We have inherited a lot of horrid flooring in our house...pale carpet upstairs, very grubby; darker carpet on stairs and landing, smells of all the previous owners' pets and now ours I suppose!!! One day we will replace the lot.
Then downstairs is mostly tiled (none matching) with floorboards in the dining room - the well laid tiles in living area are very practical, the damaged original ones in the kitchen never looked clean and in the loo they've started lifting - laid with wall tile adhesive! So we've put lino in the loo and kitchen and that's a big improvement, but downstairs is always really cold, can't relax unless heating is full blast. We've tried rugs and even put carpet down over the floorboards to stop draughts and even on the tiles but I've just ripped that all up because of doggy housetraining accidents, just not practical.
Anyway after much to-ing and fro-ing we thought about cork tiles we can lay ourselves over hardboard but they scuff with dog claws etc, and the cats would have one big scratching post! So we have come back to the lino idea for the whole of downstairs, a thick one with good backing, to stop the echoing and warm the place up!
We put all laminate floor downstairs in our holiday place, not the cheapest but not the dearest either and that has stood the test of time brilliantly, we allow dogs so needed to be practical. We may do that here one day all through downstairs. Upstairs we put a good wool carpet, again not cheap but it still looks like new - sadly it is a shade of beige!
