You have a very good floor plus it is ~40% harder than oak. The floor you have is a sliced engineered, a superior method of manufacture. I imagine your Dad drug the mattress on edge with the heavy metal frame compressing the wood or if the box springs, a staple, nail or two causing the damage. The best cure we use is to replace the boards damaged. You could try using epoxy to fill the scratches and finish with matching sheen professional products but that is very difficult even for the pros.

From your tests and comments, you're really NOT going to be happy with a dark floor if you are "hard on your floors" and want something that won't show that wear. Dark floors are much higher maintainence and show every single ding and dust particle. You either have to be in love with constant swiffering, or be OK with dust showing 1 hour after you just finished dusting. The visible scratches (and there WILL be scratches in ALL types of wood flooring) will drive you crazy in a dark floor, especially one that doesn't have much grain to hide it. Handscraped will also limit any recoating down the road to hand screening if you want to maintain that look. That's a lot more $$ than just using a machine. Resanding the floor to smoothness to refinish will eliminate the handscraped look as well. So, you're not buying a floor that will be easily or inexpensively maintained. It's basically a "single use" type of floor that when it wears a bit, will cost a lot to recoat or will have to be refinished. Based on your expressed needs and your posted tests and comments, the floor that you can actually live with will be a medium dark non handscraped oak in a satin finish.

Nope not a crappy Poly..just the ultra high expectations of consumers today. Anyone that knows wood and how it will perform understand that this is absolutely normal and they are going to continue for as long as you have the wood. now dont get me wrong, prefinished will have a tougher finish coat than site finished. That is just a fact and can be proven with research. I will say that there are a couple of Canadian companies and also Shaw applying now applying the aluminum oxide on top and have come up with a way to do it without clouding the wear layer. This is a product that amps of the resistance to abrasion big time. You have mostly abrasions...very few scratches at this point. The scratches will come and you must not worry about them. it adds to the patina of floor. For the people who to do not want to see what you are seeing, they should go to hand scraped or distressed flooring as old English will address the issue with perfection. There is no answer for you my friend..only that what you are experiencing is very normal. To take off your shows, and try not to ever mark the floor is placing undue hardship on you, your family, your pets and all else who enters your domain. Enjoy those damned floors just the way they are and understand that those marks are normal and you have the best flooring in your home that money can buy. They can be screened at a later date to make them museum quality once again, but who lives in a museum. I had pre finished floors laid 2 years ago and we have a beautiful high dollar home. I also puked in about 2 weeks and they I came to realize..such is life with Hardwood. Enjoy. Good Luck.

A quick wipe with Old English and the scratches disappear. We just had ours refinished in Feb and got quite a few scratches during remodel. GC suggested Old English and it has worked. We have medium brown I'd say. I have not seen scratches from our dogs and kids, (yet) only from moving furnitures and appliances.