I'm very interested in this thread, as we're considering cork for our family room remodel. I am not a fan of carpeting or tile. We have laminate in our kitchen & entry and do love it. If the same laminate was still available, I would put it in our family room and add a large area room. Alas, it is discontinued, so I have been hunting the past 2 wks for other options. I've looked at the corks from USFloors. They are a good company; their products are "green" which appeals to the earth mother in me. :) We put USFloors bamboo in an upstairs office last month; love it. Wicanders is another good brand. While my family is fine with carpeting in our family room, I'm not. I want something cozy, warm, green, easy to clean & unique. Enter cork! However, I want an area rug as well, so I don't want to break the bank with the cork since a fair amount of the flooring will be covered. This week I went to Lowes & Home Depot; they have a similar selection. We really like the Sage Cork at Lowe's (similar one at Home Depot). It's more of a beige, not as "amoeba like" as a lot of other corks, and doesn't look like a bulletin board. If we get it, we'll try to install it ourselves & save $600. It's $3.99/sq ft. The least expensive one I found from USFloors is also $3.99; colors don't work as well though. Laminate is another cost effective option we're considering. So many laminates these days...patterns in wood, tile, slate, bamboo, marble, etc. I brought home samples today. Nice, but I love the comfy, softer feel of cork. I do worry about scratching it (moving furniture around, dog, etc.) but we would use pads or cups under items. Honestly, I am so overwhelmed today with all the choices that I'm thinking about just picking the wall color (another overwhelming task!) and taking my time. I will try & post a photo of the Lowe's cork a little later. Wags

OK...point #1. If any part of your slab is 'below grade' the ENTIRE THING is graded as 'below grade'. Personally I would pick different flooring for the 'wet' rooms such as the bathrooms and laundry. The reason: 'water proof' flooring is expensive. So WHY pay for the entire basement to be covered in 'water proof' when only a few hundred square feet actually 'need it'. The other thing is: a floating floor is really all you want to play with. Tiles in bathrooms/laundry room can be adhered to the concrete, the rest can be floated. The basics for ANY floating floor is the same. You must have a vapour barrier (not always underpadding) and you must always have a WELL PREPARED concrete slab that is flat (no wonky subfloors for a floating floor...ever). A laminate floating floor and a vinyl floating floor and a cork floating floor (and even a linoleum floating floor) all require the same thing. And the mechanism to install is always a 'click-together' system. An engineered hardwood can be floated but it almost always requires glue on the seams. Again, all of the same PREPARATION is required. So go ahead and start paying for the concrete slab to be fixed up so that your flooring of choice can be laid down as soon as you can. The 'nightmare' the sales guys are talking about relates to installation and moisture. They are TRYING to get you to purchase the product THEY NEED to move. Yep. I would hazard a guess that these guys have been given 'targets' to meet and/or they have been offered bonuses for moving a certain TYPE of product (too much in the warehouse is costing the company TOO MUCH money). In a nutshell, the reason why you are getting 4 different opinions is because you spoke to 4 different salespeople with 4 different 'company agendas'. That's it. There is no mystery in that. My questions for you (if I were your sales person): 1. What is your budget (do NOT fudge numbers with sales people...it pisses them off and makes them less likely to get the RIGHT floor)? 2. What is your FAMILY situation? Animals? Landscaping issues such as pools, etc? 3. What are YOUR expectations? Can you accept the limitations of certain flooring if it gets you the LOOK that you want for the price you are able to pay?

