In the squeeky spots do tge boards move at all? Perhaps at a butt joint? Being a new floor they should have filled the cracks. Thats not picky. One small spot yes thats picky. 10 as you say, not picky. The roughness on the floor is debatable. In house finishing is not a clean room. Thus its expected to have a little bit. Big chunks is unacceptable. But most small hairs or grit will work itself out. But if its everywhere thats when it needs addressing. But figuring out how much is too much is the tricky part.

I respectfully disagree with Barbie. : ) I've had 3 different engineered hardwoods and no one has ever thought they were anything but solid wood. If you don't like the bevel there are some without. But I've seen plenty of solid wood floors with bevels, too, so I don't see this as an issue. Just personal preference. : ) And notice I didn't use "real" wood as a descriptive term. That's because engineered floors are real wood on the top with a plywood substrate. That's what makes them more stable and preferred by many than solid wood. They can also be refinished, contrary to what many believe. The key is to get a wood top layer that is thick enough to sand several times, if needed. I can recommend Mannington, having used their eng. floors twice. The first time was 19 years ago before most people even knew about eng. floors. I had their random plank in my kitchen and entry. Loved it but replaced it when we did the entire downstairs in hickory from Garrison. I can not recommend it because I think the floors scratch too easily. I wish we had used the Mannington hickory but it looked a little too rustic. We have Mannington California plank, 3" oak, upstairs and it has been amazing, like the previous kitchen. Good luck and be sure to get samples of any you like. Take them home and view them in the rooms you intend to have them installed, as light is different in homes vs showrooms. Also, make sure you can keep the samples so you can test them for scratching. Staining has never been an issue that I know of. HTH! : ) Diana

Well, I'm finally checking back on this thread. We just moved back into the house after having the new wood floors installed and then having the old and new floors all finished at the same time. DH would not budge on the finish, so we ended up with the Swedish Oil Finish. I mentioned to DH that some states have made Swedish Oil Finish illegal, but he still wanted that finish for our floors because that's what we had before (or so the guy who bid the job thought). Want to know something funny? The day before they started finishing the floors the guys working in our home stated that we had WATER based finish. So who knows? On the plus side, I'm very happy with the looks of our floors. They did an excellent job threading in new boards with the old to combine the new wood floors with the ones that were installed twenty years ago. You can't tell which is old and which is new---it all just looks like a beautiful new floor. We decided to go with the natural finish, and I couldn't be happier. We stayed in a hotel one day longer than the floor guys suggested, and I'm glad we did. Yesterday I spent much of the time parked in the car in front of our house, after DH had gone in (with a respirator on) and opened windows everywhere to start airing the house out. Later, we added fans and then the started the furnace on fan only. As I write this, I'm sitting in my house with fans running everywhere and almost every window open (on three floors). My eyes sting a little and my throat hurts; I have a nagging headache. I also have noticed some impact on my breathing. However, I'm hanging in there and haven't had a full-blown major asthma attack so far. Upstairs is definitely better than downstairs. I'm disappointed to have to deal with this, but it does seem to be getting better. I'm hoping to be able to sleep upstairs tonight, but if I can't, I'm going to ask my sister if I can sleep on her sofa tonight. Does anyone have information on the time it takes for the floor to fully cure (and, thus, for the off-gassing to end)? Also, I'm wondering about moving furniture back in. I've heard everything from two weeks to sixty days, so I'm not sure what to expect. The foor guys seem to only state that the vast majority of the chemicals are off-gassed in the first forty-eight hourss. That's all well and good, but with something this strong, the few remaining can be pretty significant. If I can get through this without a trip to the doctor/hospital, it will be worth it. I'm so excited to finally have this done.

Get rid of your flooring guy! This is a problem no professional should have. I suggest finding a Pro Wood flooring company that uses the right equipment. It depends how much they have sanded but I'm sure with the right tools it can be fixed! We have been sanding floors for more than 25 years now and never used a grinder! Make sure they are using wood flooring Drum sanders for an even sanding and edger machine. Here are some pictures our previous jobs. Hope this helps.