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)

Some boards have defective finish. Many boards have dents, scratches and cracks that needed to be filled in. Many boards under 2 feet were bent sideways and nothing could straighten them. With American Originals, Natural, they expect you to be satisfied with colors ranging from reds to orange to grey, to green to white. Unfortunately we expected red oak. Defects led us to return 10 percent. We installed over 1,000 sq. ft..

Hands DOWN the worst flooring i have ever had the displeasure of installing. pure trash. not a single board was 100% straight. gaps between boards everywhere. Crooked boards everywhere, but the floor is down and now I'm killing myself applying wood filler between the gaps in some effort to hide this TERRIBLE garbage. NO NOT BUY!

Beautiful and airy feeling in room! Love it! The color is beautiful and blends well with other colors. Just installed but installed it in my sons room about 6 months ago. Liked it so much Input it in my room. Always looks clean and easy to clean.

I had the 3 1/4 W tinted tea installed a couple months ago. I am very happy with it. I have no experience with hardwood flooring but I feel like this is excellent quality for the price. The tinted tea finish is a white washed natural color and looks very elegant. There is more color variation, so I recommend opening a few boxes at once and planning what pieces to put next to one another. I didn't install these myself so I can't comment on the quality of the planks (ease of install), but I am very happy with the end result.

Thanks to the very knowledgeable and helpful Chris Canzonetti in the Ithaca store, I was able to look at samples, including a returnable box of the product, in order to make the right choice. I was covering a concrete floor in a small apartment. The 3 1/4 inch width was perfect for the size of the space, and the variable grain on the wood absolutely gorgeous. I wasn't sure I wanted the glossier Bruce over the nonglossy Heritage Mill in natural red oak, but the slight gloss (described as "high gloss") picks up light and brings the grain to life. I moved furniture and boxes galore over the floor, most of the time with slides, and no scratches. Seems pretty durable. The click-lock, floating floor is ingenious. My friend who installed it was learning from scratch and did a fantastic job, likely partly due to the fairly easy design of the product. It transformed my place! Chris patiently and informatively spent several days talking to me about engineered hardwood vs. wood vs other flooring. He is a beyond-the-bar customer service person and absolutely indispensable!

I installed this in my living/dining room two years ago. It still looks pretty good. So now after two years I bought lot more to install in the bed rooms, stairs etc. Once a while you will find a crooked wooden piece. Generally most pieces are good. I highly recommend this product

Overall, I was satisfied with this product. There was about 8-10% poorly milled/unusable product across 6 boxes....which seems par for the course with manufactured flooring. This was a 'natual' grade product, so I expected some variations in color, grain, and knots, the aesthetic array was fine.

It’s absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t be happier

They are beautiful, the warped boards weren’t too bad. We used a pry methodology that April Wilkerson, of YouTube fame, suggested and we quite literally had almost zero waste and were able to return two unopened boxes. The job took two days to do, but our 70 year old house looks amazing now!

The picture is 10,000 times better than the product you got, you never get the result as nice as(or close to) the picture they shown on the website, misleading product information!!!

The milling quality of this product was horrible. I had to return many boxes of warped and uneven boards. I recommend you purchase LOTS of extra boxes to get a quality product. Once installed, the floor looks great. Do not expect the planks to be perfectly flush....it is more of a rustic look.

I previously installed this flooring in my dining room years ago. Bought more boxes for a small office; pieces left over from previous installation years ago matched perfectly with the new boxes. I always use old-fashioned "tar paper" as underlayment, because it has a bit of tack that allows me to close joints easily. I know some people have trouble dealing with the natural warping that can occur after milling, so I am including a tip to deal with warped planks, please see photos.

While it looks great once installed...you have to be very diligent in looking over every piece. EVERY PIECE!!!. I find it very irritating that at this price point there is such a lack of QA. Some pieces will have orange or black markings on them, while it does come off it is annoying. Some pieces are absolutely out of square. Some tongues are severely damaged. Some have nicks in them that you will have to fill with putty. Some are warped. I purchased 18 boxes and had over one full box of unusable wood. And because it was a special order HD doesn't want to do a refund. I think at close to $120 a box it should be darn close to flawless. I've added some pics and let me assure you that no two pics are of the same board. OH...bummer, I can only add 6 pics. Well, there were many more than 6 boards with defects.

The Oak flooring was very nice and easy to install. The finish was great. This was a continuation of a project with leftovers from a different manufacturer and seemed to have a slight difference in the natural colors. The tongue and grove was a little different and had a little trouble with lining up. Overall I was satisfied with the product but suggest you stick with one manufacturer.

Choice was perfect for kitchen, hall, closets, bathroom and pantry. Like the look, the finish, and the choice of size. Have many friends checking out Home Depot after they have seen the final product. This has been installed for two weeks. It meets all expectations.

I am extremly pleased with the quality of the hardwood floor. The color is exactly what I wanted. Remember everyone, this is a real wood product and with a natural product you can expect some variances in color and width. Could the Bruce milling shop tighten the tolorances a bit? Yes, but overall an excellent product. Much better than the fake stuff any day!

