I doubt if you will be happy with walnut, the softest of hardwoods. There is no finish that will make it much harder. It is what it is. The opposite end of the hardness scale is the ipe you mentioned. If you want a similar grain you may consider red birch, a beautiful light cherry colored wood much harder than walnut. Birch, as with all close grained woods, does show the indentations it gets more readily than the more textured woods like oak. This is because the smoother surface makes them easier to detect. No finish is perfect. Aluminum oxide is slow to wear through but also harder to repair. We have in our house a lifetime guaranteed wear through finish (Trustor WearMax) but I would not use it again. No sign of wear through but we do have indentations etc that I can not touch up to my satisfaction and I'm an expert at that type of thing. I suggest you walk through this with a competent professional to find a combination of ascetics and durability to suit your needs.

ascorsonelli: Love your house! Did you find that imperfections in paint were more easily visible with the smooth Hardie? I am building a house that is traditional in style, but I like the smooth finish. Trying to decide which to use, and my husband thinks the one advantage to wood-grain is that paint drips will be more easily disguised. Do you still love your smooth finish? Thanks!

I have the same problem! It's so frustrating. We 104 year old white pine floors that we refinished and coated with Bona. A sealer and two coats. We used a sealer and two coats on the Doug fir floors elsewhere in our house and they are VERY smooth, the floor is like one continuum. We refinished maple floors in our former home - no problem there. The oak has tons of grain rise. So so bumpy. I thought it might be due to a) the large-ish gaps between most of the boards - the poly got thinned out as it sank into the holes and b) short cure time of the sealer since the weather was cool and damp. I lightly sanded between the coats of poly. Our plan is to buff, recoat and repete. Do you guys think the rentalable buffer would sand it down enough?

We purchased the Martin Pinnacle H Groove steel garage doors that look the most like wood of any faux wood doors I've seen, including Clopay. We had real wood doors prior to these that were damaged beyond repair due to the previous owner's neglect and didn't want to deal with the upkeep and maintenance of new wood doors; HOWEVER, in retrospect, I wish we had gotten real wood doors due to the following experience. The garage door installer ordered the doors through an authorized Martin door dealer. Martin sent the doors in the wrong color, but I actually liked the color, so we decided we would keep them if Martin would pay for us to repaint the trim on our house to match. They agreed. Once the doors were hung, we noticed MANY paint imperfections down to the metal on BOTH doors. I asked for replacement doors, but Martin would only offer a paint repair. I didn't like that answer because a dab-on paint repair is never the same as a factory finish and there were AT LEAST 20 spots needing paint. But we had no alternative so we scheduled one of their reps to come and do the paint repairs. The day after the install, we noticed a SIGNIFICANT difference in the temperature of the garage. It was about 10 degrees warmer than the day before. And this was only March in Phoenix. This was concerning because our summer temps are often in the 110 degree or higher range from July-Sept and we cool our garage. Martin's advertised R14 factor rating for these doors was completely misleading. When we inquired about the increase in temperature, we found out that the R14 rating is for the rails only, NOT the panels. The many panels on the door are only rated as R8! Being that we live in Phoenix and these doors face west, this was unacceptable to us. We knew that our AC bill would go through the roof come summer...and we were right; however, Martin was unwilling to remove the doors and refund our money. Our AC bill has been over $100 more per month this summer compared to last summer. So while the doors look nice, and even fool people who think they're real wood at a 5 foot distance, they are NOT what we expected for energy efficiency AT ALL! We are also disappointed in Martin Door. Even after speaking to the OWNER of the company, they were unwilling to help us. So if you're looking for the look of real wood garage doors, but don't want the real thing, and you don't care about energy efficiency, these are the doors. Nothing looks more like real wood.