Possibly cheaped out builder/reno jobs
 

I hope I am wrong, but I noticed a couple of things to watch out for

I noticed from pictures, a good number of "newly renovated" seem to have laminated/wooden floors spanning from living room through the kitchen instead of tile at kitchen area.

New west coast style homes - what is the deal with asphalt roof rather than tile? Tile is supposed to be better suited for rainy Vancouver climate, and double the lifespan of asphalt. And another big obvious flaw I see is flat roof - potential pooling rain water unless the new flat roofs technology have improved over the years.

Why do kitchens have to have tile?

Hardwood/laminate throughout is more of a trend than a problem imo. We were considering tile in our kitchen but we could not find anything we liked so we will be running engineered throughout our entire main floor including the kitchen and laundry.

If your kitchen pipes burst your shits gonna be fucked whether it’s tile of laminate. What we are doing is gluing the tongues on our floor in the entry and kitchen to hopefully prevent what little water ingress we hope happens.

The tile question is a simple economics one. Asphalt shingles are easy to install, easy to repair, and inexpensive.

No builder is going to spend 2-3 times the amount of a duroid based asphalt shingle on a tile roof when they won’t recoop the build cost in the sale.

We currently have laminate in our kitchen. We need to be super cautious with wet moping as it is not recommended by the developer. Using those steam mop and spinning mop is also out of the question. With laminate in kitchen, it's prone to oil splatter and grease on floor. This is where my problem comes in. Sure I can get a mat, but wife doesn't like it

Thing is, laminate is just pressed saw dust essentially. cheaper laminate can swell and contract based on the interior humidity alone, let alone spilling water on it.

With higher quality products like engineered flooring etc depending on the type, you are more subject to what that particular type of wood does when wet as opposed to the press board laminate.

I have an open layout on the main floor, where the living/dining/kitchen are all connected. There’s no logical division where you’d stop the laminate and start the tile; it would look odd if there was a sudden transition. However, I have a separate grease kitchen which is tiled.

What are your thoughts on vinyl plank, throughout the main floor, including the kitchen?

Vinyl can pretty much take anything I think because there’s no actual wood to swell when wet?

Your sub floor would be the problem in those cases when spilling water

Yeah, no absorption and the joints seem to seal well. Minimal expansion/contraction on floating installation. I'm considering it for my next place. There's a 4' crawlspace under the main floor, so I'm considering a poly layer under the kitchen. Or use up a bunch of random red/blue guard, I have, kicking around.

That's not unique to the kitchen though. If you're worried about the kitchen (and have the storage space) what I did was buy enough extra material to do the kitchen area again. That way I don't have to worry about trying to match a discontinued product or different batches looking different should anything happen.

We've got vinyl plank in all the bathrooms, it's made from plastic and seals together extremely tightly. Being relatively thin and plastic it's super easy to install with just a straight edge and a box cutter (just score and snap). Also very little mess so you can just cut it indoors which I would imagine is super handy for people in apartments.

I use steam mop on my laminate flooring and it seems fine. There are different levels of steam and I just use the lowest settings. The floor will be dry within 5mins or so.