Flooring alternatives?
 

I own a condo townhouse, and the main floor sits on a concrete slab.
The main floor has 3 rooms: Kitchen dining area and living room.

The entire floor is covered in laminate flooring. Needless to say it can get rather cold on the feet during the winter.

The living room floor has carpeting over the laminate, and not bad under foot.
However, the kitchen and dining area still have just the laminate.

Looking for suggestions to replace the laminate. Only options I can think would be tile or hardwood flooring. Not sure how I could anchor the hardwood over the cement though ?

All suggestions appreciated !

There are various hardwood options that can be installed floating. You can also do a glue-down hardwood. We have parquet squares over our concrete slab, I don't really love the look of parquet flooring, but it looks OK and isn't worth ripping out (yet).

You might find that a Pergo-style floor, especially over the foam underlayment would feel slightly warmer. Overall, my personal experience is that the floor is going to be cold, even with carpet. Buy a decent pair of slippers :)

Luxury sheet vinyl - yes I know its not the 70s. I know how cheesy it sounds.

But.... its awesome! We just renovated our master bath, closet and laundry room. When we've done tile floors in the past they have always had radiant heat (we've built 4 homes in the last 7 years). Radiant was not an option here and I hated the idea of cold hard tile.

We met with our rep at Home Beautiful and she strongly suggested we check out luxury sheet vinyl. I thought she was joking but she has never steered us wrong in the past.

Anyway - we installed the floors 8 months ago and both my wife and I LOVE them. They are soft, warm and people actually think they are hard wood. Crazy I know. Also very easy to maintain, install and super cheap.

Ok thats my love story with vinyl flooring. Back to your regularly scheduled programming....

flooring
 

Engineered wood can be floated over concrete floor and looks great, we do it all the time. Take a look at a cork floor that can also be floated over concrete and is comfortable , but a little pricey. LVT is the rage now and that also be glued down or floated, I find it kind of cold.

Unless you can get heat under or into the floor it will always be cold. Rugs or carpet will reduce the sensation since it will conduct the heat of your feet more slowly than a hard, dense surface.

We had our hardwood floors refinished by Lamy's flooring and then friends of ours had them install new hardwood flooring. Straightforward to deal with, fair price and excellent work. They do all types of flooring anywhere around the lake.

Suggest you call and ask about ideas.

http://www.lamysflooring.com/

It's a matter of personal taste and lifestyle...
 

Lots of good options out there, but it really depends on your personal taste and lifestyle. We really like the look of hardwood floors and area rugs. We have two Goldens, so it works out well for vacuuming up the hair, but the HW does get scratched, thanks to 8 sets of nails walking on it each day.

A new look in the porcelain/ceramic tile world is tile that looks like hardwood or distressed wood. Many, many shades and looks are available, from a dark-stain look, to a distressed wood or whitewash look. We recently did one of our bathrooms with this tile and I've copied in a couple pix below. This tile is more of a grey shade, but there are many styles available.

If you go the tile route, I'd also recommend the radiant heat below it, especially if it's a room where you might be barefoot or in socks, (e.g., bathroom or family room). We did this in our master bath and it makes a huge difference.

Dont know what your heating system is but if its hydronic you could still install radiant on the slab before you reinstall a new flooring. You will typically lose about 1 inch for the system. 3/4" osb is applied in strips with the tubing resting in between.

You don't state if the floors are bad, broken, or worn out.

If there is nothing wrong with floors scatter rugs or custom cut carpet is an alternative.

I use custom cut carpet over my wood floor areas. I have edges bound. The binding of edges is the most expensive part.

My philosophy is that if it is not broken don't fix it. But all of that is personal choice.

Or a simple solution is to get a pair of good slippers for the feet !

I am assuming that there is no insulation under the slab, given the report of cold to the feet in winter. Given that, the thought of installing hydronic or electric heat right over the slab makes me wince. Most of that heat will disappear into the ground, making the cost of keeping the floor high enough to feel the difference rather high. It's no wonder that radiant floor heating normally is installed with a minimum of 2" of foam under the slab, preferrably more.

If you have the ceiling height to sacrifice a bit, I'd be inclined to install a layer of rigid foam over the slab (at least an inch), vapor barrier, and plywood subfloor. Over that you can install whatever appeals to you. The insulation will bring the floor temperature significantly closer to room temperature, and you'll notice the difference.

If you want a good read on the subject of radiant floor heating, here's one: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/...radiant-floors.

Concrete slab flooring
 

For whatever reason, the builder raised the floor over the slab with 2x4 joist and install the sub flooring. I didn't realized this until I replaced the carpeting with a laminated hardwood floating floor. I installed an insulated floor pad under the hardwood. The floor is cold but as cold as a floor directly on a concrete slab. I recently installed a condensing boiler. I ask about changing the baseboards to radiant flooring and was advised against it. Big reason is that condensing boilers temperature to heat the house is related to the outside temperature. So if you set back the temperature it takes a looong time to return the temperature. If I go radiant heat, I need to keep the thermostat at the same setting. The boilers designed for radiant heating uses a 'boost' setting when you set it back to the higher temperature.

I am happy with hardwood in the family, dining and hallways. Soft luxury vinyl in the bathrooms and vinyl tiles in the kitchen. The bedrooms have carpeting. You will be amazed the new vinyl flooring has came a looong way. Must warmer under feet and waterproof!