I put a high quality, floating floor in my apt kitchen in NYC to help with pet wear and tear. NOT the best option. If one piece needs to be replaced (and with pet accidents it bubbles very easily), you have to undo a whole section because they are interlocked. Also, they just don't look that great, no matter what we paid. So when it came time to make the rest of the apt floor look decent, we switched to vinyl planks from Lowes. Sounds gross, but they're actually amazing looking. Our apt was built in the 1880's, (the original floor was long destroyed and removed before we got it),and I found a dark gunstock in a wider cut that almost matched our neighbor's original floor exactly. You ready for this? 98 cents a sq foot! If one gets damaged you peel it off (with some effort) and put a replacement. Echoflooring is sooo right about batch colors. Get it all at once and mix up the boxes as you lay it. We have a bunch of mixed ones for replacement and haven't used one, not one, but I know we have them. Lowes will recommend their sealer,but we didn't use it. They self stick just fine. One or two spots came up after we were first done and someone on line told us to use a hairdryer to reheat it and lay a book on top overnight. Worked like a dream. Our apt in NY is 800 sq ft and our current tenant is a photographer with two rescue cats and she loves the floor. Even with her keen eye, we had to tell her they were vinyl and how to replace it if she had a pet accident. She was blown away! I will try to post a picture of our NY apt floor for you. To be fair to our tenant the photographer, I took the horrible quality pics w my cell, not her! LOL! Choose wisely for your space and go with your fave, not what everyone says you should do, incl me. And pls do remember the color batch issue echoflooring brought up. Good luck :) Here is a link that might be useful: NYC vinyl plank floor

Electric radiant is a floor warming system. Hydronic radiant is a home heating system. Not the same thing at all. Any floor electric radiant that doubles someone’s electricity bill is not installed correctly. It adds only a few cents a day to run. Radiant of either kind does suffer from the lag in response time due to thermal mass. It isn’t an instantaneous change the temperature from either electric or hydronic. The larger the amount of thermal mass at a set temperature, the longer it takes to change that temperature. That is why radiant is so comfortable though. It radiates heat, just like the sun does. Open concept homes with hard surface floors will be loud, period. It matters not if the floors are tile or wood. It’s hard floors and a giant echo chamber. Close off a few rooms, or add some baffling from wing walls, ceiling treatments, and cased openings, and the noise is reduced. Add rugs, drapes, and cloth upholstered furniture, and the noise is reduced further still. Carpet the open concept like the old 60’s MCM original open concepts, and it is quieter still. Wood floors on a crawl space are “softer” under foot than tile because of the minute deflection from the framing. It has nothing to do with the wood itself. Glue wood to a concrete slab, and there is no deflection for wood. There is no difference in walking on either tile or wood permanently fastened to concrete.

Patricia and Sophie are on it. Laminate is NOT a very good idea in kitchens. In fact, the average age for laminate in a kitchen = 3-5 years. Yep. You have to replace that "durable" floor inside of 5 years. But "Oh Wait! I can't find it any more. Now what do I do?" Sigh....happens SOOO often I could spit! I would say work with the electric heating in the bathrooms - and that's IT. If you MUST have it in the kitchen then MAKE SURE you use TILE in the kitchen! Now you can use laminate throughout. And I can "save you" thousands of dollars (in both installation costs AND heating/cooling bills) by suggesting 1/4" cork underlay underneath the laminate. The insulating value in the cork will reduce your heating/cooling costs by 10%-15%. If you upgrade to 1/2" cork you will save as much as 30% on your heating/cooling costs. And yes...it is possible to design the floor height variations INTO your flooring plan. Not a problem. It just takes some fore planning (as in BEFORE the concrete slab is poured). Here's the OTHER way to do this. You can CALCULATE the tile+heating coil floor heights with decent accuracy. Then you work BACKWARDS to find a laminate floor + cork underlay that will FIT the calculations you have already created. I used to do this every day for people. A tile floor will OFTEN sit slightly higher than 1/2" (between 5/8" and 11/16"). If you add in the heating coils you are going to sit a little higher (much closer to the 3/4" height) - possibly even 1" high. Now you take these measurements (stick with 3/4" = 18mm thick = you should be fine) and go shopping for laminate. The 'average' thickness for laminate = 8mm to 10mm thick. If you want a high-end laminate you are looking at 12mm (1/2"). Which means you will need to "make up" roughly 1/4" of height. Great. This is where 1/4" cork comes in. If you do the math it works in both metric and imperial: 1/2" laminate + 1/4" cork = 3/4" thickness; the metric works out to be 12mm laminate + 6mm cork = 18mm thick total floor height. Notice how all of these numbers match up? Right. Now for the tricky part. You are looking at a floating floor system. It MUST HAVE a transition strip between the tile and the laminate. Must have. The good news is a floor that has matching floor heights will allow you to work with low-profile products. These low profile products will reduce the "humps" in your floor. That's as good as you can get with a floating laminate floor - regardless of the underlayment, or the total thickness.

I love what you are doing! I wanted to do our bedroom in a dark color, hubby said it would soak up all the light. well, duh, It's a bedroom, usually spend night time in there. I lost, it is a medium grey, as dark as I could get away with. I see you went with a shinny stainless sink, I hope that doesn't end up disappointing you. Very hard to keep shinny. My daughter had one and it shows every scuff, even from cleaning. I appreciate your undiagnosed OCD, I have it also. Takes longer to complete projects, but worth the effort. Thanks for the update! I'd be at your back door if I lived close enough to give you a hand. ( MrsFO2) I don't know why it gave me a different name..????