Thank you, all. I thought a lot about all the feedback and about what SJ said about when/where/how to utilize wood planking if I like that look. I considered buying the whole house’s tile now, in case it’s discontinued, but that’s not what I want to do now. Storing a ton of boxes and feeling like I have a gun to my head to install them before I’m ready for the rest of the transition isn’t part of the plan. I went to a tile store (not big box or outlet) and bought a beautiful porcelain 12x24 similar to what Beverly showed in the second picture. It’s strategic because it’s in the master color scheme we are transitioning to and this bath is buffered from the rest of the house by a bedroom with carpet. So, in the event it’s discontinued, it will still flow and feel cohesive later provided I stay in the same color plan. This was a very helpful thread that indeed changed my mind from when I posted. Thanks again.

Engineered is hardwood applied to a good quality plywood. I liive on Cape and engineered is the only way for you to go (in the wood family). I copied this from the Spruce blog; Engineered wood is better than solid hardwood at dealing with moisture. Its plywood base is dimensionally stable, meaning that it warps and flexes less easily upon contact with moisture than solid wood. Fibers in plywood run in cross-wise layers, a far more stable structure than solid wood's parallel fibers. We owned an 1820 half Cape. It came with original wide plank pine floors which were in tough shape. My builder flipped them over and had them refinished. Gorgeous! Next house, same neighborhood, 200 yds from the water. This house was new build and I chose Homerwood engineered hickory in Saddle (refinished, no mess, and no guessing about the color). Gorgeous! 100 yr old cottage sounds so old to someone young, but 1919 is pretty flexible for design, unless you are talking about a distinct/authetic design vintage home. Choose what you like, but that close to the water…go engineered. It won’t cup and you can wet (wrung out) mop it when needed. Use Bona. Our present home, not Historic and came with a pool, I used wood look white porcelain. Gorgeous. Love Newport..my daughter is Navy…Thames for food and shopping, yeah!

100% I'd go with engineered hardwood over Vinyl plank. I just don't understand why some people seem to feel engineered hardwood is not a good choice. I think it is fantastic and is the best choice for certain installations. I don't think engineered flooring is in any way inferior. If you like wide plank you can get that in engineered as well - up to 8-10" wide. Although a more common size is 5-6" wide. We've had engineered hardwood down in our cottage for more than 3 years. We have had no issue at all with it and I haven't noticed any fading in sunlight and we have a lot of windows. Follow the manufacturers instructions and put in good underlayment - it really can make a big difference to the comfort and sound of the floors. There are so many colours and wood species available in engineered hardwood. I know you've said you spent a long time looking at your LVP - hopefully you can find some hardwood that is similar to what you were hoping for. I think this will turn out to be a lucky accident and in the long run I hope you will be very happy with whatever you choose.

The age of the slab will determine whether or not you can *easily put down a permanent floor. Many of these homes were built BEFORE plastic sheets were put UNDERNEATH the slab. In the 1990's the plastic became common. In the 80's it was hit or miss. The 70's you had almost no chance to find a vapour barrier underneath the slab. What does that mean...well concrete is porous. It is SOOOOOO porous the Floridian water table can ruin pretty much any permanent floor you install. That means glue down hardwood is out. Many ceramic tiles are out. Porcelain tile is possible but the chance of it *eventually failing. Of course, if you throw enough money at the slab or an older home, you will (eventually) get to the point where the slab is considered 'sealed' and you can put down whatever you want. For many that takes $5/sf to achieve. In reality, assuming you have a home built before the mid-80's, you will be limited to a floating floor. It is possible to purchase floating wood floors...but you are probably limited to engineered hardwood. There are solid hardwood floors that are allowed to be floated....but they are very few and very far between and they are more expensive than most other wood floors. The 'greenest' option is going to be solid wood NAILED TO WOOD subfloors. But you don't have the 'wood subfloor' requirement. That means we start looking at adhesives. But your location might mean you are looking at the 'nastiest of the nasties' to get a wood to glue in place. So we now start plumbing the very shallow depths of solid hardwood floors that are floated (normally means glue is used on the edges to hold them together). The adhesive can be much 'greener'...but you will have hundreds of linear feet of glue added to your home. The COST of these types of wood floors could knock them out of your budget...If you have $10/sf to spend then you will be just fine...if not we move on. OK...now we are into engineered hardwood. They are almost always allowed to be floated. Excellent. Now we have a vast pool of products. A 'nice' engineered hardwood with decent CARB II tests will cost $7-$9/sf. Again the adhesive needed to float them has to be added into the total costs (can add $0.50/sf) but can be Zero VOC. Right. Now we are into the a slightly better 'green' option called cork floating floors. The European sourced products are very very low VOC. They click together easily = does NOT need glue. Costs are $3 - $12/sf. The cost of install can be as much as $3/sf. Vinyl gets us into another layer of chemicals. The VOC isn't what you look at, it is the phthalates. It is a different category of chemicals and are not detectible in the standard VOC test (they are NOT organic compounds therefore you cannot find them on a 'volatile ORGANIC compounds' test). Whew. The REALLY AWESOME VOC/phthalate free products are higher priced. They can and will be more expensive than decent cork floating flooring. I've seen CoreTec Plus+ priced at $8.99/sf USD. A European Grade Laminate will have the same level of VOCs as cork...but will cost $3-$6/sf (or so). I've seen some really nice products sit around $5/sf.