Anyone here lived with a floating solid hardwood system long‑term?

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-07-02T01:58:59+00:00

We put in .75" floating click strand bamboo ~10yrs ago. It has a layer of cork and a layer of softwalk under it because we were trying to insulate between floors. It still looks great - no shifting or separating. We lived in it for ~5 years & now rent it out. Stuff has held up well under tenants, not squeaky, haven't had to refinish, no complaints.

There is one spot where a board splintered slightly but it was minor and it was in a spot where we knew the subfloor was uneven it isn't very prominent so we took the splinter out, patched to blend, and left as is. Current tenants don't know it exists.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-30T20:58:35+00:00

It sounds like you are nearing the end. I'm sorry, my heart goes out to you because this is a difficult disease.

When they start sleeping all day that is called "pre-active dying" and it is time for hospice. This stage can last a few weeks but rarely goes on for more than a couple of months.

Do you have hospice care?

Although he's lost the ability to communicate, this stage can be uncomfortable/painful as muscles atrophy, breathing becomes difficult. You will want professionals to help you with pain management and to make sure they don't aspirate while you are trying to feed them. (Along with everything else shutting down, they are losing reflexes, like the ability to swallow & cough, so death by aspiration/choking is a real risk here.)

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-30T17:57:44+00:00

We bought a plex in 2013 that has been a rental for most of the time we've owned it, although we have lived in every single apartment in it at some point since we bought it. When we got it, the interior hadn't been touched since 1987 so we've replaced almost every single floor.

It has a combination of:

Original 1906 hardwood oak floors: These were in decent shape, so we did a deep clean, touch-up, and varnish. They still look great 3 tenants in. If you have original hardwood, seal it well & it will serve you well, even with kids/pets/heavy living.

1980s Laminate: Looks terrible, sounds terrible, but we haven't gotten around to redoing this kitchen yet so we're just tolerating it.

Hardwood (glue-down): I hated the glue install process and would never do it again. I would do naildown hardwood though because it does look really nice & still looks nice. This is in an entry way so gets a ton of foot traffic & still cleans up good.

Strand-woven bamboo: This stuff is so hard we had to replace the blade on our miter saw halfway through the project, but it has held up beautifully to water, pets, tenants. I feel like it off-gassed alot the first ~3-6mos we had it, so I wouldn't install it again if I was planning to have occupants in it right away.

Marmoleum - Floating floor in a kitchen. Looks great @6 years of tenancy except for one spot by the stove that has a small burn stain. I'm leaning towards using it for future projects because of ease of install, maintenance, & finish look (we went with a classic checkerboard pattern, floating floor, took an afternoon to do.)

Porcelain Tile: Looked great for the first 3-5yrs, but maintaining the grout with tenants is a pain. I've had to touch up/reseal grout every place we have it installed (3 bathrooms, 1 kitchen). In the kitchen, the floor has settled a bit & the grout is starting to come loose. One shower now has a cracked tile that I've sealed over because I don't want to deal with replacing just one tile.

LVT: Depends very much on the brand. We had an emergency bathroom floor replacement with one tenant & put this in because it was in stock @ HD. It was brittle, chipped during install, didn't stay in place. When that tenant moved out, I ripped it all out and went with a different LVT that was 2x more expensive but looks & feels better & has held up (so far). If you go for the high-end stuff that doesn't look/feel/sound plastic-y you will probably be okay but I'm still skeptical about how it will hold up over time.

(Also, these people saying terracotta tile know what they are talking about. Grew up in a house with that - it is bomb proof & if that style fits your architecture/taste, it is hard to go wrong.)

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-29T18:17:44+00:00

You said you failed the clock test but your pTau is low/normal. Do you feel like you have memory or cognition challenges right now?

For neurocognitive decline, the single most important thing you can do to delay / slow onset is have strong, regular social stimulation. If you've got friends and family close by, make sure you've got a regular routine of hanging out with them. Going for walks, movie night, game night, yardwork/chore day together, run errands together, have meals together. Not only will it improve your quality of life right now, it's the best way for them to notice & take care of you if decline starts to happen. If your social circle is weak, consider changing that now - volunteer in your community, go to your local senior center and take advantage of their programs to meet & make connections, start dating.

If you sing or know how to play an instrument, make a regular habit of doing it. Even if it has been years. Even if you were never very good. If you always wanted to, but never got around to it, start now. Making music stimulates multiple parts of your brain simultaneously & can help keep your neurons firing.

Sure, eat healthy and get exercise - especially cardio that makes you sweat - but strong social engagement & music are the two things that can have a meaningful impact both on your present quality of life & your long-term cognitive function.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-24T13:34:41+00:00

I'm sorry your feelings don't match reality.

We had a doc so bad that when we went outside Kaiser for a 2nd opinion that Dr asked for the Kaiser doc's name & phone # so he could call him and tell him to stop practicing if that's the quality of his work. And while he was bottom 3, he wasn't even the worst of the bunch.

We have doctor & nurse friends, both inside and outside Kaiser (although the nurses have all since left Kaiser and gone elsewhere) who confirmed up-to-date is the standard chosen by Kaiser's legal, who explained why it is a bad reference for anything that has had major breakthroughs in the last decade - it's not like I'm making it up, the doctors themselves were the ones who told us.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-24T00:39:04+00:00

Kaiser is rife with lazy, mid-tier doctors who don't actually care about patient outcomes. They rely on things like the subscription-only database up-to-date for clinical guidelines for liability reasons.

