Hello there! Well, Cancork, we finally prevailed. The inspector stated many things done incorrectly and offered no remedy. The contractor refunded our money, removed the flooring and hauled it away. Although the insurance company could not actually "make" him do it, he is in danger of not getting paid if we did not sign a certificate of satisfaction. Also, most of his work comes from the ins co. Now, that we are walking on that old tile AND concrete in the dining room again, the anxiety to committing to a new floor is awful. Do we try vinyl again or just do a laminate or bamboo.....very hard to decide. I think since the whole thing was started by a water leak, the water issue is steering us back to a vinyl. We just got a quote and the installation is more than the product. You warned us all about that, didn't you? That being said, we live in Texas and it seems everyone's house moves to some degree here. That being said, is a glue down vinyl an option for us? As a reminder, we have an old vinyl glue down floor in one large room and concrete in the other right now as a subfloor. That hard board in a laminate will damage easily in a if wet too long. We are paranoid that even a cup of coffee spilled on it would mess it up. You mentioned putting back carpet in an earlier post but to be honest, that would be a detriment to resale here and I am tired of the dust and cleaning. Your best recommendation?

I have hardwoods in the kitchen and also in my master bath. When I was researching about putting them in the bath (worried about water issues), I was convinced by people on some forums here, that regardless of the flooring, if you have a serious leak or flooding, it's going to ruin whatever floor you have. Or at least it's going to have to be pulled out in order to avoid mold and underlayment issues. So, I wouldn't have any worries about using wood in your kitchen, esp site finished oak. It will stand up to anything, barring a serious leak or flood. I understand your desire for a dark floor "However, the kitchen look that I love is a marble type quartz countertop, with a dark brown floor" but since you are expecting to sell soon, I would think a cohesive, coordinated floor throughout the house, will appeal to more people than the look you want (when it's so different from the rest of the house). Maybe you can make your preferred look, the look you want for this kitchen, your goal for the house you'll be buying to replace this one?

I would say this is a "straight colour swap". In other words the VINYL floor is almost IDENTICAL to the existing carpet. It is a "like for like" switch. You won't have to "imagine" the COLOUR....because it already exists throughout the living area. Your coffee table is almost identical in colour as well. It seems this colour is something you are drawn to. That's not a bad thing. It just is. Be assured the COLOUR will work nicely with what you have (because you already have it...see how easy this is;-). That's the easy part.The thing you MUST BE AWARE OF is the CHARACTER of the wood-look vinyl. In a small swatch, I'm seeing LONG "splits" and several knot holes. You MUST ASSUME that EVERY PLANK will have this level of character! As long as you are after that sort of look, you will be fine. You will WANT to change the look of the STAIRS. Be prepared for a bit of a clash between the white-washed wood-look vinyl to the "golden oak" colour the stairs currently show. The stairs work with what you have now because the beige colour is CARPET. It looks nice. But as soon as you move to a wood-look product you will see the clash. Some white paint on the risers (or off white to match the vinyl planks) and on the stringers and the spindles will go a LONG WAY to getting the stairs to look like they belong with the floor. It isn't a huge deal...I personally would leave it for a while to see if I could live with it. But be prepared that sometime in the future you may want to fix it up to get it to be more harmonious.

I just wanted to update everyone with our decision. We were being quoted anywhere from $12k-$16k to lay and feather in about 600 sq ft of 3 1/4 " red oak down and to refinish everything so it matched. We decided to rip it all out because it was never going to give us the look that we wanted. And to get a flooring look we love, including the extra demo, it's going to cost us just under $13k for 1530 sq ft. of engineered wood floors. I've attached a photo of a sample of our lower and pantry cabinet with the sample of our flooring choice. Our uppers and island will be white cabinets.