We have carpet on top of old vinyl tiles (they are really ugly), and we just decided to replace the carpet. Any other option would be more trouble and expense. Our house was built in 1950. What I wish had been done differently was that better use had been made of the space to take advantage of natural light. The best light down there is in the garage. The worst is in the finished living space. Even the utility room has a better window than the main room, but it's right next to the furnace and over the hot water heater, so not much we can do about it. My guess is the original owners wanted a big room with a fireplace and didn't care about ventilation or natural light. We even have a full bath down there (toilet, sink, and shower), but it's placed in the far corner of the utility room and you have to walk past the furnace to get to it. We can't decide if it's worth spending money on it to fix it up. Again, I think this setup was designed so that the man of the house, who owned a gas station, could drive his car into the garage, step out of the car and into the basement, and walk and straight into the laundry room, where he could throw his greasy clothes into the washing machine and take a shower. We did finish off the back part of the garage a few years ago. I use it as a music studio. It's almost at ground level (house is built into a slope) and has wonderful light, with windows facing south and west. Wow, that's way more than you wanted to know. Hope it's somehow helpful.

thanks cny...I'm leaning towards no more stained glass too... this just came to me...after spending two days designing a stained glass piece. :( how about just a plain piece of glass insert, so that just the end of the shelves show and I can just display a few favorite pieces that I like,( that have sentimental value) such as the fruit girl and pasta boy we got on a trip to Italy. Here is a pic of our dvd cab, which is the same depth,and almost the same height and the glass is 2 1/2" wide as well... I would have the same side glass like this dvd cab with the oval top. I could have a wood panel behind the statuary so that the other stuff that I keep in the cabinet is not visable. this is a view from the front. Can you picture what I mean?

If you want the STRONG GREY colours shown in your photos, you will need to work with factory finished. If you like the liming or cerusing effect (the white in the grain) then you will need to work with the factory finish. I've heard of a small handful of HIGH-END professionals who can achieve these looks on a site-finished floor. If you think that the population of the US+Canada is around 375,000,000 that is a SMALL amount of humans....like 100-150 professionals who can handle a job like that. Imagine the price tag! We will see this level of workmanship on $25Mill homes. The price of the professional is not at issue in a home that has multiple millions of dollars in financial backing. I understand your Project Manager's concerns. Repairing damage to a factory finished floor isn't fun...but it isn't difficult either. The worst case scenario = cut out the plank and drop another one in. A bit of glue...a bit of waiting and everyone's happy. I'm not sure why the push back is so hard (the PM has probably had something go wrong in the past and had it bite him/her in the arse pretty hard). So long as you assure him/her that you will pay for all the damage control (ram board, etc) you should be fine.

Sigh...it sounds like a low-end finish to begin with. A duration of 5 years is abysmal. Do you have photos? I prefer a HIGH END 2 part European finish. The toughest of the tough come with serious protection. The gold standard is Bona Traffic HD (the HD is SUPER important). It is easy to find (harder to finance...but you want tough/durable not cheap/useless). One that I worked with on CORK (yes... the softest most difficult hardwood to live with) is Loba 2K Supra AT (the AT is SERIOUSLY IMPORTANT). It is harder to find and even harder to finance but SOOOO worth it. It has a velvety silky feel to it, it is extremely tough and it has some of the best 'low slip' ratings in the industry. No matter which high-end 2 part European product you work with (should be $150 - $220/gallon...) you really want to work with 3 coats of FINISH. A sealant coat can be used...but the TOUGH stuff is the finish = the expensive part = 3 coats to get you a commercial grade finish.