Customer Reviews for Bruce American Originals Salsa Cherry Maple 3/4 in. T x 2-1/4 in. W x Varying L Solid Wood Flooring (20 sqft /case)

Having installed unfinished red oak flooring downstairs twenty years ago, we wanted hardwood upstairs too, but without the hassle of sanding, staining, and finishing, so we decided on this prefinished natural red oak from Bruce. The two bedrooms, their closets, and the hallway came to about 360 sq. feet, so I ordered 400 sq. feet: one pallet (16 boxes, which is cheaper than the cost of individual boxes), plus another four boxes (which included 10% extra for wasteage). I didn't notice any significant color differences between boxes: in every box some of the pieces are lighter, some are darker. The photo on the Home Depot web site looks pretty close to the real thing. The wood does have a "reddish" tinge overall (in contrast, the unfinished red oak stair treads came out more brownish and blondish when I applied a coat of polyurethane). My photos make the wood look a little darker than it actually is. Even though a few pieces had blemishes (e.g. knots), I didn't have to throw away a single board. I used less desirable pieces for closets or edges of rooms. Boards that are slightly bowed can usually be muscled into place. I was happily surprised that there were so many long boards (50-60-70 inches) in each box. Because there was so little wasteage, I was able to redo three small stair landings too, and I was able to return one unopened box. We're very pleased with this product.

Love the color! It's very warm and inviting and works well with my existing hardwood floors.Our contractor said it was easy to install. I am very happy with the finished product. Looks very durable.

Excellent prefinished flooring that I used to repair water damaged flooring under carpet in bedroom adjacent to bathroom plumbing wall. Did not have to stagger joints or exact match original flooring for customer. Thickness is about 1/16" less than original 50 year old oak planks...but shimmed with vinyl sheet flooring and matched height. Solid as a rock floor again!

It took me a long time to select the right color, solid, nail down and the wider 5 inch plank width. I am happy with my choice. HD Installed a large living/dining are in just 2 days, little mess and excellent thresholds and trim work. It’s a little shiny but I like that and so easy to clean. The slight variations in light and darker wood and short and longer plank cuts make for an authentic, rich visual. It hasn’t scratched, even with two dogs running around on it. Hoping it won’t bleach out in the sun as I have alot of light near outside door to the deck.

Perfect, beautiful just what I need !!

Wood flooring was very good quality and exactly what I expected.

Beautiful color and quality wood. The issue is the wood edges are not precise and there are a lot of gaps between parallel runs. The wood acclimated in the house for over a month so that is not the issue. We used nail down method and hired professionals for install. The gaps are very noticeable near heat registers especially. But the whole floor has gaps that are developing further over time. We spent over $35,000 on this project.

This ended up looking great.

Product doesn't look like dark copper, more like yellow brass and didn't match with the same company dark copper, that I installed 2 weeks prior, so I had to return it, without finishing the floor.

This is the fourth Bruce hardwood Flooring product i have installed. It was very consistent in the quality of the individual boards. Very few had defects in the surface or construction that prevented their use. I had very little waste and was able to return several cases that were unused. Each case had a good variety of lengths and the coloring was evenly consistent. Overall I am very happy with the result

before you buy a box, stand it up on end and shake it so all the pieces go together in the box. Then open the top of the box a bit and see how the flooring doesn't take up the whole box. If you measure the box, it is 84.25 x 9.5 x 3.2 inches. Which means even if the wood filled up the whole box it would only be a bit over 17 square feet of wood. And since the wood doesn't fill up the whole volume, it's not 17 square feet. You will notice this when you go to do a job and it seems like you wasted A LOT of wood, but you didn't. You got shorted A LOT. there should be a lawsuit against this.

I just laid 13 boxes of this stuff down over two days, one person.. A lot of work. I had so many long pieces I didn't know what to do with them! Each box probably had 8 pieces of 50 inches or longer. There were maybe 8 pieces ~12 inches, and the remaining were in between in graduated lengths. The finish was smooth and consistent among boxes. I had about one "bad" board per box, but I set them aside of the closet. Not a big deal, my wife's clothes won't mind. Lastly, I had some bowed boards, all wood with bow or warp, not sure why it's a shock for some. Using the slotted screwdriver I would hammer it into the sub-floor opposite the gap and pry the boards together to bring the groove into the tongue. It was like twister trying to pull the screwdriver with my foot while holding onto the nailer with one hand and the hammer with another. An extremely useful tool is Red Devil Scrape n' Pry Bar or any similar pry bar. You can use it close gaps between board ends, pry lightly against the wall or baseboard, and it's great for getting the ripped pieces in place. None of the boards were bowed enough for the scrap pile. I think I had about 5% waste. As we purchased 15, installed 13.

