If you can afford it, I would stretch for engineered hardwood. I know it's expensive, but it just looks and feels so much better. If you're more nuanced, you can definitely feel the difference if you walk barefoot on engineered hardwood vs vinyl.

If you can't afford it or don't care, LVP is the way to go. I know many people and installers say you don't need underlayment, but I would still recommend it. LVP is so thin that if your floor isn't level you will not only feel the pockets more, but it's easier for joints to break if the floor isn't level.

For a second level in a house or to be a nice upstairs neighbor, I would definitely put approved vinyl acoustic underlayment. This will not only help level out the flooring, but it'll help dissipate noise when you're walking, jumping, or banging around. If it's for your own house, I would definitely buy the acoustic underlayment for LVP, especially if your in-laws are in the basement, lol.

edit; We just installed LVP in my in-laws basement suite at $1.99 a sq/ft and you just can't beat the price + it's a rental so LVP can take way more abuse than laminate or hardwood. Go to West Coast Flooring in Surrey, their prices are crazy good.

If you're buying a 4.5 million dollar house I think spending that money is just flicking a cigarette butt out of the helicopter flying over the Donnie creek wildfire. It's not gonna help, but it's not gonna change much.

I may have shared this before but this was my flooring nightmare lol.. did it all entirely by myself.. I don’t even know if a contractor would know what to charge for this

Original floor:

https://i.imgur.com/A4emuNv.jpg

My flooring was out almost 2” over 20 feet. Seeing as I had a completely finished basement suite below I opted to shim each joist with a laser level as opposed to rip up the ship lap and shim the actual joists

https://i.imgur.com/f7e4YLh.jpg

Then installed 5/8 tongue and groove ply as the new sub floor

https://i.imgur.com/X2FrffY.jpg

This is my flooring 2.5” lauzon Canadian maple from Quebec

https://i.imgur.com/GP9D0t3.jpg

This part was a bit tricky.. so in order to continue to floor throughout the main floor I opted to use a spline and actually start the flooring in the middle of the room as opposed to a outside wall. This made it infinitely easier to keep things square because being a 100 year old home nothing would have lined up if I had started on a wall when I finally got to the doors etc. so basically I had to measure off each wall, find a middle line, screw down a straight 2x4 and then glue and nail the first couple sections of the flooring against the 2x4. Let that set and then remove the 2x4 and go off the spline the other way.

https://i.imgur.com/bMeO9ZF.jpg

Final product

https://i.imgur.com/Z1X69vv.jpg

As you can see my joints aren’t perfect but I bit off a lot here after almost never really doing flooring period before lol. Almost 5 years later and with crazy fluctuations with heat and humidity in our home none of the joints have opened up so I’ll say I did ok lol

If I can thank you 3 times I would. That's amazing

Late to the convo but if you have kids/dogs I suggest LVP for practicality & so you can run it uninterrupted through the kitchen (necessary for an open-concept build).

Leave the $2 LVP for the rental suite though... that stuff is really cheap and gives LVP its bad name. There are some nicer wide & long plank LVP available in the $5-10 range that looks much better than the cheap stuff.

If you don't have kids or don't care about the damage from kids/pets, then by all means, go with hardwood or engineered hardwood.

Also, if you are redoing your entire floor aim for a smooth transition between materials (ie - floor to tile to carpet is at the same height)... that way you don't need transition strips.

Holy Shit !!

Vancouver City Hall proposing 9% annual property tax increase for the next 5 years! Based on compound effect, increase = >50% cumulative increase!

Per $100
Yr 1 - 109
Yr 2 - 118.81
Yr 3 - 129.50
Yr 4 - 141.16
Yr 5 - 153.86

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/0...0to%20explore.

Pocket change

Property value 2.0mil
2.2mil
2.6mil
3.0mil
3.2mil

:troll: it's unrealized gains

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...65/838/d83.jpg

wish it was higher - generational home owners and inheritors are deferring their taxes anyways. the city may as well borrow against it. maybe when the boomers die off we'll actually see some redistribution of wealth.

