Getting Floored

Random Fact: The one thing that drives me crazy about winter is always having cold feet.  Way back when I first agreed to the crazy idea of moving my family into a garage, I demanded said that I wanted radiant heating.  Having lived in a McMansion with super-high ceilings that made it difficult to uniformly heat before, Scott immediately agreed.  Since the garage is already built, we have to install the radiant system on top, meaning that we'll need something to cover it.  But what?  Thus began the big debate that lasted for months and has only just been resolved.

When you look at our space, you can see that it doesn't have a ton of windows.  This will help keep the cost down and also help insulate us from the noise around our bustling neighborhood.  Tall ceilings will help, but we will also have to use a light paint color to keep it light and airy feeling.  In images of spaces I love on Pinterest, I've noticed that they all have wood floors.  We love the earthiness this gives to the space and definitely wanted to incorporate them in somehow.  The problem, for anyone looking to install radiant heating, is that radiant heating and wood floors don't get along.  The heating can warm the floors too quickly and the floors lose moisture, making the perfect recipe for cracks.  We weren't really thrilled about the idea of our floors being cracked.

Concrete was another option.  We could lay the radiant system and then pour 1-2 inches of concrete over this.  I loved the idea that no kids or guests or dogs could do anything to hurt the floor.  It's easy to maintain and would stay pretty cool in our hot summers.  When I found out that you could stain concrete to look like wood I was sold.  This was the option I wanted, I'll pass what's behind door #2, thank you very much.  Unfortunately, Scott wasn't down with this idea.  He pointed out how hard concrete is and didn't want anyone falling and getting hurt, or worried that it would be hard on my back as I spend so much time in the kitchen.  When a builder told me that it was a pretty expensive option, I begrudgingly agreed to look at other options.

Scott offered laminate flooring as an option.  Because it's not real hardwood, it's much more flexible and works better with radiant systems.  Unfortunately, we have laminate floors in our current apartment and even though the building is just now one year old, there are already scratches and scuffs in the floor.  It just doesn't wear well and there's no way to fix an individual plank.  I would hate to have company and a child damage the floor and have a friend feeling guilty about it.  It would be kind to our pocketbook, but it just wasn't the right solution for a young family.

We then came to engineered wood.  It had a bit more flexibility than real hardwood with more durability than laminate.  Our suburban house had engineered wood so we knew how it wore and what kind of maintenance it required.  I wasn't in love, but it seemed like the best option for a while.  We told the builder and most of our friends that this is what we would use.

Except then we would have to choose a different material for the bathroom floor.  Wood and bathrooms don't mix, even though Scott was loving that look on some Pinterest boards.  I was having a really difficult time choosing a tile for the main part of the bathroom floor.  When I met with a friend who was good at design she suggested I use tile that looks like wood.  She then showed me some pictures of a friend's house who had done that very same thing in the basement of her house.  I had to admit that it looked really good and tile is the number one conductor of heat for radiant floors.  I was still worried about the wear and tear.  I was afraid that it would chip and then we'd be stuck.  I mentioned this to the builder and he assured me that tile was one of the most durable choices we could make and could be more economical than other choices.  I ran it by Scott and we came to an immediate consensus.

GREAT HEAT TRANSFER+ GREAT AESTHETICS+ DURABILITY= TILE

I wish that choosing the right tile would be easy now that we've decided what to go with.  A recent trip to Lowe's left us more confused than ever.  I liked tiles that had a reddish hue, like this:

I think it'll add warmth to the space.

Scott didn't like that, but preferred a darker tile like this instead:

Please try to imagine it without the light grout, that's just tacky.

As if the color weren't tough enough to choose, there's also lots of texture options like this:

We spent about five minutes perusing all our options before we realized that we were overwhelmed and in over our heads and called it a night.  Honestly, Scott usually has a better eye for design than I do so I would tend to defer to him, but I want to be sure the space doesn't feel cold.  What would you go with and why?  Is there something that we haven't yet considered that we should?