I think the misinformation was about screening and recoating a site finished and doing a board replacement. On site finished if you have a problem its much harder to do a single board replacement and have it blend. Most times you would have to resand the entrire floor to make it look good. With factory fiished a single board could be replaced without resanding adjoining areas. Either could be screened and recoated without sanding. Comments about factory finishes scratching are sometimes due to the fact that with multi coat products the almunium oxide is left off the top coat. It tends to look milky and the idea is to make the top coat easy to repair when scratches occur so its often pure urethane with the AO below the top coat.

I have site finished and am very happy with them, but because every entry into our house led onto the hardwood floors, we had to go to a hotel for 5 days while it was being done. It's also quite stinky for a few days. But, I preferred the satin finish of my hardwood floors, and perhaps there are more choices than when I did my floors 5 years ago, but it seems that the prefinished floors are shiney and would show scratches much easier than the satin site finished floors. I also think it depends on the type floor and color as to how well it holds up. It seems to me that oak in a light to medium finish with a satin sheen shows the least amount of scratches. Darker woods with little grain and a glossier finish seem to show the most dirt and show scratches the most because there isn't enough wood grain to disguise things. My big question would be has anyone had site finished and prefinished side by side? I have a few room that I would like to add hardwood to, and am intrigued by the ease of installing prefinished, but think they would look funny side by side with the site finished floors?? It seems like you either go prefinished or site finished in your home or can you mix?

This is such a personal decision - it all goes to what "looks good" to each individual person. I've had site-finished, engineered/pre-finished, and laminate wood-look planks. Honestly, for me personally, I rank engineered/pre-finished last in the cost/benefit analysis. It scratches more easily than my wood-look laminate did. Plus engineered still can look like laminate when it is installed - you see each individual board, if that makes any sense at all. Site finished is finished on-site (thank you Captain Obvious!), so there are seamless coatings over the entire surface. Engineered boards if they start to move on you, even a little bit, show a bit of the rough/cut ends. If I had to rank them, for me - I'd pick site finished and I will pay a premium for any home which has site-finished floors. (It was the deciding factor in my last home search.) I had a good quality laminate floor (wide planks) and I loved that floor far more than my current engineered wood floor. I personally will never again chose engineered. But obviously different people have strongly different opinions. Which is why this is such a personal choice.

Ok...first things first. Janka hardness ratings only apply to solid hardwood. Engineered planks do not work with Janka because the plied layers underneath are often 'soft woods'. Considering Janka measures how much force it takes to imbed a metal ball into the wood, it isn't possible to offer Janka scores for engineered. They just don't compute. The next thing I'm going to point out is the oddity of trying to match the ENTIRE HOUSE to a single room of existing hardwood. You have a small amount of hardwood that is dictating the rest of the house. It's not impossible but it is HIGHLY unusual. In other words, you are trying to put down more than a thousand square feet of flooring by trying to match 150 - 250sf of dining room (I don't know the size of your dining room so I'm only guessing here). That's a little like putting the cart before the horse. Usually we see this the other way around. Usually we have a house full of hardwood (big amount) but the bedrooms have carpet (small amount). The homeowners then agonize over getting a match for the smaller area. That is normal. As for your price range that you are looking at, they are too low and a little thin. The gold standard is 3/4" thickness (solid or engineered). An engineered product with 3mm or more of wear layer is the base level. The thicker the wear layer the more times a floor can be refinished. The Gold standard is 6mm wear layer (usually in the $10/sf range). If you are having a hard time finding floors that you like, you might want to think about replacing the dining room at the same time. This takes away all the pressure to work with low-grade hardwoods just to get a match to a small amount of hardwood. Solid or engineered should be more than what you are looking at for price. Prefinished wood flooring should be in the $7/sf just to start and they go up from there.