Here is my dilema. We have most of our first floor, 2500 sq ft, installed with Anderson prefinished engineered 3" maple floor stained a dark cherry and we love the floors. It is a traditional smooth floor with a semi-gloss finish. Our house is a very traditional, elegant "Gone With the Wind" type home. Here is my dilema. We had water damage to a small area. An upstairs toilet sprung a leak during the night. The damage was in a hall but since our flooring is no longer made our insurance company is willing to pay to replace the entire floor. All of our staircases, bookshelves, kitchen cabinets, and fireplace mantles where customed stained to match the floor when the house was built, so I need to stay with the same warm rich brown/red color. I was hoping to refinish the damaged section but the wear layer is too thin, even though the flooring was over $8/sq ft 13 years ago. I have been searching for 8 months for a traditional engineered smooth, maple flooring with a dark cherry stain, with a shine AND a thick wear layer. Now I find out that even if we have a maple floor that is thick enough to refinish...it would be close to impossible to "satisfactorily" refinish a maple floor with a dark stain....To make matters more complicated in the upstairs rooms where the flood ruined the carpet we were all set to install a solid dark cherry finished maple flooring but this would probably have the same problem. Why pay for a solid dark maple flooring when in reality in will not be able to be refinished to the same color as original?What would you recommend? I shy away from the exotics because I do not want photosensitive color changes as I have several large area rugs with bright sunshine. For me it is not feasible to move around large area rugs and furniture. My current floor shows absolutely no visible difference after 13 years when I pick up the edges of the area rugs. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I hate to say this but we are considering travertine floors because I haven't been successful finding a replacement.

I had a customer with almost the very same situation however the damage was done to the middle of the kitchen floor. The floor was 3/4 inch solid 3" wide plank. They had flooring left over from the original installation. I went and very carefully removed the planking that was cupped and stickered it in the dining room so the plywood could dry out.

It too was a color and wood that was no longer made. The plan was for me to go back at a later date when the moisture content of the sub-floor was back to a normal moisture content and weave the new flooring into the repair area and use the stickered flooring if we ran a little short.

Then the insurance adjuster got involved after I left. They too wanted to replace the whole downstairs floor. I'm not sure what happened in that case but I never heard from them again.

You might want to cut the center of the hall and put in a field of Travertine in the center area. Instead of trying to get it to match make it a feature design. You could also lay the center field at a diagonal with a border. Instead of trying to make it match, make it a contrast feature so it doesn't look like you tried to make it match and failed.

Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't thought about it that way .... maybe it will work!

I had a related problem where I had to do 27 repairs in an old schoolhouse in Colstrip, MT The original old growth maple was installed in 1910. Where did I get wood to match? I found out they had two rooms separate from the main floor that were going to be offices. I suggested using the flooring from those two rooms to do the repairs and then replace the flooring with new wood.

The general contractor and painter were panicked when I suggested that. They had just got all the old molding back in place without breaking any of it and it was painted. I thought of a solution. I cut 6 inches away from the baseboards with my circular saw and removed the center for repairs. When I replaced it I put borders in both rooms with picture framed corner blocks and then installed the field with new maple laid at 45 degrees to the wall.

By cutting the flooring 6 inches away from the baseboard I never had to do anything to it. Problem solved.

Splendid idea!

Great idea with leaving a section all around the room and then adding a border.

I think I am really leaning towards replacing the floors since they are 13 yrs old and insurance is paying for replacement. I really want a durable engineered wood, with minimum photosensitivity, that will be a rich dark cherry brown/red tone. Our current flooring is maple stained dark cherry and we love it, but too thin to be refinished. I am told maple is very hard to stain a dark color and to stay away from using maple for dark floors. What other wood will give me that look?

I think you should take a look at WD's suff. They can do darn near anything.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdflooring ... 215608564/