Stick with the steam that is the most confort as far as its not dry heat like a forced hot air. Why anyone would go to forced out air is just taking the cheap way out. A hot coil in an air handler will work better. Also have e you thought of radiant floor system at all or off the return of your boiler you can have a circulaing pump and add baseboard to the new room. if 75 gallon water heater isn't cutting it you may want to try a tankless water heater. Don't go with forced hot air you wont be happy. Here would be my options that you can run by a good plumber. 1 tankless water heater to do radiant floor or coil on a air handler, with a heat exchanger you can also do domestic water and never worry about hot water. the neg side about this is tankles has to be on a maintnace program for scalling and general PM. 2 put a B&G pump on the return of your steamn boiler and use that hot water to do a basboard or new radiaters in your new addition. for your a/c I would go witgh a ductless systeem if its only one big room. here are the three manufactures I would go with 1. tankless I would go with takagi ( make sure its sized correctly) 2. air handler I would go with first company. 3. fujutsi if you where using a ductless. If it was my house I would use high baseboard and heat it only to 140 degrees stick that on a tankless water heater and get my domestic hot water thrue that also. or radiant floor instead of baseboard. Use the fujitsu unit for the a/c of the house.

I am not recommending the following brand, but if it happens to be one you're considering, you might try ordering them through the non-profit boston building materials co-op. I know it sounds crazy, since you're on the west coast, but as a non-profit there is minimal markup compared to what you'd pay to get the windows through other sources. If the deal can be done by phone and email, it would probably save you a lot of money, and the windows would be coming from the factory regardless of where the middle man is located. I have to replace a few non-original windows in my house. I'm pretty far out from ordering yet, so I haven't settled on a supplier, but for price, I plan to consider what the BBMC offers. I could swear they also sell an all-wood window made by a smaller local shop, but I don't see it on their website. Here is a link that might be useful: One brand of all-wood windows

Given that we have actually attended the World of Concrete convention, I’d say I’m quite comfortable with the material. What you’re describing is pretty much a failure of the material in design or install, not typical. Even your average garage floor, which is the cheapest of the cheap in install and quality, doesn’t have the durability and etching issues you’re describing. The costs you’re describing are also WAY out of line for anything I have seen, even with fiber reinforced and stained, with multiple sealing passes. Especially on a slab, you’d be hard pressed to hit $12 a square foot all done and done unless you’re being seriously ripped off, especially on top of an existing slab - that makes everything easier :) Over timber framing the costs go up and the mitigation needed to create a good base becomes more complex, but still not significantly beyond a tile product. And the possibilities for design are vast (props to WoC again, I didn’t know half those techniques and products existed!). I agree it’s not a budget finish in some circumstances, but having a good mix design for residential finish application is NOT difficult to obtain, especially if you’re working with a good contractor and not just directly with the batch plant (easier but only if you know what you’re doing, like with any fabrication mill). I wouldn’t be scared off OP - if it is a look you want go for it. If you’re ‘meh’ about it, a cheap tile will be easier to manage, especially in a small space. But you can do a very nice job, even DIY, if you have a slab already and like the material. What can I say, I’m an optimist and concrete is fantastic stuff.

I see two different issues here. One is people looking at an expensive room on Houzz and thinking they can make their room look like that for pennies. That is unrealistic. If you go with the cheapest labor, you will usually get what you pay for. And if you go with tile from a big box store, it will likely not look like the Ann Sacks that you saw in the picture. The other issue is whether you can/should trust a professional to do their job correctly, or whether you are foolish not to do the research every time you spend big money on a job. Roarah, I don't know why you are blaming yourself for not having researched the tile specifications. You are not a professional tiler. Your GC hired a professional tiler, and he should have known about the potential problems and explained them to you before he laid a single tile. When we renovated our kitchen and two bathrooms seven years ago I knew nothing about tiling, or really any other aspect of renovation. I relied on our GC (who also did the tile work) to help me on the layout, and to tell me what could/couldn't be done. I paid quite a bit of money for the reno (I live in NYC suburbs, so labor costs are high anyway) and I maybe (naively) expected that he know his stuff and he would do a good job for me. Luckily he was a very good GC and a very good tiler. I was quite happy with our job, although of course you always come up with things you would do differently if you were doing them again. I understand that my luck could have gone the other way with a different contractor. I recently reno'd our downstairs level and needed 600 feet of LFT laid to replace existing carpet. When I had the job quoted, I was hoping to find someone cheaper than the original contractor, and I got two other quotes in addition to his from contractors who were highly recommended by friends and neighbors. Original contractor told me about the issues involved with LFT, and warned me that his quote would be high because of all the prep/leveling work involved. Contractor #2 wanted to lay the tile right over the existing carpet (!!??). Contractor #3 told me that he could do whatever layout I wanted with whatever sized grout line and it would come out just *fine* and he could do it very quickly. Ironically, all three quotes were in the same high ballpark price-wise. Anyone with common sense would reject Contractor #2's tile-over-carpet solution, but would it have been crazy to go with Contractor #3 if you didn't know the about the issues with LFT? Once I heard the difference in approach between the original contractor and Contractor #3, I read up on LFT issues because I wanted to see who was right, and ended up rehiring the tried and true contractor. But conceivably, I could have gotten several bids from highly recommended contractors and not have been told about these issues at all. But if you are a regular homeowner who has no interest in reading design forums or tile manuals, shouldn't you be able to hire a tiler without reading up on tile specifications? Assuming you are not looking for a ridiculous bargain basement price for the labor, or not overlooking other glaringly obvious warning signs, I think you should be able to trust that your professional tile layer knows how to lay tile, and if you get screwed, blaming yourself is misplaced blame, IMO.