Hi, could really use some advice on flooring. We're having major renovations to our house and are creating a big area that covers living room/dining room/kitchen etc to about 40 sqm.
I had originally had my heart set on larger scale, more contemporary herringbone engineered wood like this:
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However, I spoke with a flooring expert today who thought that perhaps our area wasn't big enough to show this type of flooring off to it's full advantage, and that also it's actually very fiddly to fit this kind of flooring as you don't have a border, and have to cut each edge piece to hand to great time/expense. He also said that you can end up with very non-symmetrical rooms which I'm not entirely sure whether or not that would bother me.
So then I was thinking that perhaps I'd revert to a traditional herringbone with a border (which is the original floor that the property should have had, if previous owners hadn't ripped it out). However, I now come to discover that you cannot install solid herringbone parquet over under floor heating. I can't seem to find engineered herringbone in this smaller scale - they all seem to be solid blocks.
I don't know if I'm just overthinking this now or if I should just go with regular straight engineered planks, but I did have my heart set on herringbone. Or choose something else entirely....
I should also add that whatever I choose needs to be robust as I have a 4 and 7 year old who like to do a lot of rampaging. I'm also slightly worried as to how durable engineered wood is, and if I should go for laquer over oiled, even though I prefer the look of oiled.
Any ideas, oh wise people of Mumsnet?