How much of a flooring budget do you have? You could do planks on the diagonal, or in a herringbone or parquet pattern, and avoid all orientation issues altogether, lol. Or, if you'd rather add windows, there are several rooms with exterior walls that could have windows in them, where running the boards parallel to the stairs would then follow Miss Beverly's rule of running the planks perpendicular to windows. Of course, that means that you'd *also* have planks running parallel to the original windows, and if the generally-accepted architectural ideal is to have rooms with windows on at least 2 sides, I don't see how this rule is followed on a regular basis in well designed homes. :-D

I bought Downs H2O LVT. It is made by CoreTec from James Duty at Cloister Flooring America in Lititz, PA. I think you and I might be in the same area - not sure if there are any other Cloister Flooring Americas except the one's in Lititz and Ephrata.. One of the other brands I looked at was Kardean, but it was quite a bit more expensive and took me over budget. Price check other stores in your area. Flooring America, Carpet One, Pro Source, and Floor Trader Outlet will have the same "Exclusive" product with a different name.. Different stores in the same chain can and most likely will have different pricing. Flooring America in Etown was more expensive than Cloisters. Carpet One in Annville/Cleona was the highest price when I did my comparison. I really like the people at Cloister Flooring America and love that they offer assistance getting started if you are wanting to install yourself. Again - COVID may be limiting the service, but when I got mine they offered for someone to come to the house for an hour and show you what to do there was a cost, but something like $100.00. They also rent some of the supplies. Everyone else I talked to pressured me to have it installed and pretty much said "You're on your own." Also, if you can wait till after the holidays, flooring should go on sale. Generally everyone wants flooring done by Christmas and then the market hits a lull and stores are trying to drum up business. I don't have a clue how COVID may change things this year. If we are dealing with the same "Cloister Flooring America" ask if they will be having an anniversary sale in March. I think that is an annual sale for them.

My Dad is up in Colorado right now and told me everything looks perfect and beautiful. This house is heavily used. Skiers in winter and hikers in summer. He doesn’t have a good mudroom, so people enter from the front, side deck, or garage straight into the main area. So, even though people try to get all the gear, mud and snow off before entering, there’s inevitably some debris that winds up inside, especially with kids and dogs. There was an entire Boy Scout group in there last summer, huge family gatherings with kids and dogs all throughout the year. People come and go all summer. 3 years and the floors are perfect. One thing to remember though: if you want to use a rug pad for an area rug you have to use a special kind. SIL was in charge of decorating so I don’t know the particulars, but I remember she had to order a special kind because the normal ones would create a stain or discoloration when they are in contact with the LVP.

@louislinus I can easily envision it on a "big picture" level what I want to do, and how I want it flow and function. Regarding flooring, I had several contractors come out. In my house, the majority of the main floor is oak strip hardwood. It's a bi-level house, so come in, go up a half-flight of stairs, and then you are facing the current dining room, the hallway to the bedrooms, and the current living room - all in 1970's oak hardwood. Since I'm combining the existing kitchen (old vinyl tile in a discontinued pattern) with the dining room (oak hardwood), my options were: 1. Leave the flooring as-is in both rooms (which would look stupid) 2. Find the some of the discontinued vinyl tile, rip out the hardwood in the dining room and extend the vinyl into the dining room (also stupid) 3. Rip out both floors and put in an entirely different floor (such as a ceramic/porcelain tile or LVT that looks like that). While possible, I didn't want to go that route - I could easily see the tile getting cracked/broken if someone dropped something heavy on it, it would make the house flooring seem more "patchwork-like" because as a person comes up the stairs, ALL the flooring choices can be seen at once (it's not a huge house), and then I felt adding a ceramic/porcelain tile would just create even more possible-clashing patterns, as I knew I wanted a natural stone countertop. 4. Find a hardwood flooring specialist who believes he can either match, or do a near-match, with putting a new hardwood floor into the existing kitchen space and go from there. I'm choosing option #4. My issue is trying to make sure that the layout is maximizing functional storage, while still allowing proper flow in the room. My kitchen and dining room are currently identical in size - 10'x13'. The wall that divides the two rooms is a 7' length on the 10' aspect. Removing the 7' length of wall will make the new room 20'x13'. I want an island, to include storage and seating, running lengthwise. The problem is that a 13' deep kitchen is pretty much the bare minimum space for an island, and whether I have an island that is 33", 42", or 51" wide (including countertop overhang) really is going to depend on how much aisle space we can live with around the sides of the island.