Prior to our 07 remodel, we had cork floors in kitchen, DR, entry and adjoining powder room for 18 years. I loved this floor! We didn't treat it with much care and didn't receive care information when the cork floors were installed. So, they received a far amount of water when washed, no added finishes or refinishing. We also have a 22 pound dog who managed to scratch up a lot of woodwork around window areas. The floors held up well. If you'd look close (like eyes a foot away), you could see many scratches from a variety of sources. The excess water caused some seams to curve up a little (only noticeable with bare feet). I really wanted to put in new cork floors, but, got talked out of it by a KD who said colors/patterns weren't right for our new look. We put in porcelain tiles and standing on them hasn't yet been a problem. I probably don't stand on them for more than 90 minutes at a time. If I were to put in cork again, I'd use the floating kind and panels or planks. When replacing the old cork floor, everyone was predicting big problems if we had to deal with glued down panels. The old floor came up easy because no glue. Cork is much more forgiving on uneven subfloors than tile. It took about a days work to even out the subfloor for tile (involved replacing some plywood and a lot of sanding). One of my friends just put in a high end glued down cork tile and they now wish that they had gone with the floating option.

We have done larger tiles on shower floors. You MUST make sure the tile is meant for a shower floor - not just wet application. The you will have to have a trench drain. This way the floor of the shower can be pitched all in one direction to the drain. Something like this: Although the drain should be just about as wide ( or long ) as the shower is depending on the direction of the joists. Good luck!

I installed Gaia Pichi from the Red series in our guest room remodel this summer. I chose Pichi because it matched my color tones and the thickness met the transition height to an adjacent tile floor. The installation process was pretty straight forward and the results turned out well. We considered the Rhea because it has a consistant tonal range, which is hard to find in LVP flooring, but the color was a little bright for our room. Flooring manufacturers don't tend to advertise their pattern repeats. It turns out the Gaia Pichi had five patterns and five reverses. As I unloaded the planks I labled them with pattern numbers; 1, 1R, 2, 2R, etc. Using the numbers in the layout allowed me to avoid having pattern repeats adjacent to each other. For a room that was 17' square I purchased two extra boxes of tile. This proved to be fortunate as the very last box gave me enough of all tiles varieties to maintain the pattern separation. Overall we're very happy with the flooring. The install is only 3 months old and the room doesn't get a lot of traffic but, so far, it cleans easy and looks great. We have no complaints.

@btydrvn that's interesting, because my electric radiant heat was not expensive to install or run. I didn't have a water pipe option, because we don't have gas available where we live. I was wishing we did but have been very satisfied with what we got. Now I feel even better about it. Thanks! ☺️ I became a huge fan of concrete in the process too, and I love your concrete floors! The green stain is marvelous too! It looks so natural. I bet it goes with everything. When you say the heat gets stopped by anything you put on top of it, I assume you mean area rugs, right? I layed a small rug over a spot in my bathroom (my only indoor heated floor so far). I didn't feel the same lovely sunshine-on-a-rock lusciousness, but the rug didn't feel as cold as it does on unheated floor. So is that really stopping the heat? I don't know. I still want it all through my house. So let me ask you, before you had heated concrete floors, what kind of flooring were you used to in your bedroom and living room? Was it an adjustment to have concrete? I grew up with wall-to-wall carpeting in those areas and shag! in the family room. That's what feels like home to me. But it's not as clean as hard floors, and we have allergies. And rugs are a trip hazard. So is it going to be more of an adjustment than I'll be happy with? What was it like for you?