It just dawned on me that you guys are "nutty" enough to have some helpful insight. Thursday, our washing machine "died." It kept filling and filling and filling. By the time I noticed, there was a beautiful waterfall ending in a stream flowing to both bathrooms. It took a bit to figure it all out, but the hallway is toast, and it went into each bedroom - not the whole floor, but along the wall and into the closets. After doing the towel method, I borrowed a wet vac and got 18 gallons out. We now have all the wet carpet and padding ripped out. Friday, we realized we were in over our heads and called insurance. Today, the ???restoration??? folks showed up. They pulled up the carpet tack strips (which we hadn't got), took lots of water readings, and left two dehumidifiers and an air filter. Tomorrow, we find out the results of the asbestos tests and what happens with our walls (they're talking about ripping out the bottom foot of wallboard).

Anyway, we obviously need to replace the carpet. (We've had fun looking at all the "lovely" linoleum, different in each room and hallway.) But, since we're doing all this DAN! stuff with Tom, I'm trying to figure out what we should do. So... thinking along the lines of allergies... I've recently learned there is organic cotton and organic wool carpeting (and padding to go with it). Or there is hardwood or cork. Sounds like the Pergo route is not recommended for the glues used.

I know some of you have allergy issues above and beyond gluten, so I don't know if you've looked into flooring issues. Any thoughts or insight you have would be appreciated. I'd like to say "money is no object," but you know how things are. Worst case, we figure out what we'd really like to do and do that for Tom's room. The rest of the rooms get Option B, whatever that ends up being. Just as added info, we're on a cement slab... I'm not sure how that affects installing a wood floor.

HOW HORRIBLE!!!! I feel for you. I can't imagine having to deal with all that water and water damage. I hope insurance will cover everything.

There are several of the Pergo like floorings now that don't use glue. In fact, I'm pretty sure the newest Pergo flooring is snap and fit. We used a cheaper brand in one of our bathrooms a couple years ago, and have really been happy with it. It was cheap in comparison to tile (especially for a 3 X6 foot bathroom...lol). It looks good (ceramic tile look and has been holding up great.

When my son was just a toddler, he had horrible ugly old crunchy carpet in his room when we moved into the house. He had horrible airborne allergies. We were also low on money, so we went with the cheap peel and stick tiles...thinking it would suffice temporarily. Well, here we are 18 years later...my son is long gone, and that floor is still kicking and looks good! We have replaced maybe a few tiles over the years where the bed rolling back and forth scratched a few areas, and they've always blended very well. It was a wood like look on a diagonal. I know 'not carpet' is recommend to reduce allergies. At the time, we never gave thought to all the nasty chemicals that might be in glues or preparations or materials, so we just went with 'not carpet'.

I'd definitely go 'not carpet' wherever possible. Don't be afraid to try a cheap alternative for a kid's room. We did my son's 10 x10 room for under $200, although that was quite a few years ago. It would still be a cheaper option, though. We just feel its the best thing we ever did. Not that often that the cheap alternative works that well, but it did for us. Now my daughter is in the room. Maybe I'll post a picture of her recent remodel...we kept the same floor....lol!

Cara

A similar thing happened to us a couple of years ago, but it happened in our garden level finished basement. Our boiler overflowed. It was a blessing in disguise. They did rip out the bottom 12-18" of our drywall, and replaced it. It gave us an opportunity to repaint our walls, and redo the flooring in our family room area. The cats had peeed so much in that room, that we needed to totally strip all the carpet, padding, and then strip and seal the cement. It wasn't something we would have done casually. I begged my husband to do this when I moved in his house, but he just replaced the carpet and pad, and you could still smell the cat pee. We even had to rip out moulding and drywall that smelled like cat pee. TMI, but I got my basement back, and we found a way to exclude the cats from using it as their personal litter box! Yeah, I was a happy camper!

So, I can't really answer your questions about allergy friendly flooring, but they can put wood floors down on cement. My SIL had a wood floor installed on her cement basement floor, and she used it as a dance floor. It looked quite nice. If you are going to do something other than carpet, I'd go with wood. I've seen bamboo floors, and they are nice, but I think if your washing machine ever overflows again, the bamboo gets trashed pretty easily. Well, the same thing happens with carpet too. But if your carpet gets wet and you catch it soon (rip it up and air it out), you can save the carpet but replace the pad. My chiropractor's office got flooded, and they saved the carpet, but their nice bamboo wood reception desk got a little warped at the bottom where the water was.

