This will be my final update. My Diamond W Coretek "Breckenridge" has been installed into my new home. I have not yet painted the walls or moved in, but I feel I can make a judgement on the floor. I am VERY happy with how it looks. It has a matte look to it (not glossy), which I like. With many fake floors, if the sunlight's glare shines on the floor, the glare often highlights fake-looking indentations that manufacturers put into the planks to make them look rustic. I hate that, and I am happy to report that when you look at these planks in the sun's glare, what I see is simply a grain pattern (no weird divots or anything like that) that I feel actually looks pretty real! While there are a lot of "knots," I really like how it looks and I do not feel that there are too many knots. This install job is not glued to the foundation (downstairs) or glued/screwed to the subfloor (upstairs). It is floating. Yet, when I walk on it, it feels very solid (as if it were glued down). There is a "quarter round" (or something like that, I forget the name), along the bottom of the normal baseboard. This extra baseboard piece is attached to the wall yet is not attached to the flooring. The flooring is then NOT installed all the way to the wall, but about 1/2" short of the wall. This extra baseboard piece covers this gap between the flooring's edge and the wall, and the gap allows the flooring to expand and contract without buckling or bubbling up. (Note that this extra piece has not yet been installed in the two photos shown below). As of now, without having lived on it yet, I couldn't be happier. My flooring guy turns out to be great, and he said he is a fan of this particular Diamond W product. He really had nothing negative to say about it. His only advice is that the floor can temporarily "buckle" or "bubble" in areas, most likely facing east or west, where you have a patio door with no overhang where the floor is exposed to daily periods of very hot direct sunlight. So, in those fairly rare cases, he recommends a window covering to diffuse the light/heat. On a side note, shame on Diamond W for having such a horrible website. I mean, seriously, shame on you. You give your customers one terrible photo of this product/color, and you expect us to be able to make a quality assessment? And, in your photo, you actually have a very poor install job shown with planks that are not properly staggered? There are some industries that simply need to experience a revolution of efficiency, and the flooring industry is one of them. Shaking my head... A final note: To anyone seriously considering this product, I highly recommend you simply buy an entire box of the stuff in the color you prefer for around $75 and lay it out yourself. I don't think any quality judgements can be made with just a sample from a flooring store. I was able to get a box delivered to me in less than one week.

Love the color, it is exactly what we wanted. As for quality, it‘s our 1st experience with LVP (we are more used to engineered hardwood), and we’re glad we went with the CoreTEC Grande line. I‘m not sure we’d like a thinner LVP that doesn‘t have that super realistic surface layer or the weight to it. The CoreTEC Grande planks are super realistic, heavy and thick, more like wood would be. And they transition nicely to floor tile. Plus, they have a slightly thicker cork layer on the bottom (compared to most LVP planks) and it does feel very nice underfoot. Overall, it’s holding up very well and still looks like new. It’s a little more difficult to get rub or scuff marks off but it resists dog claws and our kids‘ toys better than wood does. One thing to note…if you plan to use rugs with a polypropylene backing on them (most on Wayfair or Amazon have this backing), you need to use a special rug pad in order to protect the floor from developing serious surface problems. Wool or cotton rugs are fine, though. We have two rugs with polypropolene backing, so we bought a couple rug pads from Rug Pad USA before laying down those rugs. So yes, so far so good for us. Good luck and make sure you hire a good installer. There are definitely some tricks to installing the Grande line as the tongue and groove mechanism is VERY fragile. Use a scrap piece of a plank as an install block instead of a regular floor install block. The scrap piece fits together with the plank you are installing and when you hammer the scrap piece (or a regular block up against a scrap piece), it pushes the plank into place without breaking the tongue and groove material, if that makes sense. A regular block just crushes the tongue and groove material once you start hammering. Anyways, sorry for the long post. Hope its hepful.

We installed 2600 sf of Happy Feet Pinnacle LVP in our new build and am very happy with it. i had read through this group many times prior but decided with grown kids it was more important to us to have a matte look and low maintenance than risk wearing out our socks. I definitely prefer the feel of natural wood under bare feet but this LVP is not wearing out our socks or our bare feet. So far it feels like a great decision. interesting anecdotal observation - when in our old house, which had hardwood throughout, when we laid out various LVP samples and left them there for a week, our dog stated laying on the Happy Feet sample section. Never the other samples. 🤔

Thank you. I hear you re laminate advantages, from now having read enough. I just can’t find much selection at floor stores and certainly not what you’re calling high end European product. What are the names and brands I should look for and hunt down? Most floor stores push vinyl as you say, but even a couple of those that do sell it said they’d install laminate in their own home not vinyl,nbutbthen tehy show me their laminate and there’s few choices and can’t even find a simple light toned natural wood like version....all are either trendy grays, too dark, feel and look (and are) cheap. So I’m lost. re laminate and water, those who do like laminate in floor stores all say no to bathrooms but that kitchen is ok because wetness for 24-72 hrs (depending on which laminate) should be fine on the ones designed for water ”resistance”. Is that just a sales pitch too? i see plenty of homes where people put real wood (eg maple maybe w a sealant?) in kitchen and say it is fine as long as wipe up a spill, but water drops hit a problem. I assume lamI ate is at least better than hardwood w water? Or no?