To be spending months going round in circles about flooring

[TeaLightsGlisten]

I'm driving myself mad.
I've got horrible plastic shiny laminate in lounge that I loathe. It came with the house years ago and the first thing I wanted to do was get rid of it but we never have.
DH doesn't do DIY (bain of my life but that's another story).
I don't know how to do flooring.
So I've had 3 different tradesmen round to quote for replacing laminate with engineered wood floor, and to quote for professionally sanding and staining original pine floorboards which are in excellent condition from 1980 when house was built (have pulled up and inspected, they are in near perfect condition). They natural floorboards are tongue and groove, so no draught. And nailed on to joists, so no movement.
I just cannot decide.
It's unbelievably expensive to do either one, and I'm terrified of making the wrong decision because we are going to have to take out a loan to do either option and I won't be able to afford to replace a floor I'm not happy with!
I'd love advice, and I'd love any images you may be able to share as I'm a very visual person and am struggling to be able to visualise what it could look like.
Thank you to anyone willing to help!

It's actually very easy if you hire the big sander, I did ours and it came out great

I removed all the ugly carpets myself in my new small 1930s cottage and decided to keep the original floorboards.

I just hired a local handyman who replaced a few boards that were too damaged and that only costs me about £300 for the whole house.

Then I sanded the floor myself. You can hire a machine for the weekend. I already had an electric hand sander at home which was enough as my rooms are quite small.

I also restored the original stairs that way.

Where the floor boards were did not look good enough to be varnished only I used some hard wood floor paint in a dark grey.

It would have cost me thousands to get the floors and the stairs done for the whole house.

If you can do some of the work yourself and keep your original flooring I would try that.

OK, you're convincing me towards a DIY job....!
DH is worse than awful at DIY though, and I do mean horrifically bad, no common sense or skill whatsoever ....so it'd be me doing it!
What can I use to fill in the floorboard gaps? If I don't fill them, they're going to get filled with biscuit crumbs and crunched crisps trodden in from DC, which will look disgusting and unclean!! They're tongue and groove boards, so shallow gaps, but gaps all the same.

I'd sand and varnish the original floors yourself, you'll probably love it. If not you can put the engineered floor down and you won't have lost much.

Late to this, but for wood gaps I've heard you mix the sawdust from the sanding with wood glue and use that as filler. How are you getting on with it all?