I highly recommend hardwood floors, or whatever’s cheap but looks like hardwood floors. I’ve been a renter for 20+ years and there is no way I’d go for vinyl or linoleum or anything besides either carpet or wood.
Like Sam Lowry said, my guess would be that the windows suck. Leaky/drafty/noisy/etc. If I go to look at a place and there is plastic on any of the windows, that’s a red flag to me that they need to be replaced.
I currently rent a house that sounds very much like yours: mine was built in 1953, and it’s a 3BR/1BA on a concrete slab. Approximately 1,000 sq ft. I’ll have been there for 2 years in April. The kitchen and bathroom were both renovated right before I moved in. Before this place I spent a year renting another 3BR/1BA rambler built in 1953, in a different county: that house hadn’t been updated much at all in the past 60 years, to the point where most of the outlets still weren’t grounded. The kitchen was original.
The “50s feel” in the first house did nothing for me. Plus the refrigerator and oven/stove were relatively new, ruining any kind of period look that might have been at all cool.
The kitchen in my current house is awesome: granite countertops but white appliances, and nice touches like an oversized sink, over-the-range microwave, big pantry, and soft-close drawers. It doesn’t look ridiculous or out of place at all. The bathroom isn’t very fancy, either, but they put in a lot of white tile and it looks fine. This house also has replacement windows and a not-very-old roof, plus when they did the renovations they put some extra insulation in the crawl space under the house. It’s still a very simple house, and not much to look at from the outside, but it’s probably my favorite rental to date. To the point where I’m seriously considering springing for new fencing (I have a dog) if the landlord will agree to a long-term lease with no rent increase for a while.
I would ask, who is your target renter market? IOW, will you be planning to rent to tenants who may have pets?
I hate vinyl because it’s so easy to drop something sharp and ruin the whole floor. I hate carpet because it harbors fleas, has to be replaced frequently, stains, can get smelly, etc. So when I was a renter, I looked for hardwood and/or tile floors. Either one holds up well to renters as well as their pets. Dog toenails can scratch the finish on hardwood, but when you have the floors installed, you can request an extra coat of polyurethane on the finish and that pretty much solves that problem. I would think, as a landlord, you’d want to go with the most durable material possible, so you don’t have to re-do the floors as often. Vinyl would not be that material.
Also, I lived in a rental house that was on slab and vowed if I ever had to do that again AND if the HVAC system needed replacing, I would seriously consider ambient floor heating. Slab floors are cold! I understand these are best for temperate climates, where forced air furnaces wouldn’t necessarily be the most important thing. For example, this would be perfect for Florida, where it doesn’t really get that cold in the winter and your A/C is your biggest expense/concern.
Anything that isn’t carpeting gets cold, but yes flooring on a concrete slab can get kind of frosty! That’s why my landlord put some extra insulation into my house’s crawlspace, which I definitely appreciate. I also have area rugs throughout the house, and have learned to wear slippers and/or socks for most of the year (I prefer going barefoot).
Is “wood laminate” the same as Pergo laminate (and similar products)? If so, consider going with actual hardwood. When we redid our kitchen in 2001, there was perhaps a total price difference of 100 dollars going with hardwood.
We actually planned on putting in Pergo, but there were problems with rippling in the subflooring and laminate isn’t nailed down the way hardwood is, so the flooring guys said they strongly advised against it.
Unfortunately, they didn’t know that until AFTER the cabinets had been installed - and it makes a difference as hardwood is thicker than laminate.
So, whatever you do, flooring-wise, make sure to decide before installing cabinets.
Personally I’d seriously consider a good-quality vinyl flooring, perhaps even vinyl tiles of some sort. There are much nicer choices out there than there were years ago. I love hardwood but NOT in the kitchen, and you said you wanted the same flooring everywhere.
Ah. My friends have a propane/wood furnace for the house but thir mudroom has electric heat in the floor. Wonderful to come in from the cold and it melts and evaporates the snow and ice off footwear.
