I agree with SSAD, but California is a parallel universe so you may want to inquire locally.

Your house, your dollar. If you were selling soon - I would say leave as is for the value. But the lvp gives you the unique option of changing your space for a lesser cost and it can be removed when you go to sell. I would absolutely inquire locally - you will need something that stands up to the sun...

I wonder if you could do an engineered wood?? I believe there are ones that are floating floors...

Best of luck!

No to LVP or floating an engineered floor. Both will raise the floor and not look right and I'm sorry LVP is not at the same level as wood floors (engineered or real) or marble tile

cpartist...agree not the same, but there are some practical advantages. I agree with the general conclusions so far but just needed to float the idea, no pun intended!

Many Million Dollar homes in our area install LVP floors throughout the home. I would say to use the LVP as it keep the marble out of the landfill and if the next owner likes marble they can uninstall the LVP and still have finished floors.

I would never go for hack solution. Rent a tile stripper should take care of that marble. Nice American milled hickory flooring..

I don't think of this as a hack solution. I think it preserves the expensive marble underneath but gives me the option to be happy with my home while i still own it. I actually love the low maintenance and worry free aspect of the LVP also.

Yes, you can tell the difference between LVT and wood. If you do live in 2MM home and I was looking to buy in that price range, I’d consider your home one that I’d have to do major work to and question some of your other design choices and if you cheaped out on those too.

Also, the “luxury” in LVT is a marketing tool in its truest purest sense. Vinyl Floor or Vinyl Tile just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

No to LVP in you home. What makes you not like the marble floors. I think that might be able to be fixed to your liking. Maybe the problem is not your floors but that your decorating style doesn't complement the flooring.

Floors are black and cream marble. They are cold and dated looking and difficult to decorate around. Very very bossy tile and not my style! I've tried for 7 years and it's just a no go!

Post a picture

I live in SoCal too. I removed ugly hardwood from the downstairs (about 2500 sq ft) and replaced with pretty hardwood. Yes, it was about $50k. As a real estate investor, I see many homes and track trends and markets. I also operate moderate rentals. There are very few nicer homes here (near the beach) with LVT or marble (except in bathrooms). I only see LVT in weekly beach rentals. I have seen marble and travertine floors inland in older Mediterranean style sprawlers, but nice wood sells faster and for more there. So if you like LVT cover the marble and just consider it a write-off. Even if you put in new hardwood, a future buyer might rip it out too. I did.

I think the idea of a floating floor over the marble is excellent. Either for future resale, or if your tastes change over time, preserving the expensive flooring is great.

I’d actually just suggest going to a flooring store and asking to see all their floating floor options. Just pick your favorite. If you choose to sell, you can leave it or remove it according to the realtor’s advice. Since you’re reflooring just for your own enjoyment, just do floating and pick what makes you happiest.

Floor in dining room and living room ( left photo) foyer (right photo).

yup = bossy. and if you trend more towards simple - that floor will be fighting it.

Large strategically placed rugs? Sorry, I do understand your issue, I passed on a house with plain tile. Its wood all the way for me. LVT is just vinyl tiles. Will raising your floor height even work with your doors?

No rug can fix this beast!! I've tried. :)

How long will you be there? If less than 5 years maybe move and sell it as is?

Oh, No. Sorry. It is exactly what I thought it would be. The front medallion even louder ...

I can say that I certainly don't love that floor either. We actually inherited an inverted version of your dining room floor in our foyer and kitchen (black absolute granite and nero marquina marble with white quartzite diamonds. And while I don't love it, I've learned to decorate around it so it becomes a backdrop rather than the commanding centerpiece of each room. If this were my home, I would most likely try working with the floor first. This would include exploring adding large custom cut area rugs, like those made out of bound broadloom carpet, that cover all but the perimeter of the floor in rooms that it makes sense to do so. I would also explore cutting out the medallion and any other really offensive parts and replacing it with a more neutral stone. The beige and black pattern can be pretty neutral with the right design scheme while that medallion understandably will always call undue attention. Both of those are most likely less costly than covering it up or replacing it with what amounts to a material downgrade. However this is just what I would do. You need to do what will make you happy to live there.

I don't know what look your are ultimately going for, but if it is so much at odds with that floor, I do also wonder if it is at odds with the whole look of the house? Houses with that sort of floor often were accompanied by other equally loud and now dated design choices.

Is the second design at the entry?