Let's deal with the Elephant in the room: floating floors have a hollow feel = BAD subfloor preparation. I'm going to tell you a little secret about carpets. They HIDE the WORST SUBFLOORS in the building industry. I mean people have found cigarette butts, gum wrappers, saranwrap, drywall cuts, etc under their carpets. And that's just the stuff you can sweep up. Now for the 'never flat, never level' subfloor. These builders use lowest of the low/crappiest of the crappy materials under carpet and sheet vinyl (I doubt you have linoleum...I'm guessing sheet vinyl...but never mind). They use PARTICLE board or OSB - the nasty stuff. Now imagine trying to tile over top of that crap. New subfloor anyone? And the other issue, if you have wood joist/wood subfloors...the DEFLECTION RATING! The deflection rating is only good enough for CARPET...or a floating floor. It might not be enough for regular hardwood (it all depends on where the joists are and the thickness of the subfloor). Whomsoever you spoke to at LOWES is telling you the truth (wow...a dude at Lowe's knows what he's talking about??? never happens!). Imagine you have a deflection rating that is 1/2 of what you need...and you have crappy OSB as the subfloor. Cement backer board does NOT add to the stiffness rating of the subfloor. You need REAL plywood (subfloor grade thick enough to get you to the Deflection Rating of the tile = could be VERY thick...depending on your joist distance). That stuff is not cheap. You are looking at $1.00 - $1.75/sf. Plus all the SCREWS (no nails...you need to SCREW the new subfloor to the old one...that's fun in with a capital SUCKS!). The screw pattern is tattooed onto the wood. Which is every 6 inches on the edges and every 4 inches in the field! That's A LOT of GALVENIZED SCREWS. Your screws will cost $50. Now we move onto the ditra/schluter system. And the spacer system (as you already know) and the thinset and the grout and the tiles. So far you could be into the tile job for $3/sf...now you have the other $3-$5/sf for the tile/thinset/mortar. Sigh. Now lets look at laminate. How does $2/sf for a decent midrange plank sound? Not bad right. Good. Now imagine the cost of 6mm cork UNDERLAY. That's another $0.80/sf. Excellent. Now imagine LOOSE LAYING the cork sheets (do NOT purchase the role...you loose 10% to the inside curl) DIRECTLY to the subfloor. No glue. No nails. Nothing. It just sits there. Now that you have the spacers at the walls (your expansion gap spacers = 1/2") and your cork sheets are laid up to the spacers (give the cork the same amount of expansion as the laminate). Now click together your laminate floor. Excellent. You have eliminated the BOUNCE of laminate (due to the subfloors being uneven) and the HOLLOW sound of laminate ('cause cork eliminates that as well). With cork underlay you can make a sh!tty $0.79/sf laminate feel like solid hardwood. And vinyl does NOT like underpad. You have to get that subfloor STUPID FLAT (sanding/patching/floating self leveler if you have the right PLYWOOD on top). Hmm...laminate with cork underlay sounds might nice right now.

Cork is an excellent carpet replacement product. It is warm and quiet underfoot. It comes in two formats: A floating click-together format for 'dry' areas and a glue down tile for wet areas such as bathrooms and mud rooms. Yep...you heard me. The glue down cork tile is 100% water proof. As in MORE water proof than vinyl click together products. How? The glue down cork tiles are butted together (no grout lines) when installed. They are then coated x2 with water based polyurethane. The poly seals the seams to create a continuous sheet of cork. The only areas of concern (as with ALL floors in a bathroom) would be at the walls where cork meets drywall. I'm a cork flooring expert. I've done this more times than I can count. A situation like yours were you do NOT want to refinish the entire house because two rooms had issues. Cork is an oak. It has many of the same colour tones as White and Red oak. In fact it starts out quite orange (sigh...ignore that phase of it's life...it doesn't last very long) but soon calms down to a lovely soft yellow which is IDENTICAL to the current laminates you have. Here's how I would do it: I would pick a floating floor that has an IDENTICAL glue down tile option. I would install the floating floor in the bedroom. This gives you the 'total' floor height that you need to match. Now you remove the bathroom flooring and lay in new plywood OR cement backer board (cork doesn't care) to raise the floor up. Now you glue down the cork tile (6mm or 8mm) so that it matches the existing floating floor. Finish the floor in two coats of polyurethane and Voila! A continuous floor with minimal effort. A glue down tile floor (if you hire this part out) is going to cost (labour plus materials) the same as a porcelain tile installation. That's roughly $12-$15/sf. Sounds horrible until you realize you have 30sf to cover...now that's not too bad! A floating cork floor will cost (roughly) the same as a HIGH END vinyl floor installation ($4-$5/sf for materials + $3/sf for labour). www.icorkfloor.com Cork Flooring Tiles Glue Down - Forna Silver Birch 6mm Flooring (icorkfloor.com) Floating Cork Floor - 12mm Forna Floating Cork Flooring (icorkfloor.com) Those are just and example of how to get a continuous floor in two different formats of cork.