dian, we've done the tape the plastic to the floor thing and didn't find any moisture. Dh & I even talked about painting the slab for a short term cheap solution, but agree that it would look pretty awful. We went to Home Depot & found some vinyl flooring strips called Traffic Master and were on the verge of ordering it when we thought we'd better come home & do some remeasuring first. I got online & found about as many happy people as unhappy, and really, about half the unhappy folks sounded like they hadn't put it down according to directions. Still, even though it would be a short term solution for us, I don't want to look at curling edges for 6-8 months either so we've backed off that for now. Thought we'd visit a Floor & Decor tomorrow & see what other options we have. If the TrafficMaster worked, it would be ideal. It would only cost about $600, and would be able to clean it during construction, and if for some reason we actually loved it, we could patch it in to the new addition & just leave it here.

Are you my doppleganger, Mable? This is almost our exact circumstance, except we live here and don't rent. We are in a small ranch (in Alaska) and tore down the wall between the kitchen and the living/front door area. We are also on a slab, which limits us to engineered wood if we go with real wood. Almost universally, the local flooring folks are recommending LVT or laminate over the engineered hardwood - even though it would give them 3x more of our money if we went with real wood. They all say that the laminates will wear better/scratch less than the wood for the same water risks and are better with animals or men who don't take boots off at the door. Some of the newer laminates have much better systems for water-resistence, too. We are seriously looking at LVT's, which is a market that has exploded a lot over the past year or two. There are now loose lay LVT options, which are great because if a plank gets damaged you can just literally use a plunger to pull up the damaged board and replace it. There are also floating, click lock systems for LVT now. (We really don't want to glue down after pulling up all this crap from our foundation and hearing horror stories about glues interacting with concrete subfloors, even though glue down has distinct advantages in terms of not needing such a level subfloor and sounding less hollow.) We are still on the fence about it all, but my partner wants to go with a loose lay LVT floor (Kardean, XL Flooring Drop and Done or EZ-Lay). I don't love the look of the LVTs and am leaning towards laminate and taking the water risk to get a little bit of sheen and I think they reflect more light for our small home. I think the laminates look more realistic to wood, too. Currently, I'm researching a product from US Floors called CoreTec One and CoreTec Plus, which is marketed as a laminate with 100% waterproofing that is able to go over uneven surfaces.

The short story is we chose radiant because it worked the best with the floorplan / material choices we made. The long story is how we got there. We had the choice of a basement, crawl space, or slab. Basements are common in my area because of the required 3' footers - it doesn't cost much to go deeper and have a basement. Financially they make sense, but I don't care for them. They are cold, dark, and low ceilings feel oppressive. Crawl spaces are nice to allow access, but the floors were crazy cold in winter and the amount of humidity could also turn into a mold problem. We chose a slab foundation before we had land, and it worked out since the land we built on would not have supported a basement. Our slab has xps foam board under and along the edges for insulation. Our floor plan is completely custom that I did in autocad myself. All the common areas are on the south side and open. The bedrooms and bathrooms are on the north side. With an open floor plan (some of it 17' tall rooms) and concrete floors it makes forced air ducting more difficult. My experience with forced air is that it blows dust and curtains, feels like a cold draft across your neck when it first kicks on and forces the cold air out before the heated air, and is noisy enough to have to raise the TV or conversation volume when its on. Choosing radiant floor heat with separate zones for the common and private areas seemed like the perfect choice for heating. But we do use our air conditioner for 6-8 weeks and the floorplan layout was critical in being able to use a wall unit to comfortably cool the whole house. I was planning on finishing the concrete with coloring and waxing of some kind, but my husband became friends with a person who polishes commercial concrete floors and we had him polish our floors. It looks wonderful, and is easy to clean. The radiant heat is quiet and even heating with about a 2 hour lag time. I also thought it would be warm on my toes, but I learned that it's not - even in the middle of winter, and want to make sure others are aware of that so they are not disappointed. It's not cold, but its not warm either. Our upstairs is a quality pad and carpeted which feels nicer to my bare feet than the cool concrete. Each house and owner is different so I hope you find the best solution for your situation.

I disagree neither one of them have scratched in my home in the last 11 yrs with big dogs playing inside all the time. But the quality of the flooring has a lot to do with that. I dont have wood look laminate we have one that looks like slate on our main floor and we have wood look vinyl plank in the lower level whre our dogs have free access to adog run all day. Both floors clean up with a vacuum and a damp mop and still look like new. I have never heard the hollow sound everyone talks about with laminate maybe we just used a better under pad .