Beautiful flooring, easy to install. Great value.

This product should not be a part of your home improvement plans. The material reject rate for both shipments for me ran about 20%, of which Home Depot only covered their standard rate of 7%. In addition, the poor quality of the material also effected installation, which resulted in a claim to Home Depot which they also would not cover. I would have to say that the money saved by using this vendor and the Home Depot chosen installer is not worth the months of hassle I have had with both of them

Fantastic product and wonderful installation through Home Depot. We put in over 1200 sq feet on our first floor in two separate installations with the same Crew 2 installers. Out of almost 70 boxes we had minimal problems with bad boards. Two orders made months apart and the wood was consistent in color and quality. We could not be happier with the end result nor the thoroughness and conscientiousness of the installers. Highly recommend this product and the company Home Depot contracted to install it (Crew 2).

This is a very nice looking wood floor. We got the Barista Brown Oak color which went nicely with the white trim work. You can also find the matching corner round and trim pieces on Home Depot online as well. We had about 2/3 box of bad pieces out of 8 boxes of flooring. This is a our first wood flooring project. We used approx. 2000 nails for 224 sq ft. The kids have dropped toys and what not on the flooring and no dents or scratches yet.

Once you open each box as you install the floor, you find out that some boards are not even and they have lots of defects on. Cracks, splits, curved, and even termite holes on them. The quality of the wood is not the greatest for the price. I had to buy an extra box just because of the defected wood. Also for some one who is a beginner on stalling floors, there should be a manual or a guide to use to follow a pattern. I have installed wood floor before, so I know how to set up a pattern not to run into even logs when joining them.

Have used this product in several rooms in my home and have never been disappointed. Beautiful floors every time .

The color, width and thickness matched my existing Bruce flooring perfectly. Had to patch where I resized a doorway going into my kitchen. You would never know it wasn’t the same flooring I installed 20 years ago. Very pleased that Bruce still makes the same flooring. Going to install the rest in my foyer entrance way to match the rest of the house. Very happy with the quality.

I didnt realize the “Tea Tint” had a greyish tint and originally thought I ordered the light wood color; however, to our surprise, it looks amazing in our guest room, since the walls are also grey. The pic shown is not finished, its just laid out.

We bought this flooring for a 1st floor guest room. The rest of our 1st floor is 3/4 Red Oak but a different brand. This Bruce product blended in pretty well with the old wood flooring. The guest room project turned out pretty well. It has a rich look. My only complaint is that there were quite a few boards that were a slight bit narrower than the 3-1/4. This created some gaps. See picture provided. I had to fill a few gaps in with wood filler.

Most of the flooring looked pretty good with few knots in the wood. The color varied a lot and is not like the sample picture. Some of the tougues were shaved off and I was sent some flooring with damaged tounges which were marked but shipped to me anyways. Overall the flooring looks pretty good.

My floors are absolutely beautiful! It's obvious that they are real wood floors. When my neighbor saw them, he asked me what brand and color they were. He said he wanted the exact same ones in his home!

Over all, I am happy. There was a good mix of short and long pieces in the boxes. The Floor looks great. The finish is nice. The CONS: The quality control for this product was lacking. There were quite a few pieces that did not have square cuts on the ends so they would not fit together without a huge gap. Some of them were off by 1/8 inch over the width of 2 1/4 inch wide material. Maybe 20 pieces out of 14 boxes were bad. Some of them I did not notice until I had them nailed down and then had to peel them up so that was very annoying. I was not impressed at all. A few pieces were slightly differing thicknesses on the ends. Just make sure to look each piece over before you nail it down. Make sure that you buy a little extra material.

I had 650 sq ft of this floor installed by a highly recommended angies list installer that has A rating. Since this floor is a special order item, I ordered alot more 36 boxes 792 sq ft and used 35 boxes There were a lot of bent and skinnier boards that we could not use. Installer was very careful to align the board and struggled big time. Not all the boards were 3/4 think neither 3-1/4” wide causing uneven floor and showing 1/16 gaps all over the floor. I don’t recommend this floor to anyone.

Excellent product for the price! We replaced carpet with this flooring 20 years ago. This past spring, we needed to do an adjacent section and were able to find ALMOST the same flooring, just a slight difference in the edges. It was just as easy to install as the first batch. As we did a diagonal pattern, it took a bit more cutting however, it has held up beautifully all these years. Trimming is very easy too. Be sure to get a good underlay to keep the sound down.

