To do a good job with any new flooring, the old should be removed and adequate new base established. Additionally, in kitchen you could have issues with height of nee base and new flooring. So make sure you can put what you choose under appliances like dishwasher. Sub-flooring could be fairly thick. Some engineered woods are made to accommodate some sub-flooring anomalies. “Telegraphing” is the phenomenon of any flaws or seams from grout or other materials under a new floor like a vinyl will show up through the new flooring. Thus the term “telegraphing” through.

question 2, installing smartcore ultra by its lonesome without additional pad/underlayment be sufficient for noise reduction in this application?

#1....Good luck with LVP in a condo. #2. I hope you have a second option other than LVP As you have just discovered, LVP is HORRIBLY difficult to get into a condo. The reason: it does NOT LIKE underlayment/underpad. The attached underpad is 'nothing' in the acoustic world. The only product that has a hope in H3LL to get anything close to 'decent' numbers = mass loaded vinyl (MSV) underpad specifically designed for LVP. It cannot be anything thicker than 2mm. This is hard to find. You will often find 1.2mm - 1.5mm. If you can find the 2mm stuff it will be quite expensive. The QuietWalk is 1.4mm. And then you have to convince the condo board that what YOU want is going to meet THEIR requirements. You need to KNOW the type of building construction it is. Then you have to find out what the condo board WANTS TO SEE (STC/IIC/Delta IIC). If your condo is currently 70% carpet, you will most likely need to provide documents that PROVE your choice of LVP (withOUT underpad) plus QuietWalk underlayment MEETS or EXCEEDS the requirements by the HOA or condo board. I used to sell cork flooring and cork underlay and use to help clients and condo boards SET requirements that were REALISTIC for their situation. Vinyl RARELY made it into 'up-down' apartment buildings. Especially if they were wood construction.

Yes, I won the honey oak lottery! I have honey oak cabinets, baseboards, trim, doors, and windows. Right now I'm trying to figure out flooring for our bedroom so just dealing with the baseboard/trim, doors, and windows. I don't want to deal with painting everything. I'm considering swapping out baseboards to match the flooring but then I would have mismatched baseboards/trim and that might drive my crazy. (I just posted a question tonight asking folks to show pics of how they handled different baseboards/trims...hoping photos will help me make up my mind on that part.) I haven't started looking at samples a ton in person but am headed to the flooring store tomorrow. Here are screenshots of a few I'm thinking about (ignore the piles, work in process 😄). I can't decide if I should be trying to match the trim as close as I can or pick something that has some markings that match.