I'm a fan of hardwood flooring. I would recommend raw wood (as opposed to pre-finished), finished with a primer and at least two coats of oil based polyurethane. My step-son is a flooring contractor and that's what he recommends. He's installed hundreds of floors and knows his $hit.I know it's tempting to try and do it yourself but DO NOT DO THAT. Installing hardwood floors really needs to be done by someone who specializes in just that who has experience doing it. You have to have done the sub-floor properly, let the flooring acclimate to your house, meaning that you have to store the flooring material in the room where you plan to install it for at least three weeks to let it stabilize, check the moisture of the sub-flooring and the flooring itself, etc. There's even more to it than that, I'm just repeating only a small percentage of the things that absolutely need to be considered and taken care of after listening to my step-son describe how he does this. Like I said, it's not easy if you want it to come out right and last for a while.
Don't get fancy, go with red oak, don't even think about pine or anything soft, it will look like crap in no time.
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