While shitty for some folks this is ultimately a good thing - the city has been deferring billions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades to avoid raising taxes for decades (like not spending enough on sewer upgrades) AND they've kept rates low artificially for decades (so have the other cities in the GVRD) to protect landowners. Getting rid of property tax deferral is the next thing they should do (provincial gov't) but that'll never happen cause seniors would lose their shit.

After reading this, for a second there I thought I was on Reddit.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/mark...naby-apartment

$2400/mo for a 500sf condo at Brentwood.

Brentwood seems like the place to be. My cousin lives at the amazing Brentwood and he loves it there. It's right off the highway and not that far from downtown with the Skytrain right there.

city of lougheed is even worse. they want $2425 for a 415sf 0br/1ba, and that's not even as desirable as brentwood.

^^ you better take it before it goes up

Funny how the passage of time changes opinions. I lived at Brentwood during the first wave of construction after the Millennium line was complete. I remember people on Reddit and even on this forum dumping on Brentwood even recently.

How times have changed. Coquitlam Centre will be the next Brentwood in 15 years.

Coquitlam Centre is pretty bumping right now isn't it? For those who don't go into Vancouver much, I would say Coquitlam is ideally located. I would take Coquitlam Centre over Surrey Central or Guildford.

edit; actually, thinking about it, I really like Guildford and the traffic there isn't as bad. I know Surrey Central traffic can get crazy and I think Coquitlam traffic can get really bad too.

The mall itself is sort of lame, but there's so much surface parking, so it's only a matter of time before it gets redeveloped.

The former Dodge lot across the street will be developed soon with multiple towers, which will be the real catalyst for change.

Roads around Coq ctr aren't terrible, especially being used to Richmond traffic, despite what locals might complain about. I love the area myself having moved there a year and a half ago from Richmond.

It's nowhere as bad as no. 3 road, Alexandria, or alderbridge and garden city.

Admittedly it does get congested during rush hour (Johnson, Barnet, Pinetree). Hopefully they'll find ways to address that as they start further development in future.

Getting to the highway down Lougheed is a bit far but usually flows ok.

The locals who complain are probably those who have lived in the area since the 1970/1980s when the Tri-Cities were truly a backwater that nobody west of Boundary Road cared about.

Traffic around Coquitlam Centre and Lougheed Highway is going to continue to increase and get worse as Burke Mountain continues to grow. People have to live somewhere.

Yeah that's what I figured, I look at their traffic complaints like :rukidding:

The one perk about Coquitlam Center was that it was never really that busy until the last 6 or so yrs. Gives me a bit of Metrotown vibes now so I've avoided going even though I lived 2 blocked away on Johnson and Guildford

What shocked me about Coquitlam was the size of the bubble world there, I couldn't believe how big it was.

Brentwood I thought was okay for the price, don't think it's that worth it. You're not really that close to much. I guess having a lot of date options on the bottom floor maybe okay.

But for $2,400 you may as well pay to be in Oly Village / DT.

If you're old and don't like the downtown life then you may as well live by Joyce a save a few thousand a year.

lol - inb4 "taxation is theft"

Still think Brentwood is dumb. No infrastructure to support the density, keep in mind it's not just Brentwood but Solo across the street and the other thing that's going up. Lougheed and Willingdon simply cannot handle the volume of traffic in that area, and the spillover to Dawson is brutal as well.

The layout of the whole thing is also stupid and I find it really hard to navigate the first time I drove through it. Gone through it 4 times now and still don't like it.

Coquitlam Center is BUSY. I went to visit some friends in Coquitlam 2 months ago and I was surprised how many ppl there were at the mall. People drive just as poorly but just sub in more white ppl. And that trail around the lake, wow that was just as amazingly busy. Though I must give it to the city of Coquitlam, they've done a good job.