We have pre-finished Bruce hardwood floors and love them. My parents also love their Bruce hardwood floors. Both of us have a shiny finish while they have a beveled edge and we opted to go without the bevel. Theirs are a gunstock shade and ours the shade lighter.

With the new house, I think I'll go for a darker shade and less of a sheen. Since getting my current floors I've learned that less sheen shows scratches less. With two kids and a dog, that's important to us.

Flooring is such a personal choice. What appeals to me may not work for you and vice versa. Do you want to post pics of what you've put down so far?

I haven't taken any pics so far. I'm just sitting here at work feeling depressed to be spending several thousand dollars on a floor I don't like. I'm just hoping it will grow on me, because I don't think I have a lot of choice at this point.

Here, this picture from the manufacturer's site is fairly representative of what it looks like, though I'd say that the lines between boards are more prominent in our house due to the way the light hits them.

{{!gwi}}

Big big hugs, sch917! Such a huge investment and you want to love your floors. I hope you can find a way to fall in love with them. (Sorry, no help as my pre-finished bamboo is going in next month.)

my last 3 houses we installed pre-finished hardwood. First house was oak, and I really loved it. 2nd house was distressed hickory, a medium stain and very consistence in color (wasn't like natural hickory) I almost died when it was first being installed. I stopped the installation and called the company about returning it.. the restocking fee was $5000 plus shipping back, that I decided to live with it. Turns out - I loved it!

3rd and current house is a pre-finished mahogany floor. Again, at first I nit-picked it all apart, didn't like the space and gaps between boards and such, however, once again when it was finished and I was living with it, I really "like" it. I say like, because it really is just a bit darker than I wanted. It is not an expensive floor, but it looks great, everyone who comes comments on the floors.

Thinking back whenever we built homes, I panic about hating things, but when it was all done, it all came together and I ended up liking it!

Thanks, that definitely helps!

(What's up with it making me change the subject to reply? Is that new? I guess I haven't been around here much for a couple of years...)

We have the prefinished ash in our living room and master suite. And we dearly love it. I wondered about such a light colored wood, when everyone seems to be going darker, but now that we've had it installed for a whole year, I know it was a great choice in our small Cape.

I'm glad Elsa42 explained what the difference is in prefrinished and varnished, because I had no idea. I just knew I was tired of sanding and the house being messed up all the time, and I did NOT want to endure the process of finishing floors once they were installed.

Lovely to look at, not exactly really shiny, just very smooth and easy to keep clean. No problems with the baseboards or the heating system, it just all went together like it should.

Thanks all. It does make me feel a little better. Looking at it again when I got home tonight, I still hate it, but I feel like I'm pretty much stuck now. The mess, time and pain of finishing in-place is just not something I can handle right now. I have the dueling stresses of not liking the floor and wanting the house back to normal (all of our stuff is crammed into a couple of rooms that aren't getting a new floor). If it wasn't so disruptive to our living situation, I'd be more inclined to say rip it out and do something different. But I know it would add at least a few weeks, and I just can't deal with that...

sch9171 - I am so afraid I am going to be right where you are that I sent this thread to hubby to read. I told him I would probably fall apart at some time during the floor install or right after because it is not the floor of my dreams, it's the floor of his dreams. But it was this or no wood floor at all, so I chose to compromise. I think it is all so much more difficult when you are living in cramped space while your house is torn apart. That's been us for the last month and our floor gets delivered Saturday but we need to wait another month for it to be installed because the moldings aren't available yet.

Hang in there.

Every engineered floor is different from the next. If You really don't like this one, its possible to use a product you will like. If you dislike the spaces, you can try looking at Lauzen, which is a really nice product and a very square edge that fits together tight. My friend has it in a natural oak and its very nice. It doesn't appear plastic. Some pre-finished wood does, and some does not. I have Mirage in brazillian cherry. It is a low sheen so it does not look plastic at all. Okay, maybe it does a tiny bit (to my VERY discriminating eye) if I really stare at it from up close. But the overall look is very natural from the natural viewing distance.

I think the low sheen is actually one of the things that is bothering me the most (besides the spaces). I don't want a basketball court, but to my eye, the sheen makes it look "manufactured" and cheap. I think the bottom line is that I feel like we went with a real solid hardwood rather than laminate or something else cheaper because we wanted a really classy, high-end(ish) look. And I feel like what we have looks much cheaper than what it is (whereas a lot of the cheaper products look more expensive than they are).

