other brands just do not look right in my home office with little floor showing to my eyes. Also if the boards are shorter and less wide, more of the light boards will be seen and I will see the mosaic of colors that I fell in love with almost 4 year ago when I installed my floors. Yes, they change color but no wood is perfect especially if one is stuck with engineered wood since I am on a slab floor and I have to make sure the wood looks good with my Putty file cabinets. Hope this helps others that despite the problems associated with Brazilian Cherry needing to be cleaned more often and darkening, I do love the exotic floors the way they dramatically make a room come alive if one can't have rugs in the room.