Hi! I am a recently unemployed architect who has some time on her hands & have decided I would like to put hardwoods in our town home. We live in Colorado, so it is dry. It is crappy 1980's construction & the main floor is over a crawl space (plywood over TJIs). The construction is crappy & likely underengineered and every time someone jumps the entire place shakes. Corners were cut when this place was built no question. I would love a suggestion as to what type of floor & underlayment & general suggestions as to what I should use (we always specify engineered flooring up here for large residences but I don't know "why" other than it is more stable, so that's just what I assume I need to get). I also don't know what I need to do on top of my existing plywood flooring in terms of prep. I could really use some advice! The one thing that annoys me about hardwood floors is sometimes in cheaper construction you will walk on a floor and hear a hollow sound & really want to avoid that situation. I thought that sound was because of a laminate floor vs. wood but I want to make sure it doesn't have to do with method of instillation as well? Thanks so much for your help!
Meg

I'd think about a floating click cork floor with additional underlayment like cork or sound solutions.