Because I am a fan of marble (and inlay floors) I'm going to buck the trend and tell you to float a floor over top. Leave these beautiful floors in place for someone else to enjoy. If you want LVP then go for it.

I am saying this to preserve the existing flooring AND to ensure you enjoy your home while you are in it. In fact, I would go so far as to say, "Cover them until you are ready to sell and then remove the LVP prior to listing the home".

Just make sure a vapour barrier (6mil poly sheeting) is used over top the marble before laying a new floor. Vinyl has a tendency to leave stains on existing floor finishes (vinyl is petroleum based which is the same as a very slow oil leak). To ensure your marble stays happy and healthy I would make sure the 6mil poly sheeting is used as a separating barrier.

Life is too short to fight with your flooring...and your flooring is too beautiful to throw away. That means the logical solution is to cover it today so that you can uncover it tomorrow.

^^^ This.

Although - make sure you don't end up with the icky hollow echo-y sounds on the floating floor. Your eyes will be happy covering up your marble, and your ears will revolt...

Bite the bullet, remove the ugly marble and install lovely hardwood you will get much more enjoy for years. I live in SoCal and see that tired marble flooring, as said, it is difficult to tone down.

Can't you go over the floor with a realistic wood laminate floor? They are so good these days it's hard to tell. You'll spend more on taking out the marble than installing the new floor and you won't have to deal with all the dust.

BeverlyFLADeziner: Yes, that was my orginal question but for vinyl planks. I don't think I would do laminate because in my opinion, laminate is a worse stigma than the high quality vinyl planks. But the issue is whether putting in vinyl planks will tank my home value if I decide to sell. I priced out the cost difference (labor and materials) between the two options and there's only about 10K dollar difference between installing vinyl planks on top of the marble vs demo marble and install wood. That cost differential is 75% due to demo costs and the rest is difference in material costs. High quality vinyl planks are not inexpensive. The wood is 5/8" thick engineered so it can be refinished.

hmmmmnnn, the environmentalist in me likes the option of leaving the marble in tact underneath. Why don't you do a room this way and live with it for awhile. That would be a minimal investment and you could ask people who come by what they think of the room. I have LVP and the sturdiness is appealing to me over wood.

Not sure if you're concerned about environmental impact but LVP isn't a great eco-choice.

https://www.greenbuildingsupply.com/Learning-Center/Flooring-LC/Why-we-dont-sell-luxury-vinyl-tile

In terms of resale, I bet a realtor can tell what makes sense in your neighborhood and style of home. I know LVP is used a lot in rental properties. If you have to rip up the marble, I'd put down wood. It's timeless and can last for decades. (my wood floors are 70+ years old)

Also consider the difference in mess! That might be worth it to me, not having to deal with the demo mess and time it takes to rip it all out. I wanted to do hardwoods but my dog pees and poops and my kids make huge messes so ultimately I am glad I went with the LVP (I had laminate before and it did not hold up, lasted maybe 5 years). Anyway you are correct it is not cheap. I paid $5 a sq ft. However my house is in the $600k range for resale. So you should consider that for sure.

If you like the vinyl, I'd go ahead and install it for now and just have it removed if you want to sell down the road. Just make sure they don't damage the marble since it will be much better for resale.

If that entry area was fixed the cream/black floor may not bother you as much. I would see if you can have just that portion changed out if you can't put a rug over it. The marble is so much more upscale than LVP, which will just cheapen the look of your house.

If you think the marble floor is dated and bossy, then why would you want to save it for the next buyer who will most probably also think it's dated and bossy?

I'm a hardwood flooring fan and have been forever--it's classic and neutral and goes with everything. And if you want vinyl, sheet vinyl is a better option than planks.

Placing a floating floor on top of that requires undercutting all of the door casing, and the appearance of shortening of your baseboards, as it will need to butt to them with an expansion gap.. Plus quarter round on top at the room edges to conceal that expansion gap.

If if you want to remove it later, that means that all of your door casings will need expert skilled labor to attempt to patch that big exposed gap and not be obvious. Or you will need to replace them all. All of the baseboards will need filled from the trim nails securing the quarter round, and then all of your trim will need repainting to match and look right.

Thats a BIG extra cost that you aren’t even considering in the costs of a floating floor.

If you hate it bad enough, you will spend the money to replace it all the correct way. That means removing it all and starting over.