Maybe I'm just too used to looking at real old wood floors and my expectations for what a modern new wood floor can look like are out of whack. Before this project, we had a very small wood floor right at the entrance (maybe four feet by six feet), and while it was in need of refinishing overall it looked very nice. It was a different color, but I was foolishly expecting something similar in style. I think that floor was original to the house, built in 1988, so it's not like I was comparing to something from a hundred years ago. And while we live in a nice neighborhood, these aren't super high-end houses, so I'm sure the old floor wasn't very expensive at the time it was installed.

sch9171, who is the manufacture of your floors.. I actually think they look so nice!

Regarding the low sheen.. LOVE it. I also think is is so much nicer than a high sheen, which is also VERY available in pre-finished flooring. I myself thought they looked cheaper, and not as nice. The high sheen shows EVERYTHING.. every spec of dirt, every ding or scratch. We are in the process of getting ready to build again, and I know I'm going with pre-finished flooring, with a low sheen!

I also totally agree with elsa42, things change so much rugs and furniture go in.

The manufacturer is Kentwood. The specific product is Kentwood Originals solid hardwood in "North American red oak Caribou."

You'll love it after you get your stuff in there and see it all come together.

We have wood floors (in the main parts of the house) that were finished after installation which were laid over a sub flooring at the time the house was built.

When we replaced the bedroom carpet with prefinshed wood floors I had the same panic you are having. Now - I LOVE them. Prefinished is just different and that is what I reconcilled with. It is very different flooring than finished on site but it is still quality flooring and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Now, I did not feel that way as it was going down and that was a very sick feeling. I look back on it now and think I wish I could have spared myself the extra wrinkles earned by the stress. I get tons of compliments on the flooring I thought would haunt me forever and that I now love.

I understand your pain - just wait - you'll get used to it and as pretty as that picture is, I am betting you will fall in love with it too.

:)

I find the new hardwood floors to not look cheap and look beautiful. Once, you put your furniture in the rooms and clean the floor with a wood product, you will start to like your floors I am sure.

Thanks. I hope so! I think I'm going to go shopping at floor stores tomorrow and see what else is out there. I definitely believe it'll look better with the furniture back and stuff, but I also would rather rip it out now than wait until everything is back in place and have to re-move it again to redo the floor. It's about 90% done today, and I like it less every time I see it.... It's basically a sunk cost now, so there's a lot of incentive to just live with it.

Actually. This might be a stupid question, but I'm desperate... One of the selling points of solid hardwood is that it can be sanded and refinished, right? So, would it be possible to have someone come in and sand off the factory finish and then put on a new finish?

The flooring board has some professionals that post on that site that may be able to offer you advice about refinishing the engineered flooring to the finish you want.

When we built our home 13 years ago, we put in solid pre-finished hardwood with bevels. My husband hated those bevels so much, we had someone come in and sand down the floor. I think it cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 or so for the kitchen, dining room, and hall. I wish we hadn't because it removed the much better factory finish. That might be the answer for you, however, if you really hate your floors. But, I think they're gorgeous.
Dee

We did pre-finished in one bedroom. The rest of my house has the oringinal old oak. It is not that I dislike the pre-finished, but I just like my old oak floors better. But, since you are 90% done, I guess it would be best to live with them. I don't think you mentioned the color? Mine are very light and I think that is part of the problem. The darker woods look so much better.
I agree withthe above posters: furniture and area rugs will make a big difference.

The color is the same as the picture above, though it looks somewhat darker and redder to me in person. It's fairly dark.

Here are some quick pics I just snapped of the real thing, not quite done yet. The colors aren't quite right; I could have gotten them closer with an SLR, but the card reader for those is buried under a stack of stuff right now :-p

I actually think it looks a lot better in pictures for some reason. Not quite sure why... Also, the lines on the floor are much more prominent in the afternoon when the light is coming in from a different direction.

The floors are beautiful!
They look like quality flooring.

Yes, I agree! MY floor is very light and looks almost like a Pergo Floor. I like yours too. Go with it. As you said, this is not your forever house. We all learn as we go along.

I think your floor is beautiful! When we were building our home we went with prefinished because it was much less expensive due to the amount of time you have to spend on site-finished. I also didn't like the micro-bevels, but after living with it for three years now, I don't know that I would want site-finished. The prefinished wears fantastically, and once your rugs and furniture is in, it's much less "in your face". The low sheen is much better for hiding scratches, etc., so is better in the long run. I hope you come to love your floor; it looks luxurious in the photos!