my cousin recently built a house. This is one area where it made sense to not pay the builder upcharge. They had the builder put in the cheapest carpet available, and then hired their own contractor to rip it out and put in hardwood flooring before they moved in. More choices, and cheaper. I think the builder even bought the carpet back from them.

Another thing to consider when looking at the engineered floors is plank length. I just realized why I didn't like some of the photos I saw ... they had too many short pieces which gives the floor a choppy look and to me, it looks too much like a tile effect. The Uptown Floors suggested above sound great, and I will look at them more closely, but they still have "shorter" board (12" to 8 ft). I am looking at another company with board lengths from 3 ft to 12 ft. Those longer boards make a big difference in the overall look in a larger open floor plan. The longer boards do cost more, so I need to do some more comparisons and value of spending more for a more pleasing look. Their other specs are mostly similar. I think floors are going to be my hardest decision!

@shead, it is not an either/or between engineered and onsite finishing. I am planning to get an engineered floor — that will be supplied with the raw white oak top layer (to the thickness I specify) and it will be finished on site. There will not be bevels between the planks. I can specify the quality of the wood of the white oak (character grade or less knots — I’ve forgotten what all the grade levels are called). It is my understanding that if I want boards over 3 or 4” wide, the engineered boards help prevent cupping, curling and etc distortions. The humidity in the house also needs to be controlled. Although I love the look of really wide planks, I understand that people have more problems with 10” and wider boards so I plan to stay around 7”. There are various companies that offer this raw wood engineered product. The color of the white oak varies from where the trees are grown so that may impact your choice (and mine). I haven’t yet decided on what sealer (or stain) I’ll use — the installer will provide samples on site. If I go with Bona for the sealer, I also plan to use the Bona water-based protective coat (leaning towards 3 coats of Bona Traffic HD as the installer uses that a lot and is not as familiar with the similar quality Loba product). The installer also uses Rubio Monocoat; I haven’t researched that yet to see how it compares to Bona. So far, I haven’t heard a downside to taking this route — if there are any pros out there that think differently, please let me know.

Update - we looked at the three stores in our area (we are in the boondocks) that have flooring and do their own installation (been burned by Lowe's with their crappy installations on another project, so the chains are a "NO!"). Not one of the stores recommended laminates, and they had nothing but really cheap-looking ones in samples. I gave up and bought LVP. It'll work, and I'm sure, although I won't love it like I love my hardwood at my other house, I'll like it and it'll be easy care. After dragging home numerous samples, we finally settled on TruCor Blonde Oak. We need a light-colored floor in this house. We liked the sample better than anything else, it comes in 6' boards, and it doesn't have a whole lot of color variation. I'm going to request that as many of the darker and knotty boards as possible be saved for the closets. We had a good-sized sample board, and this is the manufacturer's view of the floor as a whole. This will be in adjoining and semi-open living/dining/kitchen/hall and in a bedroom - about 1000 sq. ft. in total.