"Yes, if you and your husband are not in accord on this, then it's sure to be exploited by the builder. And it's sure to introduce strife into your relationship as well. If you're not happy with the floors, but your husband is, then you need to pick your battles. You've had enough other issues on this build where having your husband's support to correct is vital. " this is a very good point. as are several made in this thread. movement of wood,,,floating flooring use of fillers etc. but none of it solves anything if it isn't put into effect. expecting perfect just isn't going to happen, having the correct install should be the goal. the reason I asked twice about where the foam insulation was installed, and if load calc was done for hvac is for a good reason. granted you can't see it..which seems to be your main view, but different types of foam insulation allow moisture to exit, others don't. hvac removes humidity. high relative humidity inside a house will cause wood to swell. low rh causes it to shrink. new builds have a lot of RH. moisture content of lumber used for framing, subfloor...sheetrock mud, paint all add to RH load. wooden flooring should always be put inside the house several weeks prior to install....with hvac system running. this acclimates the wood so that you don't have cupping gaps etc. I realize that this is an excellent place to vent your building frustrations...but ignoring the good advice you get here isn't solving anything. understand that you are one house. GC will build other houses & has a working relationship with insulator, hvac company, flooring co...and so on. each will do cya for each other so that the warranty runs out. and then you are left with substandard flooring...brick whatever flavor it is today. they build and move on..you live there. the one advantage you have is that the gc hasn't been paid in full. and having been to court for my own clients...it doesn't often go the way you want. its that cya good ol boy network. you & your husband need to chose what you can live with and can't live with. complaining about every little thing puts you on gc/builder/sub's sh!t list. not saying it is fair...but it is the way it is. construction is a tough field with good and bad players. chose your battles, stick to your guns & keep your complaints short to the point, factual & without getting on an emotional rollercoaster, as it will only make things worse. let your husband handle it if you can't distance yourself from your feelings. it isn't about making friends...it is about getting what you paid for in a huge investment that you will live in for years. IMO this thread is like a train wreck...one can't help but see the latest advent. I'm not trying to put you on the defensive, but as a woman in a man's field of work...these are the things I've learned. best of luck.

Amidst the horror stories on this forum of contractors who shirk their responsibilities, there are regular stories of people who are paranoid of confronting their GC, who proceed to do so and have the GC completely agree with them and redo the problem area without question. You shouldn't necessarily assume that he'll react by storming off the job, especially given his high Houzz rankings, assuming they mean anything. Think through the possibilities carefully. If he's a lout, then if you bring it up now he could storm off the job. If he's a lout and you bring it up later, he'd just storm off the job later. And it sounds like you're calculating that he's potentially a lout, so you want to wait to bring it up so you get more done. If he's a good guy, then if you bring it up now he'll fix it. If he's a good guy and you wait to bring it up, he might say "hey, if you had told me sooner I would have fixed it, but now it's going to cost me a lot more because I've put trim in, etc., so you're stuck with it." THAT's what we're all trying to warn you about. You run the risk of alienating a good GC by waiting. That's neither fair nor reasonable. And you said you have confidence in him. Why, then, are you acting like you know he's a lout?

Yes. I have sanded and finished subflooring for customers. Really no different from any other flooring finish work, except that you have to consider the fact that it happens to be a single construction floor system and, therefore, you have to take steps to protect what is below the floor when you sand and then apply stains and finishes. Anything you do above to the floor surface can easily find its way down to the space below...dust, stain and finish. You have to sink any top nails below the surface of the wood before you sand and continue to punch them below when necessary. You probably can never remove all tar paper lines and staining, but that is OK, as the floor will have a great look all by itself. I have finished these natural and stained a few. I also colored one green once at a customer's request. That one was unique and beautiful.

A strip floor with individually nailed strips allows each and every strip to expand and contract separately. Having a large expansion at the edges is of no real benefit. An floor with glued pieces fastened to each other acts as a single very large pieces of wood. these floors need expansion room at the edges. Each of thestrips in a floor might move les than 1/16 of an inch accross their 3 inch width. But acoraas a room that is 10 feet wide there are 40 strips. If they all moved as a single piece you are looking at 40/16 inch of movement, or about 2.5 inches. If you left 1.25 at each side things would be fine. A nailed strip floor only needs the 1/16 at each edge, since that is all a single board moves anyway (and one side of every board is nailed and cannot move very much at all). The gaps between the strips open ad close to allow for the separate movement of each strip. It does take some practice to lay strip floors through out the year, even after the wood has acclimated. Lay it too tight in the winter when it has acclimated and shrunk and it can buckle in the summer wen the humidity is higher. Lay it to loose when expanded and you have wider than desired joints throughout the dry parts of the year.