Sounds beautiful. My style sounds a lot like yours and I went with a medium stain with 4" width. I kinda wish I'd been more adventuresome and done the random width. Go for it, I bet you'd love it!

I think it will be beautiful. I have hand scraped maple with a medium autumn stain. It's an engineered wood that is very lightly hand scraped. It has random lengths but is all 4 inches wide. I worried the very heavy hand scraped look would be too trendy. I just wanted enough to hide any damage we might do. Almost three years later and so far so good. My furniture is traditional as well. I like your term "comfortable traditional" which is exactly what I would call mine. Good luck with your choice.

I also think it would be beautiful; ask him for a sample so you can see how he does it,

These three responses are so encouraging and so reassuring! My "floor man" is actually my nephew (but we're paying him retail, natch), and he has driven me around to see many houses, so I know what his work looks like. I've also seen his brother's, cousin's, parents', and his own house, all of which have hand-scraped. I do like the idea of suggesting that they do "lightly scraped." And I will ask to see a sample of what that might look like. Another question: would it be too nuts to do some rooms hand-scraped and some smooth? For example, the halls, kitchen, and my quilting room hand-scraped, as they are apt to get more foot traffic and in the quilting room where there will be more furniture moving back and forth as I pull out and then put up the cutting table, etc? Then put the smooth in the dining room, study (both off the entry), our bedroom. Oh yes, and do the stairs hand-scraped, since I've noticed that uncarpeted stairways can get scratched really really fast. (Our upstairs won't be used all that often, however; two guest rooms up there and a fantastic walk-out attic storage room.)
Any further comments/suggestions will be most helpful!!!!