For anyone years later who is looking for the same info: I recently left flooring as a store manager and sales rep. First, understand that NO flooring is scratch-proof. They are scratch-resistant. I know someone else recommended staying away from it in case your basement floods but the truth of the matter is that if it floods and you use your homeowner's insurance (recommended), they will insist on the entire floor being replaced no matter what you have installed. You can choose a commercial grade if you are really worried about the flooring holding up to abuse. They are often glued down. Your installer will probably want to skimcoat the floor or use a leveler. This is good practice. Urethane with ceramic bead and urethane plus with aluminum oxide particles are the strongest choices right now but there are some higher ratings Like AC 5 which is stronger than say a 20 mil wear layer. There are also a few in the 30 mil wear layer range. You will often save money hiring your own installer because stores make money from the cost of installation. Hire your own and have them buy your materials. If they have an established relationship with the store, they will often get a significant discount on your materials. The store I worked for had a 55% profit margin but when they sold to installers/contractors they lowered it to 30-35%. Stores have to make a profit and so do installers. You may save some cash if your installer charges a smaller profit margin. Ask for a Certificate of Insurance on the installer. If their installation is bad or unfinished, their insurance has to cover it. Stores should have a warranty to cover poor workmanship as well. The manufacturer will cover manufacturing defects but not workmanship. Before you hire someone, ask if they do moisture testing and what is their procedure for it. ALWAYS have a moisture test done and documented when they come out to measure. If it is too high they should recommend what to do to get it and keep it at the appropriate level. ALWAYS have it done again before installation. This is the number one thing that causes manufacturers to deny a claim.

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.

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.

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.