As I've mentioned in the past, I'm renting half of this house from my parents. Currently I'm on the ground floor, and they're in the basement. They're using my rent money to make renovations to the house. My dad wants to rent this house later on so he'll have some extra income. I plan on renting the whole thing for a while, but we're making the ground floor and basement entirely separate in anticipation of him renting to other people in the future.

We just made a new stairwell (well, it's still in the process) to the basement so the existing one in the house can be taken out, which will also add floorspace to both levels. However, I don't think any of the renovations have gone as well as I'd like them to, so I thought I should run any more major changes by you guys just so we may avoid some pitfalls. I'll draw up the current layout as well as the basic plan for the new layout (major wall to be knocked out to make most of the basement a big, open area--not the dedicated home theater I want, but my dad won't budge). I look forward to any feedback. In the meantime, my dad's already asking me about flooring, so I'll start with that.

What would you do for flooring? I'm hoping for thin (as the basement is short, and it's going to have a suspended ceiling, making it even shorter), durable, easy to maintain. Of course not so expensive would be nice, since I have other priorities. I don't want to carpet, but rather just use rugs.

So what do you think? Any strong opinions? It would be nice to be able to respond to my father being somewhat informed. Thanks for any advice you may have!

I'll be posting a lot more questions as the endeavor progresses.