MiaOKC - thanks for the tip. I will call tomorrow and check it out LazyGardens - likewise thanks for the lead, I will check it out too. Im so excited...hopefully they'll pan out. Gregmills - I'm in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area and I guess it IS a matter of geography because Ive run up against brick walls trying to get it. Down here everyone is going with the pre-stained or engineered floors, based on what the sales people/contractors tell me. It may be due to humidity concerns. I'm not worried though. As I mentioned in my original post, my house is from the 1940s. The original part sits on joists, a master bedroom addition from the 80s sits on concrete slab. Both have the hardwood and the floors are in awesome shape, no warping of any kind. I'm confident, with a properly installed subfloor, mine will be fine too. Ive tried to make sure my addition did not look like one so I desperately wanted to keep the floors consistent. . Thank you all for the leads. If anyone reading has more suggestions, I'll take 'em.

Just wanted to give an update now that we've been in the house for a while. We went ahead and purchased the 1.5" unfinished red oak from a company in FL for an even better price and had it drop shipped to us. We ripped out the lineoleum ourselves and had our installer install, sand and refinish everything to match. You can barely tell where the new floor starts and the old floor ends! We're really happy with it. It's actually a little lighter than the pictures portray. The only downside is that because the house is so old, the floors are pretty creaky! Before: And after:

Staceyneil, Thank you for your input. The tile is rectified and a 4 rating and has this taupe bevel around it. I am still not sure what the bevel is for. I just felt less than 1/32nd grout width especially since I had wanted to install the tiles in the running bond method could cause problems. Both installers seem to feel my concrete slab floor is fairly flat but I am sure it is not 100% flat since the place is around 21 years of age and I already see a crack in the concrete near the sliding door when I lift the ripped Linoleum floor up. The tile is discontinued so it is so difficult to find much on the tile but I did find out the Ilva 18" X 1" Porcelain tile was rectified and when I measured several tiles, they all seem to be a 17.25" X 17.25" perfect square. Amazingly Ilva calls the tile White but it is more beige, grayish ivory, taupe, touch of reddish beige with gray veins.

Thank you for your response, the ceiling height in the basement would be to level out with rest of basement. No, I would not want to go lower. The sunken living room floor on inside has joist hangers already, this is on the main house middle beam. I do NOT have my floor open yet but here are pictures I found online that would be very similar to mine. the hangers on inside with wall dividing rooms right on the load bearing beam. The other picture would be the way on outside of wall with joist sitting on sill plate. My thought was that the living room floor that I need raised has no bearing on the rest of the structural walls. With in this living room I would be able to remove finish floor, sub floor to see all of floor joist.