J,

I think the prices you have been quoted are unreasonbly high. $15 per sq. - maybe in Trump Tower... Having renovated several appartments and doing a renovation now, I can tell you from my experience. Firstly, around $7-8 per. sq. ft. you can get fantastic hardwood floors - even at Lowe's + ~$3 installation. I would also look www.ifloors.com and some other sites. Now, the floor you are refering to called hardwood engineered floor and in my opinion it's the best deal for money. This is what I am putting in now. It ranges between $3-7 depending on the brand quality of the wood. You would also need to buy cork to put under the floor and don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The best cork is about $1 sq. ft. These you can really install yourself or hire someone for a two-three days. We put ~1000 sq. ft. of floors in two days and that's pretty slow.

Cheers,

Zhora

Hi - I was thinking about swapping out the parquet flooring for hardwood.  What kind of experience have people had with this?  I'm debating between a engineered "floating" floor that would float over a foam'ish subfloor, or just a simple glue down of engineered hardwood.

I understand there is solid concrete under the parquet.  is this conducive to the gluedown method which does not involve a subfloor?  Thanks

I had engineered wood floors installed directly on top of the parquet with glue & staples. Has worked out fine & saved a lot of $ by not ripping out the parquet. I've also met people in the building that floated engineered wood flooring or laminate flooring on top of the parquet & are very happy with the results.

Very helpful freezedried, thanks.

Has anyone floated or glued over the concrete?  I am a little worried about the height of the floors if i put it on top of the existing parquet.

The height of adding directly on top of the parquet limited my choices in engineered wood flooring somewhat, but I still found one that I love at 3/8" & no height problems at all at that thickness. (If I could have afforded to have the parquet ripped out, I would've done it that way though.)