I've dealt with 30 year old engineered floors with the original finish, and a couple of screening and topcoating over it. If you take care of floors and don't let kids play roller hockey indoors, you too will never need to do a sand and refinish. The idea of "refinishing" as a criteria for choosing your floors is not really a valid concern. Choose a quality major brand, and you won't have any worries. No LL or box store crapola. $5-6 a square foot and up is where the good stuff starts. Under that, you can get some OK buys, but you're generally gonna have to do a lot more homework to make sure. So, what does "taking care of your floors" entail? Vacuuming a couple of times a week. Not allowing food and drink outside of the kitchen. Using rugs at all entries to capture the dirt from outside. Being a no shoes indoor household helps a lot too, but I'm not going to get into that classic arguement. Don't mop your floors. You can damp clean them, but people get all hung up over sloshing water on top of wood, and that's just a comple no no. Use something like a Bona cleaner a couple of times a month, max. Every other type of cleaning should be spot cleaning. But with food and drink confined to the appropriate spot, spills are minimized. Abrasion from debris is minimized by rugs that you frequently clean. And in 8-12 years, you do a refresher of a screening and recoating. You don't need to sand down to bare wood at all. Unless you don't do the above and wear through to bare wood.

Choosing the right flooring type isn't enough for your living condition. You will have to consider the types of cut: flat sawn, rift and quarter sawn, quarter sawn or live sawn. Quarter sawn and rift & quarter sawn will be best choices, because expansion and contraction is along the thickness of the wood. You will need climate control all year round. 70 degrees at 40 % relative humidity is where you want to be throughout the year. The use of a humidifier/dehumidifier will be needed year round. Although, engineered flooring is more stable than solid. Using the wrong wood specie in your living condition can run the risk of de-laminating with engineered wood. If, the top veneer is more or less stable than it's core and backing. You will experience de-laminating in extreme humidity swings. Take in account of what the engineered flooring is constructed of: mdf or plywood. The width of the flooring will account for how much expansion and contracting also. 2 1/4" strips are the most stable. As you go wider, expect to see more wider seasonal gaps. Proper acclimating is critical, should be performed with a moisture meter. For 2 1/4" strip flooring , sub-floor and flooring moisture should be within 4%. For all other widths 2% moisture differentiation is allowed or should not be exceeded. Don't forget proper expansion gaps, which is the thickness of your flooring, example: 3/4" thick = 3/4" gap. Sub-floor type and condition will affect the performance of wood floors. All this needs to be considered for the proper and successful performance of your wood floors.

Wow...that's a huge question. I know it sounds simple, but it is quite complex. So complex there are entire books on the subject (both professional and lay-man). So....solid hardwood is just that. It is solid. It is the same wood cut from the same tree, from the same plank at the mill. Traditionally it is 3/4" thick. Widths vary but the classic is around 3" wide plank. A 3/4" solid hardwood can be refinish 3-4 times with a total lifespan of 60-100 years. These are either factory finished or site finished. The industry has realized that some people are too afraid of large purchases so the solid hardwood industry has come up with the idea to make their planks THINNER and thereby making them cheaper. I've seen 1/2" or even 3/8" solid hardwood. They can be refinished once...maybe twice and have a lifespan of 20 - 40 years. These thinner solid hardwoods are often factory finished (cheap, thin and fast). And that's the easy part. Engineered hardwood...where to start. First off the TOP layer is the ONLY LAYER that contains the pricey hardwood that you are paying for. Everything else is like "plywood". The body of the plank is made up of cross-hatched layers of wood (not always hardwood) that are glued together. The top layer will range from 2mm - 6mm. The ability to refinish will depend on the thickness of the top layer (known as the wear layer). You need 3mm of wood to complete a full sand and refinish - just once. So the 2mm wear layer is a "one and done" type of floor. It has a life span of roughly 20 years (though many people rip them out after 15 because they look beaten up). The 6mm wear layer in a 3/4" engineered plank that is site finished is the Holy Grail of the engineered hardwood world. They are the most expensive, the most beautiful and offer the longest life cycle of all engineered hardwoods. They are so expensive that they are MORE expensive than solid hardwood floors. Whew. There is so much more but that's the difference in a nutshell. Shaw has had some complaints. The biggest issues with wood will be humidity and indoor climate control. Ask your builder to check the heating/cooling system. Ask them detailed questions about the unit's capability to handle climate control that is REQUIRED for a hardwood floor - regardless of the presentation.

I know this is a very late reply but maybe it’ll help someone looking to buy Reward Flooring. Dont Buy it! We had the Terreno line installed (about 3500sqft). Purchased 1 box to get a better idea of the quality and color. looked good so we ordered it. Somehow we got a decent box. The floor has wood putty/filler throughout the planks. its rare to see any plank with ”natural” blemishes you would expect from a rough saw line.. It’s easy to find planks that had long fractures and filled or knots that popped out and were filled in with putty. It’s everywhere. We purchased a couple of extra boxes for backup and they have planks filled with putty. I would estimate 35-40% of the planks have filler. Haven’t seen so much putty since Jr High wood shop. It was‘nt till post install that I learned the floors are produced in China. Very poor quality. I suggest you look for a different brand based on our experience. Reward Flooring is horrible.