We just had white oak T&G installed in out place. The reason I went with it over the engineered product is that I did not want the Seams at every joint. They tend to collect dust & dirt and we felt that if we were not right on top of it it would drive us crazy. The manuf has to chamfer the edges so the piece fit together well. Our floor is smooth ith no places for anything to collect. You can get the distressed look with regular T&G flooring too.

OK I explain. It is a floating floor what we call in the UK engineered floor, so it is not solid throughout but a thickness of the wood mounted on a plywood base. It is a Malaysian wood, not so hard, so I suppose high heels could dent it perhaps, it is not the hardest. It is a click system not requiring glue, interesting. Now from Malaysia it says it has five factory coatings of which some contain aluminium oxide. It got worn out over the years. So a year ago I sanded the wood with the machines with the correct paper and vacuumed well. Then I applied one coat of Bona Traffic silk, you know the glossy one. I then noticed a number of parts were very coarse to the touch. So after some hours I sanded again with slightly finer paper but still coarse. Now I applied again Bona. Once again certain areas were coarse to the touch and you could see stains. So now I did a final very fine sanding but this was by hand with very fine paper particularly in the areas affected. It took me hours. Then I applied the third coat. I called the Bona representative who was at a loss!!! He gave me a bottle of Bona "refresh" it is a type of product to do another pass over. I applied it to the worse parts of the floor. Although one could see areas which were coarse to the touch and which did not look quite right the shine was sufficient to fool guests for Christmas. Now I am exactly one year on. In those area I mentioned there are now black marks. I attach some photos of the present situation with example of the black marks. (sorry I do not know how to create a new thread). I want to sand it and apply Bona again before New Year when my mother is visiting, my wife will just about tolerate me sanding on the 27th Dec. I had the suspicion it was the Bona product maybe the bottle I bought was old or had been exposed to low temperatures where I bought it from but the Bona representative told me it was very unlikely to be the case.

I have bleached Brazilian Cherry but not done white pickle over the top. I have no reason to assume it wouldn't work. Bleaching would be required; it can't just be pickled. Here's a sample of bleached Brazilian Cherry sitting on top of natural color Brazilian Cherry. This sample is several years old. The left side has oil poly while the right has Bona BonaSeal (now ClassicSeal). You'd probably end up with more of a driftwood color. IMO it's easier and less destructive than tearing up the floor and replacing it. One challenge with pickling a darker wood is to make sure you don't get any cloudy areas. Cloudy pickle doesn't show up as badly on a lighter bleached wood, and make sure to use a non-yellowing finish.

Came across this thread and hope I can get some advice. I’m dealing with a situation like Kay L - dated engineered hardwood that is glued on the slab in the downstairs living areas. We would like to have all the downstairs flooring the same (except for bathroom). We also want new matching floor on stairs and second level, like Candri. My husband wants to diy the downstairs with floating engineered hardwood on top as he thinks this option eliminates the problem of potential moisture/mold issues from a glued EH floor or waterproof LVP (my preference). I am super hesitant to undertake this project. #1 The cost of covering up all that perfectly beautiful, albeit dated, wood. #2 Floating floors sound hollow when you walk on them. #3 Covering the tile kitchen floor with wood increases risk of water damage, which is why I would prefer LVP. (We had a busted pipe in the bathroom 11 years ago that ruined carpet and led us to installing our current floor.) We haven’t considered gluing down new EH over the existing glued down EH. I read somewhere that glue over the finished wood can cause problems. Not sure if nailing is an option since the base is concrete. There is NO WAY we will take up the current glued EH. We’ve seen YouTube videos, and trying to get up 900 sq ft of glued down EH would take forever and create more mess than I want to deal with. Any thoughts???