There are wood floors and then there are Wood Floors (putting on my floor snobbery hat). A prefinished 5/8” engineered wood floor from Lumber Liquidators or whatever just isn’t the same thing as a well sourced, top grade & well crafted traditional wood floor which is a work of art & the gold standard and on par with the type of home you have described. It is also a very ambitious messy project that will tear your house apart for weeks and cost a fortune. You would have to really hate that marble to go through such an enormous undertaking, and factory produced wood flooring would not be up to the level of finish or beauty.

I don’t know what the high-end wood flooring species in your area is - here it would be old reclaimed timber from either old building beams or rescued from the bottom of rivers, old growth tight grain w/ few knots in looooong boards for few seams, in high demand. The material expensive, installation expensive, modifications to existing house details, lots of dust from 3 separate sandings, good installers hard to find.

Also have you tried huge plain informal seagrass rugs? They are fairly inexpensive large rugs and used in some very formal rooms as a big warm/neutral field with a natural casual background material. I would try to cover as much of the black dots and tile medallion. Love the look of seagrass paired with formal Instead of $$$ wool intricate patterned colored rugs.

It looks like you got a ton of advice. I would suggest you maybe talk to local realtors and see about a free estimate or spend a few hundred on a local design to really answer your question about the luxury vinyl. I have no sense of a $2 mill home in So Cal and what " level " of materials that will correspond with. In certain areas near where I am that price of house can be a fixer so it would be fine with luxury vinyl.

Did you consider breaking it up? Leave the marble in certain areas and changing in others?

Do what you love - especially if you are going to be there for a long time...

Best of luck!!

Thanks Debbi Washburn. I've consulted with several designers/realtors and 90-% say that buyers for my home would expect hardwood. I am, however, making the exception for the kid's bathroom and my guest house. For these areas, I'm laying the vinyl on top of the marble. The practicality of the vinyl in these areas surpasses any other argument! For the rest of the downstairs, I've chosen a 7.5" wide French Oak, light medium brown. The wear layer is 5/8" so it can be refinished if I, or next owner, gets tired of the color. Very excited to start this project in a week and will post pics.

That is very exciting! can't wait to see it

Good choice! And good luck living through the chaos. But worth it in the end.

suzyq53 . Very good advice! I've lived through kitchen remodel x1 and bath x3. It's stressful but always worth it, This project should take 14 days but expecting 21. I can handle it, given the payoff. :)

Are you removing the marble floors?

just looking at those floors makes my feet hurt. Good choice.

myrica4

It's been well established that solid hardwood on a concrete slab is less structurally stable than engineered. About 1000 sq feet of my downstairs is solid hardwood and there are gaps everywhere from expansion and contractions events. Engineered hardwood is far superior and with a thick wear layer, will stand the test of time.

luvbeautifulthings: I live in SoCal, where houses cost what yours cost. I have stated before in these forums that I do see LVP in my area. But we live in a suburban area of large families, SAH moms, pets--that kind of neighborhood. It's not West L.A., if you know what I mean. I agree it's important what realtors tell you about the local market.

In your case, "floating" the floor on top is going to mean a couple of things you might not like; such as having to cut the door molding around every door casing. Removing and re-installing the baseboards. Will your doors still shut or do those have to be cut down too? How will the new floors transition to the kitchen? (Ugly transition strips?) Or are you taking LVP right into the kitchen...in which case you're going to (maybe) be fencing in your appliances (How will you now slide your dishwasher out?).

The other thing is this: as you search for your awesome LVP, that looks realistic, that's good to excellent quality, you're going to find you're almost spending as much as engineered wood. And as we both know, the cost of installation in SoCal is high--- product cost isn't going to vary all that much unless you go really bottom basement (but I have a feeling you won't). Near me, installation was $5-6/sf and that was 5 years ago (or so). It's probably higher now. The cost of glue for my downstairs (which is large) was $2,000. Not a budget breaker in the scheme of things.... so given the choice, glue down engineered works better where we live (we are on slab). Either way, you'll have to redo your baseboards. Price it out.

I'd demo that floor and not think twice. I'd get the floor you want and do it right the first time. Glue it down.

Girl_wonder thanks for sharing that article. It scared the beejebus out of me. I was actually thinking that LVP sounded like a great idea for flooring until I read that.

Who wants to purposely create a toxic potential cancer causing environment in their own homes. Not me.

My solid wood floors aren’t perfect (they separate/gap depending on seasonal humidity & they can scratch & dent) but I didn’t realize how lucky I am to have them.

Look new 4x4 thin tile you can install directly over the marble.