Gregmills, thank you for replying to my post. In 2009, I had several installers take moisture readings and my floor was dry. BUT since 2009, I had the water damage from the water heater on 3-20-13 which damaged the 5" wide BR-111 Brazilian Cherry engineered wood floors which have not been removed and are over the Floor Muffler Ultra pad that they were floated on. I had to buy area rugs as the planks had cracked and lifted. I was waiting to have the insurance claim settled first before removing the floors. My little 6 lb Maltese got her foot caught costing me over $300 with the vet bill, X-rays and pain medicine. Thankfully nothing was broken when she was running and got her foot caught in the floor and was whimpering and carrying on. That is why I bought the inexpensive temporary small area rugs to cover many of the damaged areas until the insurance company settled with me. I had chosen to install the same Brazilian Cherry Wood but now sold directly by Triangulo to stores rather than first sold to BR-111. I just want to change my width to 3.25" from 5". I would prefer a floating floor again as it felt like a solid wood floor but was not so hard on my feet. The store had bought a large lot of 3" Solid Indusparquet Brazilian Cherry Hardwood so can give me a very good price on installing the solid wood by gluing it down using SIKA 2. I did look this product up and they are saying 3/4" solid hardwood can be glued directly to the concrete since it has a moisture barrier and good holding power but flexible. I did call the manufacture of this wood today and Indusparquet will not warranty the solid wood unless it is nailed to plywood floors. I have get to go to the store to discuss the estimate he prepared for me but I am feeling I need to tell him that I really prefer the 3.25" engineered wood downstairs and upstairs. In the summer time, the air conditioner keeps the humidity level down and the house is maintained at 36 - 40% humidity. In the winter time, the dry air is a problem with my forced hot air heat. I used humidifiers downstairs in the day time in my home office and upstairs at night. I have never had a problem with the 5" engineered wood floors until the water damage so I feel I am OK with the engineered wood floors. But when I go upstairs at night, it is very dry and I have to run the humidifiers on a long time to make my bedroom humid enough so I do not get nose bleeds. This is what I am afraid of with the solid wood. I am also afraid of the install failing downstairs where the concrete floor is not flat/level. I filled the large cracks I found when the carpet was removed in 2009 before the installer arrived to install the floor. I will not use him again as he told me to use 2 less boxes so I changed my order and we ran out of wood and he never came back to finish the job when the wood arrived. I want someone to do the full job and charge me extra for moving the heavy cabinets. I have bought so many stackable crates since I will empty them. I have called moving companies to get prices and in case a store does not want to move the cabinets into my garage themselves and to put them back on the floors.

LONG but I wanted to tell Jeri all this about my floor in case she is interested in it or her husband is. Jeri, I was so surprised at how much grain Brazilian Cherry has also and there are more boards with more grain I wanted to send in pictures of but I knew that I sent enough pictures before I would bore all of you. I think if you go with a sawn cut engineered or a solid wood plank that is 5" wide (that is what my BR-111 planks are and fit together very tightly IF you have a good installer like my second installer since I floated the floor so 3-M tape was supposed to be used for 1 hour), you will see all the grain. When you walk on the floor, it feels like a solid hardwood floor and you can't tell that it was floated. I floated it for the tiny bit of give and for the extra insulation using the Floor Muffler with the Ultra Seal. I was afraid that gluing it down wood make the floor colder (I have little dogs that walk on the floor so I was thinking of them) and would be a harder surface to walk on. No one can tell so far that has visited that it is engineered with 3M of real wood over plywood. I had wanted Brazilian Cherry for the longest time but kept trying to fall in love with other wood species due to the change in color and fear of it getting too dark. I was amazed that if you leave all furniture off and open all the windows for about 3 weeks that the wood gets richer and darker without being too dark. I have not seen any more darkening up but if there is any, it is subtle since under the TV stand and under the cabinets when moved, there is no color change that I can see. The wood was so brown when I first opened the boxes that I was disappointed and had wished I spent more and went with the Santos Mahogany that I love and still love (Was more money so that is why I went with Brazilian Cherry since the two woods are so similar) but it sat in the family room for awhile until I found a painter and a flooring guy to install it so maybe exposure to oxygen quickens up the darkening process? I also am in an interior townhouse and most of my lights are not overhead but floor lamps if that makes a difference but I do keep all the blinds open in the day time with my big windows in my family room and the floor has not darkened up more and under the TV stand (has wheels) is the same color. The wood in person is very neutral and is brown and orangey brown with a few boards being a reddish-brown. At night with the lights on, it looks more red. It is always beautiful in color and very interesting with the varied grain and goes so well with my cherry desk and credenza and looks nice against the putty cabinets, the Bone White walls, the taupe sofa or any other color that I have near it. There is an amazing abundance of grain with the floor so interesting and not boring which shocked me at first since I had wanted a floor with little grain like I saw in the 3.25" board samples I had here but now I am liking the interesting grain. I chose Brazilian Cherry since it is good with dryness in case I am sleeping and do not have the humidifiers on in the winter time until I wake up. So far no buckling which is good. The wood is very good with dog pee which I know from my experiments from soaking wood in dog pee and now from actual use with my little dog Lexi marking. It cleans up easily and does not turn black. She has been very good since I got the floor and is now marking more outside in the back yard and only once in awhile needing to put her scent on the floor and does not go back to the area that I clean so that is good. I bought the wood from TrueHardwoods.com and no one locally could match their price but I did find two other online stores with similar prices for the 3.25" and the 5" widths. I chose TrueHardwoods.com due to my neighbor having such success. Again, Jeri thanks for the compliments.

Thanks for the comments! bahstonkim, I would love to see your pictures! staceyneil, we will definately take your advice and compare woods. We expect to have a large cabinet sample arriving later this week that we can bring along. zellmar, your kitchen is beautiful. Your maple floors look very much like our existing birch floors throughout much of our mid-1800s house. The floor where our new kitchen is going is presently linoleum and we can't wait to get rid of it. We could try to mimick the existing birch floors, but thought it may be more interesting to do something that provides contrast. The more pictures the better!

From those on this kitchen forum, do you think that I should continue the Brazilian Cherry floors into the kitchen now that I have new appliances or will that not make the two small rooms look separate so I should do a pretty big tile or some other kind of floor? I like having the two rooms look like two separate rooms and I like how easy my Linoleum floor is to clean when I let my little dogs in and out the back kitchen sliding door but I am ready to change the 20 year old floor and update the kitchen. What color tile or other floor would look nice? I know there were a few kitchens I liked with big tiles. My friend is trying to push me to go with a tile look alike that is softer. I am thinking of going with dark Cherry kitchen doors hardware added unless I should just touch up the oak where it is worn and just change the counters? Any ideas of colors for the counters? I guess you should look at my new appliance post to answer these questions where I put the link below. Sorry about repeat posts but after I took so long to do one post, I was trying to copy and paste it to share to another forum on the GW forum for more responses. I am ready to continue the renovation of my kitchen and add framed pictures to the other rooms to finish them off. One day, I will change the TV to an LCD TV but for now, I want to work on the kitchen since the TV's screen is crystal clear and works so well. Here is a link that might be useful: Stainless Steel Appliances in my kitchen Link to help me continue to make changes with suggestions & ideas