I am hoping someone can help me.

I am trying to decide between the two brands, but am not sure which is the better of the two.

I am looking at installing about 1200 sf of hard stained maple flooring of the 3/4" 3 1/4 variety. The floors will likely get some heavy traffic in certain rooms, particularly with kids' toys being banged around. So, one of the imoportant factors to me is a hard finish. I saw a Robbins product that I liked for its finish, but everyone keeps steering me away from it (even those stores that carry all of the brands).

Any help or comments are appreciated.

 

Just as an update. I decided to go with the Muskoka. The milling quality seemed excellent, although I am sure that is true of the Lauzon.

In the end, the Muskoka had the right stained maple for our tastes. And, it seems that the Muskoka has relatively longer pieces overall.

 

Generally most Canadian mills are perfectionist types... You can't go wrong with either the Muskoka or the Lauzon, but I personally like the finish on Lauzon. My personal fav is Mirage... but then Im biased since I have been to their factory.

 

Is the Lauzon finish any harder than the Muskoka? I didn't think it was, but it's hard to tell.

I would have loved to consider the Mirage, but since internet retailers have been restricted in their abilities to sell Mirage, the price point becomes way too high for me to afford it from the local stores.

Case in point. The Muskoka locally is $7.89/sf + 7% tax and from Hoskings $5.62/sf + $300 shipping. For 1200 sf, that translates into real dollars.

Thanks for the comments. It's hard to separate sales pitch from reality. The guy at the store said Muskoka was the best choice, even though he sold all the Armstrong stuff (Bruce, Hartco, Robbins). He didn't have Lauzon though.

I agree with the Canadian mill quality. I ordered samples from the internet that must be getting their product from China or something, and the milling was not precise at all. The groove was relatively larger than the tongue size and so when you put them together, you could shift the tongue up and down inside the groove. My worry was that if you put that stuff down, the floors would possibly clank.

I would have saved $2.50/sf, but it just seemed like a bad idea, especially since it's going in our dining room and living room (as well as a family and playroom). Plus, the finish layer was quite a bit softer, even though it was a 9 coat AlumOx finish.