Sigh...more "salesman hype" hits again. The "indestructible" products are stone, concrete and packed earth (yes there is a floor product made out of dirt). For wood products, the FINISHES take all the abuse. That means the finish is the thing that needs to be looked at. An aluminum oxide finish is the toughest finish we have. And to ensure it must be "super tough" there needs to be at least 9 layers of AO urethane finish applied. If your floor is 5 years old, then I would say this is a traditional urethane product. Aluminum Oxide shows WHITE when it scratches. Your floors are showing indents in the finish where the dog's nails are creating groves. This is normal for urethane but abnormal for Aluminum Oxide. I'm sorry you don't like your floor. I'm sorry the sales person put a spin on it that has not materialized. You can look to see if your floor can be refinished. The top layer of wood needs to be 3mm thick. You can check that at a floor vent. Simply get down on hands and knees and measure the thickness of the top layer. A wood flooring professional (NWFA Certified of course) can then tell you how easy (or not) it would be to refinish the floors you have. And to ensure you have the toughest finish, you will need to ensure the professional uses TOP OF THE LINE products from Loba (Loba 2K Supra AT) or from Bona (Bona Traffic HD).

We just installed the Shaw Jasper in our new home and we really like it. The one thing I can say is that it has a touch less variation than I thought it would, but its not like it has NO shade variation, it is just a touch more uniform throughout than I thought it would be. Regardless, its really nice and I hope these pictures help someone out, because I looked everywhere and until Jana posted this, I couldn't find anything but stock pictures so we took our chances. It worked out pretty good!

Did you ever find any photos? I was looking at Mindful for my new kitchen, but wasn't a huge fan of some of the texture in my brightly crosslit kitchen. It it a unique grain pattern, and I was afraid it would drive me crazy in the bright light. Have you ever noticed that? The Mindful looks quite a bit lighter in your photo above.

Liinda...Did you decide to go with the Heritage...we are going with it! Hope it's the right decision and not too rustic, or too much variation...but that gal about her pic of it looks nice...I wonder what color paint would like nice with it or what color the gal above chose, b/c I think that looks pretty...We are looking at maybe Gossimer Veil or something with a very slight gray cast...Don't want anything super warm or yellow! Do you know what paint you are going to use, or did you not have to change yours?