Overthinking everything with house - flooring

[KTB00001]

Hi, need advice to calm down as I’m going down a rabbit hole of googling all because I’m trying to pick a new floor!
im a sole earner and its just myself and my young son in the house so i dont have heaps of money to play about with.

i live in an old house (circa 1900). It’s clear that over time previous owners have done renovations and apart from the utility room which is not great the house isn’t in terrible shape. However I kinda now regret buying such an old house and I go between not minding its quirks to my obsessing about all the jobs that need doing.

anyway I had a small leak recently which wrecked a few carpets and I’ve been given a settlement amount from insurance company to cover cost of replacing. I decided that it was now my opportunity to use that money to put towards nicer floor for 2 halls and the lounge and I would pay the difference. Thinking it wouldn’t be a difficult task to pick a floor is turning into me overthinking everything. Some of the house is still lath and plaster and some of the house isn’t. The skirting boards seem pretty much moulded to the walls almost and every person who has been to price for flooring have all said it would definitely damage the walls removing these. I don’t want to have to redecorate so this leaves me with either laminate with a beading (budget will never stretch to wood) or glue down LVT which seems to be alot more expensive. And I get so many different options as the floors to get redone are all concrete subfloor and some say screeding is enough, others say it needs a dpm and my head is bursting.
the easiest option is laminate but will the beading look rubbish?? Everyone seems to have an opinion on beading too.
this in turn has now got me obsessing over skirting boards as they aren’t great as they have goodness knows how many layers of paint on them and to be fair all need sanded! Is this something that I could do myself to save money. It’s all giving me a headache.
part of me just wants to sell the house but the other part of me knows that would be another pain! I should be grateful really and everyone always tells me it’s a lovely house but they don’t look too closely which I seem to spend most of my time doing then googling and scaring myself!
any advice on how to just calm down and advice on what to do about this floor!
I don’t want to replace with carpet as it just gets wrecked over time and I know a wood effect floor will look lovely in an old cottage
thanks

If the skirting boards didnt bother you before just get the new floor and beading and don’t over think it - the new floor joy will far outweigh the old skirting.
I dont know why they said laminate is the only option with beading though? You should be able to get engineered wood or click LVT.
I’d paint the beading the same colour as the skirting if you can be bothered to.

Engineered wood is out of my budget. The click vinyl is an option but the state of the subfloor the flooring people from
Various companies all said by the time the subfloor is prepped I may as well get the glue down variety but the cost in the prep is the issue.

If the floor doesn't have a damp proof course then putting laminate down will trap all the moisture in and cause a load of problems.
There is no way to tell if there is a damp proof course without ripping up the concrete.
I suspect it was fitted because there was damp and whoever owned the house couldn't be bothered to fix it properly and just took the floor up and concreted it to hide the issue.
The easiest choice will be to relay carpet as moisture can still move through this into the room and evaporate.

Actually you might be able to see the damp proof as some plastic sheeting sticking out of the concrete at the edges of the room?

What's the height of the skirting you currently have? If you use a boxcutter to score along it to separate it from the wall, there might not be that much damage to the wall. If they are saying you need to pour concrete or some levelling compound, the skirting would have to come off anyway. If they are suggesting OSB boards, they're at least 1cm thick, your laminate flooring on top of it (12mm), underlay (3-4mm) and if you choose like 5 or 6 inch skirting, it might just go high enough to cover the damage done by the removal of the old skirting boards.

Beading looks dreadful imo.

I’m an over thinker as well, and drive myself mad researching stuff! If it’s any help, we had our downstairs tiled (over concrete floor). We went for wood look planks. In most rooms we had them tile up to the existing skirtings. In one room we had the old skirtings taken off but that’s because we were having the walls skimmed and then new skirtings fitted over the tiled floor. The old skirtings look fine though. I also hate beading which is why we went for tile and it was much cheaper to fit than LVT.

If you did decide further down the line that you wanted to change the skirtings, you can always get skirting board covers:

What if you have carpet in the lounge which will be cosier and probably cheaper. If you have a carpet place near you they often have rolls of carpet of random sizes which are lots cheaper. I had my small hallway done very cheaply this way with a much higher quality carpet than I would normally be able to afford for not much at all.

Then can you afford to do one or both halls in either tile or engineered wood or glue down vinyl?

With all the suggestions you have don't forget that changing the flooring and messing about with screeds etc can also then mean you need a joiner to sort door heights.

Remember no one else looks at your house as critically as you do. It's the impression it gives rather than the nitty gritty that people see. If it's an older property it likely has some character already and no one expects it to be all perfect like a more modern house. If you're not careful this job really could spiral causing you to have to spend time and money on stuff you wouldn't have considered if this money didn't exist. Nevermind the headspace it's currently occupying.

thanks for everyone’s replies and suggestions. I really do think I have to go down the beading route if I want a reasonable looking floor without too much hassle. There just seems to be such a bad feeling about beading in general although when I spoke to a colleague at work she turned around and said she spent a fortune on a real hardwood parquet floor and still opted for beading but doesn’t care in the slightest and said she hardly notices it! So maybe I’m just being too picky.