Someone told me they had problems with the off gassing of their new carpet. They had it cleaned, and it helped a lot. Carpet has a lot of flame retardant in it. We don't know what that does to us, but maybe if allergies are an issue, just have your carpet cleaned after you install it to get the chemicals out if it faster.

Hopefully insurance will cover your costs. We had a different disaster over the weekend, and we are hoping insurance will cover most of our costs. Then, my husband missed his flight to Japan today because of the earthquake in Hawaii. Now I'm really getting off-topic, but things have been weird around here lately, eh?

Claire

I recommend true linoleum which is not the same as the vinyl floor that most people call linoleum. True linoleum is made from mostly natural products, has a strong smell of flaxseed initially because it is made from flaxseed, but we had no reaction to the smell at all and we're quite sensitive to smells.

It's beautiful, easy to clean, and, unfortunately, not cheap.

http://www.themarmoleumstore.com/fra...px?menu_id=123

I'll also caution you that you need to make sure the people you hire to install it know what they're doing if you go with sheet linoleum. They do make a version that is something like Pergo but topped with the marmoleum instead. We didn't want to raise our floor and I didn't like the smell of it in the store (of course the whole flooring store stank to high heaven, IMO, but that's another story).

FWIW, this is the color we chose:

http://www.themarmoleumstore.com/fra...hite&border=60

And it is absolutely beautiful.

Hardwood and cork are also beautiful options. I personally wouldn't go with even wool or cotton carpet for 2 reasons. 1 because they would still need padding and much of the off-gassing comes from the padding. 2 because carpet by it's very nature holds in allergens and dirt. Hard floors don't. If you want to use rugs on the hard floors that's great and you can get them cleaned much better than you can ever truly clean carpet.

Rachel

We have friends with a cork floor in their basement. THey really like it for warmth, looks, and comfort. It was quite expensive, and they recently had water in the basement and it damage the flooring.

Water damage on the main floor is really a fluke, so you may not have to worry too much about that kind of water damage again... I hope!

Cara

I would skip all thoughts of carpet unless it's something that's small enough to be thrown in the washer. We like to step out of our beds onto something soft, so we have little area rugs beside our beds.

My first choice would be cork. But that's just not in our budget.

My second choice would be snap laminate. We just finished ds's bedroom in the snap and love the fact that it looks like wood but doesn't scratch as easily. (We got some beautiful flooring for $2/sq. ft. Canadian).

That said, I just put that new tile on the downstairs bathroom floor, the kind that overlaps and glues together but sits on the subfloor and 'floats' like Pergo/laminates. It's very thick and sturdy. I thought of the glue being an issue but decided that I had to err on the side of water damage control (it's the bathtub bathroom where the children play and splash). I rest as easy as I can with this, knowing that we don't really spend much time in the bathroom. It also has a beautiful wood look (dark walnut) and cost $2/sq. ft. Can.

I was really surprised with how quickly my friend's beautiful wood floor started to look damaged. I got a laminate installed and all carpet removed amost 2 years ago and it still looks brand new.

Wood floors don't recover well from water damage either. Anything wood, or laminate, is going to warp and buckle.

I'd go with vinyl or tile or linoleum in an area that might be exposed to water. I found some WONDERFUL vinyl that I had installed in the kitchen that looks like tile, worn italianesque tile. It is gorgeous. I am absolutely amazed at how beautiful they can make vinyl look these days.

Thanks for all the comments / suggestions. I'm feeling overwhelmed. It doesn't help that all of us are packrats and the house was a mess before all of this. Thank heavens Mr. Kay is better at managing this and keeping up with the workers than I am.

I hadn't thought of flame retardant on carpeting... that's one of the things we were told to avoid in pajamas for Tom, so I guess it's not recommended. I am leaning toward no carpet. (Mr. Kay would prefer going back to carpet.)

Anyway... just to keep you posted... they found asbestos in the flooring and wall tape. I guess I'm not really surprised, but it never occurred to me until yesterday. One of the workers asked us yesterday if we were the original owners. While I am a mere months away from 40, this house was built in 1953! (Mr. Kay is a few months younger; although to hear him talk, he's at death's door. "I'm getting old!")

So, we have to wait and see what the next step is. My fun meter is pegged.

future ref, get a "basin" for UNDER the washer.....perhaps with a sensor in it because, being on a slab you can't put a floor drain in....if money is realy tight....they make paint for concrete.....maybe just for the short term, to save up for what you want....good luck

Oh yeah, that reminds me they do make finishes for concrete floors. In fact, they can be quite stylish and expensive or there's always the stuff people use for garage floors that is pretty cheap (epoxy finishes).