Here are some pics, the photos don't show the true color of the floors though. They were much darker and had more brown and less red in person. We did chose a almost black wire brushed oak floor in our newest build. Just to try something different, but I would do a dark handscraped low sheen again in a heart beat. :) We do build a new home every three years as an investment, so no real long term experience. But in the three plus years of having each home the floors wore well and did not show scratches with dogs. But low sheen, and handscraped did hide any scratches or dings we did have and looked natural. Other house: New build brushed oak floors, low sheen: This post was edited by xc60 on Fri, Mar 28, 14 at 1:27

Thanks all. We removed the floor. Unfortunately as expected, that exposed more of a mess. Luckily, no "damage" to subfloor per say, but it looked like the previous folks who installed the floor used leveling "float" on pretty much the entire 700 sqft and in some place as thick as almost 1.5 inches. This made it very difficult to remove the layers of flooring (combination of engineered hardwood glued down and some solid wood nailed down to plywood, which was glued and nailed down to "leveling float", which was poured over OSB subfloor). The demo guy tried to get to the OSB subfloor as best he could but he stopped after 2 days of demo and when the OSB was starting to get damaged as it came up with some of the float. We have now moved on to filling the 3 very low areas with some plywood and then pouring self leveling float over the entire floor to try to fill in all to "holes" that were created by trying to pull up the previous float. I guess I am officially welcomed to home ownership.

People keep saying certain floors are better if the basement floods but, quite frankly, if that happens it is likely everything would need replacing, anyway, Not true for tile with an uncoupling membrane or natural stone. Even low pile carpet can be saved provided the flooding is from clean water. Laminate in a basement only if it's on top of plywood and XPS insulation or a dimpled membrane, otherwise the natural drive of water vapour upwards will encourage mould growth. We currently have engineered hardwood glued down on our recently purchased home. Looks good. But it's what the house came with after being rehabbed for a year due to fire damage.

Huh? No wonder why so many people are confused with information on the internet. You could have a pro use the Tycote system to bring up the sheen level as long as the original finish is not any type of natural oil. Probably best to get the real skinny on it. https://www.basiccoatings.com/products/tykote/b06914312?pageNumber=1 Oh, wait. New? Forget the finish warranty if you went this route. Who notices it? Only you? Floors are made to be walked on, not to be looked at like a fine piece of furniture.