The floor by the garden level entrance used to look like this:

Crazy tile

Unfortunately, the previous owner used actual cement to lay the tiles over the existing wood floors. His sandwich consisted of original floor/linoleum/wire mesh/cement/ugly ass tile. Once we removed all this, the floors looked like this:

Garden level hallway - minus crazy tile

The floor boards were brittle and dry rotted in many spots. The consensus was that we would repair the rotted spots and use it as a sub floor for a new layer of hard wood. We wanted something durable, economical and environmentally friendly. We pulled some samples

The choices

And decided on this one:

The winner

It’s a bamboo floor in a finish that complements what is already at the house. It is also hardest of all the samples we had and since this will be the tenant’s main entrance, we needed something that can withstand a fair amount of abuse.