It came very nice, and easy to assemble. We are using now for a while in the kitchen and an entrance. it is very beautiful finish.

After all the floor looks great. Out of 9 boxes there is about 2/3rd box left - pretty much all defective boards. Cracked, damaged, or made if really bad wood. I say unusable. For this reason the product does not deserve 5 stars; I buy extra for the cuts, not for the defects. Also, some of the boards not milled square, particularly the shorter pieces. That leaves visible gaps. I would still recommend this product for DYI. Beware, in real life the color is darker than on the stock picture where is it shown at bright light.

I have completed over 800 square feet of this product....! I encountered very few problems with the product . Fi and finish were almost perfect I highly recommend this product as a great update to any décor.

The finished results are beautiful. This was a DIY project which was not easy to install but now it's done and I'm thrilled!

Put down 30 boxes of 3 1/4 inch floors. Took 2 weeks and turned out looking good. Have them down for a month now and no scratches. Only complaint is the inconsistencies of the lengths of the floors. One box will have nothing but short lengths and another will have long lenths. Overall my wife loves the floors.

I just finished installing 240 square feet of this and it looks awesome. My wife and I absolutely love it. This was my first time installing real hardwood, i have done a lot of laminate flooring, but this was easy. The only downside was the defective pieces, but i was able to put them in other areas where they were less noticeable, they say to get 10% more for cutting, but i had very little waste.

Boards were of different lengths and many fit perfectly into a row, so we only cut off three boards! The finish was good and the tongues and grooves were good on all but three of them. Ended up looking very nice when finished. We are very happy with how it turned out.

I also had many quality issues with their product. Had well over 20% defects in the product delivered, (project involved over 50 boxes /1100 sqft). Product tongues improperly milled or missing, grooves damaged or broken, many surface nicks, gouges, scratches, dings / chips or significant cracks in the wood, end cuts not square and the wood was not always the same width, let alone the board warpage that was excessive or not usable. Had to cherry pick through the boxes and inspect every board in order to finish the project. Got so frustrated, that I even contacted Bruce directly to complain about their quality asking for a call back but that fell on deaf ears. While the finished flooring does look good, I should not have had this many issues with their flooring product. I'm not going to recommend their products, as their final quality needs significant improvements. Will be returning all the boxes of defects back to the store.

As an overall, I’m disappointed. My disappointment is driven by two major factors: 1) Damage during delivery/shipping 2) Product quality 3) Refund policy DELIVERY: wood arrived severely damaged during shipping. I had to return 25% of my order to the store even without opening the boxes because of severe damage imposed on the product during shipping. Replacement I received was in a bit better shape, but also many planks were damaged (inside of the boxes!) by ignorant shipping. Ordering in pallets won’t help: many outside boxes receive damage anyway. If a side of the box is damaged, it means you’re throwing away at least half of the box, because there are not so many planks inside (these are the wider planks – less quantity inside of the box). I had to deal with all kinds of issues caused by improper shipping: split tongue/groove sides, cracked plank ends, cracked planks, etc. Not just shipping to home made my order inconvenient, it brought extra burden and nerves: 1) Shipping carrier lost most part of my order and had no clue where it was. I spent plenty of time on the phone with Home Depot and shipping carrier trying to find it. 2) Since my delivery turned into three parts (instead of one), I had to meet the delivery three times instead of one. Each time they give you ½ day time slot, so you’re really stuck. 3) You have to help yourself in case you have to return your order. Get a car/truck, load boxes into it, get to home depot. All in all, SHIPPING TO HOME turned out into tremendous WASTE OF TIME instead of providing time savings. Shipping to home – never again. PRODUCT QUALITY: a) GAPS. Be prepared for a good piece of extra work! I mean it. Unless you don’t care about gaps. This product is NOT the case shown on most videos when you just use your rubber mallet and then nail it… If you want to have no gaps, you’ll have to apply some imagination and special tooling to make them stick to each other seamlessly. LOTS OF EXTRA EFFORT. b) FINISH. Some of the planks happened to have damaged finish out of the box. Some had wood filler. Some had bark on the reverse side. c) WIDTH. Some planks have different width at their ends. Watch out! d) LENGTH. Not excited about planks length. Even if you happen to reveal some longer planks inside of the boxes, most of them are extra trouble to fit (see point #a above) e) COLOR variation. Colors and texture vary significantly. Even putting some obviously gray planks aside (yes, something you wouldn’t expect to get as “select” grade), you either ignore colors and texture variation or spend even more time dealing with it. I just pulled plug on it at some point. f) WASTE. I had to try really hard in order to minimize waste. I had to assemble, disassemble and assemble again each row for several times due to gaps, uneven planks, damaged planks, planks not fitting into each other, damaged/incomplete tongues, etc. As a bottom line – I would stick to another product if I knew I would experience issues above. I would be okay to deal with points #b)-f) above if planks would fit easy. Point #a (gaps) is the major time consumer which made my project drag a LOT LONGER THAN EXPECTED. NEVERTHELESS I have to admit that after all this hard work, the RESULT LOOKS AWESOME! REFUND POLICY: watch out as they may not refund you taxes you paid! That is my case. They just provided refund for the product price, but not the taxes. This is the very first time ever I experience that. As a bottom line: my project turned out to last LOT LONGER due to EXTRA EFFORT I had put into making planks fit seamlessly. You got what you pay for. Though the resulting floor looks great and awesome, I will definitely stick to different product and likely buy it right from the store/warehouse should I do next project of the kind.