I seldom wrote reviews, but this product deserves my time. We bought the ginger snap oak solid hardwood for our first floor. We brought home 3 products to test the color; this one was the obvious choice. I cannot describe how pretty the color and pattern/grain is! It’s warm and glowing and the grain has variety and sophyitication. The workers truly used their craftsmanship to bring out the beauty of nature. We did found flawed/warped ones though, and returned them in the end. Not much. Another thing is that the ibstructions provided by the company were not very clear. Just finished installation a week ago. Everday i look at the floor and love its natural beauty. Hoping its quality will stand the test of time!

We bought this on a pro deal, I think for $4.59 per square foot. It was a pallet deal for 700 square feet total and turned out to be great. With any product, you have a few boards you have to discard, but we only needed 600 square feet and at the price point, we essentially got 100 square feet for free buying the pallet which worked out to be perfect because we could put aside a few boards if we didn't like them. Turned out to be a great buy coming in around just over $3200.00 and we did our master bedroom, two guest bedrooms and a large hallway. Pleased overall with the product.

Reading the reviews some people left, I was a bit hesitant to order this floor, but am I glad I did. I really don't know if those other people were just really unlucky or if it was lack of expertise that made them give bad reviews. The floor is absolutely beautiful, I just order another 350 sq feet today. Sure, a few planks have a bent, but if you know to handle wood, it is NOT a problem at all. We had actually NO waste or so whatever, the floor installed easily and is stunning.

My American Originals Brown Earth 3 1/4 Flooring Experience If you are a DIY'er like I've been forever, you can likely get away with 5% extra material if you are willing to make some extra cuts - a "pro" will want 10% to save his time at your expense. Here's what I found to be consistent from the 15 boxes used to cover 2 bedrooms: 1. Be sure to have a good large screwdriver and hammer nearby since many boards longer than 22" are bowed/warped to some degree. You'll need to remove the bend with the screwdriver impaled into the floor at a slight angle in the center of the bend, then pull the joint tight and nail on both sides of the screwdriver before releasing it. I'm not sure if this is less prevalent with 2 1/4 strips though I tend to think the mallet and nailer can fix most of those on the narrower size. 2. As others reported, there are some REALLY BAD milling issues. Expect to see many ends that don't butt together across the entire joint (one side touches, the other side leaves a small gap) - you can't fix those. You also encounter boards where either the entire tongue or partial tongue was cut off in the milling process. If it's partial, you can cut off the bad section and use the good section to start or end a row, being mindful of whether the male or female end is required to install the board (always have the cut end against the wall). Use boards cut on both ends in closet corners where no milled end is required. If the entire tongue was cut off, use those for ripping the last row of the installation. These extra cuts should enable you to use only 5% extra not 10%. Extra unopened boxes can be returned to HD. Be sure to examine the bottom of each board to determine if the groove has been partially cut off. Also watch for boards where the last several inches of the flat finished surface is narrower than the remainder of the board, which will leave a noticeable gap when the next row is installed. Place a straight board across the joint in that area before nailing if it looks narrow on the end - it will highlight the issue. 3. Damaged wood - there are boards that look like something was dropped on it already, scratched, or it has a gash so deep there is no finish color (these will be obvious). If most of the board is good otherwise, cut for use as a starter or end board. Have a bottle of Old English wood touchup on hand to tint edges where the stain did not apply at Bruce's facility - easier to do before installing the board. It's also easier to remove the crayon marks on the face or edge of boards before installing. With considerable work, it turned out beautiful to the untrained eye and is "acceptable" to the trained eye aware of the imperfections noted above. I would suggest pulling wood from 2-3 boxes at a time, inspecting each piece, and stacking them by size, having other piles for badly milled pieces to use as noted above. I placed a small piece of blue painters tape next to the problem on each board while stacking making those boards easily identified. There is an obvious quality control issue at Armstrong/Bruce and it seems they choose to ignore it since the issues noted above have been called out by customers for several years (see older reviews) and nothing has changed. These problems were found on factory sealed/banded boxes, not customer returns (don't accept previously opened boxes). Box contents are rather inconsistent in the amount of bad wood and appearance (wood grain). It's very dis-heartening when you pull out a very long, beautiful board from the box only to find there is not tongue on it - I had several.....and how many sq ft is that 82" board, and how much per square foot ? I don't know anyone that purchased other brands costing as much as $9 sq ft - so I don't know if higher cost would improve quality. FWIW, I have seen the same issues with Bruce Dundee at $7 sq ft. Note this color (American Originals Brown Earth 3 1/4") appears significantly lighter or darker depending on the amount of light shed on it (see my pics of the medium beige room for an example) Hope this helps some folks !!!