We are in the midst of a larger project and are preparing to have a professional lay down hardwood floor in the dining room and kitchen (open concept, rectangular room). I would appreciate your insight/experience which underlayment to choose (paper only vs. cushion vs. vapor barrier/cushion) and if there are any specific materials or brands you can recommend (budget-friendly). I read a few posts and tried to gather as much information as possible. -- Installing 250 sq. ft. -- solid, pre-finished white oak - 4" blanks - standard tong and groove -- dining room and kitchen are above a garage (not heated) - insulation and fire-rated ceiling will be added in garage as part of the project -- floor joints run along the long side of the room -- sub-floor (?) runs across the room - wood is solid and dry, so we are not planning on changing it -- dining room has a large opening towards the living room with existing oak hardwood. The new floor is the same thickness as the existing one. -- steam heat and window air conditioning Our preference would be to lay the floors along the long side of the room to match the living room. Thank you in advance for your help!

Option B will certainly be cheaper because most attics are only built to accept storage items, not the weight of a living area. You'd have to reinforce the attic joists in order to meet structural requirements, and that would intrude into your headroom. Also, even if you did plan from the beginning and installed larger joists, unless you have around 9' of ceiling height, you won't have room for a living space and the required insulation. You'd have a lot more construction complexity with this choice. Option B will also need all of the above mentioned alterations, plus additional insulation in the garage ceiling, but it would undoubtedly be cheaper than option A. However any of these projects will require a lot of work from licenses trades to accomplish. Creating bathrooms close to an existing plumbing stack does help with some of the plumbing costs, but we're talking the difference between 15K and 12K for your plumbing bid. In the overall numbers of the project, 3K isn't a lot of difference on a 100K project in order to have a bathroom where it works best for layout functionality. Option C would be to take the 100K that the project would cost and add that to the amount you could realistically sell your home for and go shopping for an existing home with the additional space you need.

OK, everything went fine today. Got granite install changed to late afternoon so appliances came in the am just before noon and then granite install was later - yay!! Love, love, love the granite, but there's a small issue w/ the edge next to the range on one side is not totally straight - see pic below. Will call granite place in the am - our contractor said they can come out to grind it to even it up, but not sure I want to do that - with my luck it will end up getting damaged!! See sneak peek pics - so not finished, very dusty and a little dark: (Yikes I see from this pic that the one recessed light shines right on the hood - ugh, I didn't even think about that(we didn't change recessed lights)!)

The only role the building/energy codes would play in the roof truss issue (other than to require that the trusses be designed by an engineer) is to require that the roof/ceiling insulation (presumably in the attic floor) be continuous to the exterior face of the exterior support wall. Unless that insulation is spray foam, it is likely to be 10 to 12 inches thick so the truss would have to be designed to allow the insulation to be that thick at the exterior wall. This truss configuration is called a "raised heel truss" or "energy truss" as shown in the drawings above. From your elevation drawing it appears the truss is not raised causing the soffit to be unusually low which would prevent blown-in insulation from being the required thickness at the exterior wall. This can be accommodated with 5 or 6 inches of closed-cell high-density spray foam for the last foot or so of the truss. Even if raising the truss was more expensive than using foam, I would have expected the designer to have called for it in order to maintain the full height of the exterior wall.