I have currently about fifteen residential units that I rent to upper scale folks. Mostly singles and a few couples. Over half have hardwood on the floors. Some in my big building have it in the kitchens because it was there and we just refinished it, maple, from 1913. It is full of imperfections from nearly a hundred years of use and abuse but still looks very good.

I originally was going to put ceramic in the kitchens but decided to go with the wood and see how it went. after six years I cannot think of anyplaces that have had to be even touched up yet.

There are some places in my office where the chairs have worn all the finish off.

We used three coats or oil based polyurethane in most of them. Professional refinishers did it all with the walk behind sanders. Due to all the small nails from underlayment they used a lot of paper which I ended up paying them extra for.

Folks really like the wood.

On the fourth floor it is all terrazo. That is pretty trouble free too. It had a lot of small damaged areas which we patched with bondo, sanded smooth and sealed with terrazo sealer. That is working out well too.

If anybody wants to look, there are a lot of pictures on my picturetrail websites. username ctwalgamuth, and tomwa, iirc. Let me know if those don't work and I will check and correct.

picturetrail.com

Tom W

I was curious about this as well.

So, I took a scrap piece and dropped it in the sink..........filled with water........and let it sit there for 90 minutes. Removed it and it's just as solid as when it went in the drink. This material is solid and well compacted!

The job is going well. Getting an entire row connected on the ends and then installing the row on the sides is much easier than doing it by individual panels...........which disengage the entire row anyway.

I didn't explain my idea very well. I meant not to slide the piece sideways under the jamb and then make the long joint, but to attach a piece to the existing body of work, the length wise joint, and then tap it 10 or 12 inches longitudinally, whatever is needed so that it slides under the jamb already firmly set in place. If you need to cut a shorter piece in order to make that work, you might have to go with one joint (endo) not having a tongue or a groove (then you'd have to cut off the tongue -- ouch!) to engage. Wouldn't be a big problem just once, I don't think.

Well, I finished the job. Since I had two doorways in the same plane, it was virtually impossible to do the "slide" along the long joint. I would have needed to pound the piece into the long joint without the benefit of a 15° lift. Probably would not happen. So, I pulled three of the four jambs..........took about one minute per jamb since the trim was already removed. Made the job an easy deal to finish.

This is one durable floor.............I don't think water will bother it one iota. I'll caulk the edges just for safety, but, one hour in the sink did nothing to the panel.

I thought about just removing the jambs but that can be a pain if the casing is firmly nailed into them. Good call, it seems like more work at first glance but it's the easiest route in many ways.

I assume you used a brand with no MDF -- hence the good water test results.

What brand did you use? I was at HD today and the brand I like is indeed "Universal." Real wood, all the way through.

If you want to go extra high quality someday, try Junkers (I think that's the spelling, pronounced Yonkers -- German). It's solid, not laminate, but it's pre-finished and snap together like the HD stuff. The pieces have two rows in each section instead of three.