As an overall, I’m disappointed. My disappointment is driven by two major factors: 1) Damage during delivery/shipping 2) Product quality 3) Refund policy DELIVERY: wood arrived severely damaged during shipping. I had to return 25% of my order to the store even without opening the boxes because of severe damage imposed on the product during shipping. Replacement I received was in a bit better shape, but also many planks were damaged (inside of the boxes!) by ignorant shipping. Ordering in pallets won’t help: many outside boxes receive damage anyway. If a side of the box is damaged, it means you’re throwing away at least half of the box, because there are not so many planks inside (these are the wider planks – less quantity inside of the box). I had to deal with all kinds of issues caused by improper shipping: split tongue/groove sides, cracked plank ends, cracked planks, etc. Not just shipping to home made my order inconvenient, it brought extra burden and nerves: 1) Shipping carrier lost most part of my order and had no clue where it was. I spent plenty of time on the phone with Home Depot and shipping carrier trying to find it. 2) Since my delivery turned into three parts (instead of one), I had to meet the delivery three times instead of one. Each time they give you ½ day time slot, so you’re really stuck. 3) You have to help yourself in case you have to return your order. Get a car/truck, load boxes into it, get to home depot. All in all, SHIPPING TO HOME turned out into tremendous WASTE OF TIME instead of providing time savings. Shipping to home – never again. PRODUCT QUALITY: a) GAPS. Be prepared for a good piece of extra work! I mean it. Unless you don’t care about gaps. This product is NOT the case shown on most videos when you just use your rubber mallet and then nail it… If you want to have no gaps, you’ll have to apply some imagination and special tooling to make them stick to each other seamlessly. LOTS OF EXTRA EFFORT. b) FINISH. Some of the planks happened to have damaged finish out of the box. Some had wood filler. Some had bark on the reverse side. c) WIDTH. Some planks have different width at their ends. Watch out! d) LENGTH. Not excited about planks length. Even if you happen to reveal some longer planks inside of the boxes, most of them are extra trouble to fit (see point #a above) e) COLOR variation. Colors and texture vary significantly. Even putting some obviously gray planks aside (yes, something you wouldn’t expect to get as “select” grade), you either ignore colors and texture variation or spend even more time dealing with it. I just pulled plug on it at some point. f) WASTE. I had to try really hard in order to minimize waste. I had to assemble, disassemble and assemble again each row for several times due to gaps, uneven planks, damaged planks, planks not fitting into each other, damaged/incomplete tongues, etc. As a bottom line – I would stick to another product if I knew I would experience issues above. I would be okay to deal with points #b)-f) above if planks would fit easy. Point #a (gaps) is the major time consumer which made my project drag a LOT LONGER THAN EXPECTED. NEVERTHELESS I have to admit that after all this hard work, the RESULT LOOKS AWESOME! REFUND POLICY: watch out as they may not refund you taxes you paid! That is my case. They just provided refund for the product price, but not the taxes. This is the very first time ever I experience that. As a bottom line: my project turned out to last LOT LONGER due to EXTRA EFFORT I had put into making planks fit seamlessly. You got what you pay for. Though the resulting floor looks great and awesome, I will definitely stick to different product and likely buy it right from the store/warehouse should I do next project of the kind.

Ordered 8 boxes of 2.5" and 16 boxes of 3.5". Returning all 24 boxes. Tongues are damaged, none of the boards are uniform in length. Went through all the boxes I ordered. More than 1/2 the wood is unusable. Huge waste of time. See photo of incomplete tongues and wood failing to lineup because they are not uniform in width.

I bought 10 boxes to cover 200 sq ft. and ended up with about half a box left. There were very few damaged boards and I used those to finish rows off. The color is perfect and the boards fit together very well. My recommendation to any DIY'er is to buy a floor nailer when installing your hardwood floors, completely worth it.

I had the gorgeous Ginger Snap white oak hardwood flooring installed in an upstairs bedroom a couple weeks ago. I am thrilled with the color and the quality of the wood. I am so happy with how it turned out that I am going to have almost the whole house done with the Ginger Snap hardwood. I would definitely recommend this product. You will be very pleased!!!!

Great floor. We love it. It requires the floor to be prepared and then nailed and stapled. It takes more work than a snap and click floor. But we prefer the 3/4 hardwood without the extra work of staining and varnishing. Really like the product. Wish there was a few more longer boards. I understand it is random selection of boards.