My mother is 85 years old and has Parkinson's, so she has trouble getting around. I am keeping her in mind with your question. I would go with a low pile carpet, if you were my parent. It is softer for when she falls down. Mom has hardwood in her foyer, dining, and halls, and although they are beautiful, they are mostly covered with throw rugs, which are a tripping hazard, but less slippery for her. She has trouble with getting a "grip" on the floor when standing up, and carpet helps with that. Wheelchairs will run grooves in a hardwood floor.

I live in New York City and this is a 120 year old brownstone and we left the original hardwood floors intact and just refinished them except for where we removed a wall between kitchen and dining room (and added three strips of wood where the wall had been - the island is installed in the middle of where the wall used to be - and we also installed about 10 partial strips of wood where we removed a dumbwaiter and some ducting to make the kitchen about 25" deeper which is where we placed the fridge. here is a pic for context - there has definitely not been temperature control since installation - being an old house, it can get pretty cold in the winter and pretty hot in the warmer weather - we don't have central air, but do have centralized heating via boiler ( and thermostat placed on the parlor floor where the new kitchen is) As for whether these are carpenter ants, I googled big black ants and found pics of carpenter ants and that is what we have. Whether they are doing anything problematic, I don't know. Another forum poster said to check where the steel deck is anchored at the bric of the house because if water is getting in, that is a perfect place for a carpenter ant infestation. So I'm going to investigate that as a priority although I don't know who might be an expert on that It might be worth mentioning that the door to the deck used to be a window so we had a window converted to a door in addition to adding the deck... So a number of places where perhaps the changes could end up with structural issues and/or risk of new places of entry from the outside, for ants

We have red oak floors covered with carpet in our living room in our 50 year old ranch. That room opens up to our dining/kitchen area which is sheet vinyl on a subfloor (placed over old vinyl.) We were wanting to do glued down engineered hardwood over the entire area and the hallway. The guy who measured said we could put a subfloor over the hardwood to bring it up to the level of the vinyl. Sounded easy. Now the installer says we need to remove all the old hardwood and vinyl and do new subfloor over all of it. Who is right? Is a floating installation an easier/better option?

I'm not sure what LVT is. :) I have an appointment with the flooring person for Saturday to test out samples. Cherie, we hate forced hot air because it bothers my and the kids' asthma and allergies so I am actually very happy about these baseboard radiators as radiant heat is much easier on the lungs since it's not blowing hot air all over the place. There is central air for the summer months. We live in Northern NH... it gets cold here for sure. I am going to keep the tile in the kitchen for now and the rest will be new flooring *all going in the same direction* ! We are ripping out the red carpeting, which is in all four bedrooms as well as on the stairs. We want to replace that with flooring and we don't want yet another type of flooring in the house so it makes sense to do the living and dining room as well. When we reconfigure the kitchen, we'll have to match it up and remove the tile at that time.