I've spent more time than I care to calculate researching hardwood floor options. Here are the key variables I'd consider:
-Wood species: Easy, as it sounds like you're set on white oak
-Solid Hardwood or Engineered: Sounds like you'd like solid, but wider planks are more doable with engineered. There are high quality engineered floors, but if you go with engineered you also need to look at the wear layer, overall thickness, number of layers, and composition of layers to evaluate the quality. I would not go lower than a 4mm wear layer to preserve the option to refinish.
-Prefinished or site-finished: it sounds like you're set for site-finished. Keep in mind you can get either of these with either solid or engineered.
-Width: Discussed in detail above. The wider the floor, the more expansion and contraction of boards you'll get, resulting in gaps when it's drier and cupping (as the boards push one another up) when it's more humid.
-Length: Also pay attention to the length of the boards you'll be getting. You want to know both the range (i.e. 2'-10') as well as the distribution of those lengths. If the range is 2'-10', your floor will be quite different depending on whether it is an even distribution of all lengths, or 75% above 6', or 75% less than 4', for example.
-Cut of wood: plain, rift, quarter, and live sawn are the main choices. It has to do with how the log is cut. I found this to be a good illustration. http://lacrosseflooring.com/blog-articles/plain-sawn-vs-rift-quartered/
-Grade: Character, Common #2, Common #1, or Select and Better are the main categories I've run into in my search. It has to do with how much color variation there is across the boards and how many knotholes and such there are. Here's a good explanation: https://www.flooring-professionals.com/flooring-resources/choosing-the-right-hardwood-grade/
Happy floor shopping!
Q
