Hi fun2cook,
You are asking some good questions which every home owner is hoping for their wood flooring to be. Here are my advice:
1. Get lower gloss level flooring.
2. Get something grainy like Oak. Even it is not the hardest wood out there, it hides the scratches the better than many other harder wood.
And lastly, no wood floor, engineered or solid will stand any major water leakage in your house. Call your insurance when that happens.
Thank you!

I recommend solid wood flooring for the reason below:
A quality engineered wood flooring will cost as much as solid wood if not more. The quality of engineered wood floorings are all over the places on the market.It is hard for a home owner to make the right buying decision because most of the flooring sales rep tell you how stable is engineered flooring compared to solid wood because most of their price point products only come in engineered format.They do not want to lose the business to the big box store. That is not always true. I have seen most the claims in this industry were from engineered for the past couple of years. It takes a lot more resources and technology to make quality, trouble free engineered wood floorings than most people think. Solid is easy to deal with and hard to go wrong. Comparing solid and engineered wood flooring is a very big topic and situational. We will talk more next time. Feel free to ask questions. I will check back. Thanks.

I truly appreciate your advise. My intuition has always been to go with solid wood, the the comments by this salesman really took me by surprise. I think it was Bruce 1/2" engineered wood with aluminum oxide coating, that he was giving as an example of a "good" product. It was cheaper than the solid wood, but not by much.
Taking your suggestion on low gloss finish to heart, I was looking at some hand scraped (but not distressed) samples. Do you think this is a good finish for my child/pet home? Is elm a good choice, or is oak better?I'm also deciding not to carry the wood into the laundry area. My laundry is in a mud room adjacent to the kitchen, with access to the backyard too. The hot water heater is also in this area. Since there is a pocket door separating the 2 areas, I think it would look ok to transition to a tile or stone floor for that section. That would greatly reduce the chance for water damage on the wood floor. That little space also gets a lot of action as the backdoor entry, so a more durable floor there is probably the way to go.
Thanks for your input.

I truly appreciate your advise. My intuition has always been to go with solid wood, the the comments by this salesman really took me by surprise. I think it was Bruce 1/2" engineered wood with aluminum oxide coating, that he was giving as an example of a "good" product. It was cheaper than the solid wood, but not by much.
Taking your suggestion on low gloss finish to heart, I was looking at some hand scraped (but not distressed) samples. Do you think this is a good finish for my child/pet home? Is elm a good choice, or is oak better?I'm also deciding not to carry the wood into the laundry area. My laundry is in a mud room adjacent to the kitchen, with access to the backyard too. The hot water heater is also in this area. Since there is a pocket door separating the 2 areas, I think it would look ok to transition to a tile or stone floor for that section. That would greatly reduce the chance for water damage on the wood floor. That little space also gets a lot of action as the backdoor entry, so a more durable floor there is probably the way to go.
Thanks for your input.

Hand scraped solid wood flooring can be a good selection if you like the look. It is more about the apperrance and sheen level than about the toughness on finish. It hides the dings and dangs better than smooth finish. Elm is a good species, but on the softer side. I don't think you will ever go wrong with Oak if you like the grainy look. I personally like White Oak better than Red. Good luck with your searching.

Well it happened again. Out shopping on Saturday for granite and wood flooring, and I ask to look at samples of solid wood. The salesman starts telling me all these reasons I should go with engineered instead! I don't get it. The solid is more expensive, but DH thinks there profit margin might be higher on the engineered.?? The reasons he laid out for engineer are reasonable: Solid is more likely to buckle or wrap is subjected to water. Also as the solid expands and contracts with the weather, gaps between the joints can appear. I do live in a fairly damp area, with lots of marine layer. So I guess the wood could absorb the moisture and do funny things. Is this really a problem?

There are advantages and disadvantages to both solid and engineered. I still haven't decided between them myself.

Engineered will have less movement than solid. Probably. Solid probably resists denting (like from dropping objects) better.

Solid is a simple product. It's a board, dried and machined. There's a lot less to go wrong in the manufacturing process. Site finishing is a well-established practice.

Engineered products are all over the place in quality. Study the specs CAREFULLY. I have seen cheap ones with paper-thin veneer. That's just ridiculous IMO. Sales reps reassure you that the finish is incredibly tough and durable and has a 25-year warranty. That's completely worthless and irrelevant to what happens when in the course of everyday living, the veneer gets gouged completely through. Besides, who knows what company would be around in 25 years to honor any warranties.

There are products with rotary peeled wear layer. This doesn't look like a solid wood floor; it looks like a plywood floor. I wouldn't expect the wear layer to hold up as well.

Besides wear layer thickness, some have better substrates. 2 additional layers of soft wood is common. Occasionally I see Baltic birch-like plys with wood that is much heavier and denser.

I don't agree with the sales rep that Bruce 1/2" engineered would perform better than solid. 1/2" is quite thin, and I just can't see it holding up over the years. I often don't agree with sales reps. Many are ignorant or only spout marketing. But there are some good ones you can learn a lot from. If you do independent research, you'll be able to tell them apart.

Personally I don't think you should pick a floor based on holding up under extreme flooding. Only tile would hold up, and even then, you might have mildew you could never get rid of. Marine layer humidity is NOT going to cause great problems in any quality wood floor that is properly installed. It will not buckle if there's an expansion gap and the subfloor is dry. So, look for a product that will look good for the lifetime you plan to be in the house, and the lifestyle you lead.

We are very happy with our Lauzon engineered wood floor. Lauzon makes both engineered flooring and solid wood flooring. If you go with engineered wood flooring, I second what andersons said in the above post..stay away from a rotary peeled face layer.

We don't have dogs or kids, but this factory finish on our floor seems to be extremely durable and the shine is low which I like. We ordered our wood online and diy installed it (last summer). The boards fit together so well and we were very impressed with the milling quality...not a single warped board, no dents, or anything.
-Laurie