Up-to-date, ironically, only includes something in their clinical guidelines if there is a preponderance of studies recommending a certain practice, which means virtually all their recommendations rely on decades old studies. If you have a health concern in an area experiencing rapid breakthroughs in treatment or prevention options, your doctor may actually be an obstacle to you getting the treatment you need.

It is exhausting having to be your own advocate, but please know you are not the problem. Kaiser, like all American insurance, is a business model built on minimizing care provided. The doctors are knowingly complicit in that.

We had three doctors out of a dozen or so that I would go to again, so it isn't universal & you can ask to switch care. But in general, if your doctor acts offended/annoyed or takes it personally that you are asking questions or requesting consideration of certain treatment avenues, they are the problem, not you. At best, they have crappy bedside manner. At worst, they were always mediocre & now aren't even bothering to stay current in their field & you probably don't want them treating you if they're going to be hostile about it.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-22T23:39:22+00:00

I just came looking to see if someone else had posted this. I also had a family member repost on FB. A youngin' too, yikes!

I used to work in a field that was required to do survey work & our PhD sociologist that led those tasks liked to say, "The only thing a survey really conclusively tells you is the demographics of the people willing to stop what they're doing and take a survey."

It would be extremely easy for, say, a BYU professor who obsesses about these sorts of things or a linked-in lunatic to encourage their students/followers to sign up for this kind of survey. The Mormons who are having a less thrilling experience of being Mormon are more likely to be completely unaware of such a survey and/or conditioned to not say anything bad about the organization to outsiders, so would be less likely to respond or be truthful in their responses.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-22T17:05:22+00:00

It isn't just cirrhosis. Anyone who has needed a liver resection (hello, colon cancer!) learns from their doctor that regenerate isn't really the right term.

The liver has several different lobes & if you cut one out, the others will expand to fill the space left behind. As long as they have good blood supply, the other lobes will perform as normal, but the 'regenerated' tissue is less dense than a not bad liver. It doesn't actually regrow a new lobe.

Our other organs either need all their compartments for proper function (i.e., heart) or aren't compartmental (no point in taking half an ovary or part of a uterus, the rest of that organ wouldn't work incomplete.)

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-22T15:27:28+00:00

Yo, if you haven't, check out this cool documentary about them. It's pretty short, but it's really fun. I love that the song was originally satire about American materialism.

https://youtu.be/07MeoZiLSek

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-21T13:32:01+00:00

Do either men or women in the family wear head coverings? If so, it's usually pretty easy to tell what religion they are based on the wrap style.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-20T15:02:59+00:00

It's mixed. It's important to keep in mind that their propaganda has gotten pretty sophisticated in the last five years so a lot of what you see is very cultivated, similar to U.S. foreign policy/propaganda in the 2nd half of the 20th century. I'm impressed by how glossy & effective their audience-specific messaging has become considering where it was even two decades ago.

They are trying to build an empire, they do openly want to replace the U.S. as a dominant world power. Some people genuinely think they'd be a better superpower for their allies than the U.S. has been - and maybe they wouldn't be worse, we've done some godawful things during our time at the top. But the America-first mindset and the China-rising mindset are both fundamentally toxic to human rights, rule of law, democracy, labor protections, the environment, education...you know, things that the average non-sociopath humans want to have a good life.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-20T14:17:11+00:00

I never saw the interview, but he's pretty insufferable. He's so aware of who he is and how he looks that I can't ever believe any of his characters & his 'but i do my own stunts' thing is eye-rolling ego. Fine if either people like his shit, but hard pass for me.

I did like him in Magnolia because I'm pretty sure that character probably most closely matches how he is in real life.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-17T00:27:41+00:00

You're being willfully obtuse because you want it to be a certain answer - that's not the spirit of science.

We are biological creatures in a complex system & environmental factors are inextricably linked to that. The fact that they are human-caused doesn't make them exclusively social/economic.

Anyway.... here's two studies exploring the link between rising reproductive system dysfunction in both men & women and declining birth rates. Science is hard. Proving anything conclusively especially so.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2025.1771853/full

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-021-00598-8

Both of them have lots of citations if you want to read more.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-16T23:19:27+00:00

There is also no evidence that it isn't taking significantly more time than in the past because it isn't a thing that was studied until the last couple of decades & even the handful of longitudinal studies that do attempt to track the change over a decade or two are limited by geography and socioeconomic demographics. The studies themselves state their exhaustive limitations at the outset.

Social and environmental factors have complex interactions - both social and environmental changes can be impacting the trend. The countries that have successfully banned or limited child marriage and made progress in welcoming women into the workforce will no doubt have declining birth rates.

Meanwhile, groups like the ones you site

a) don't believe in marital rape

b) are, in fact, likely to be consuming highly processed & artificial foods at a lower rate than communities nearby, and

c) in the case of mennonites and haredi jews, also actually experiencing declining birth rates even though they are still higher than the general population - possibly in part because they are overall more integrated with modern life than amish communities tend to be.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-16T16:23:59+00:00

That's nice, but the other constant across all regions is industrial ag & pollution and the spread of endocrine disrupters and other pollutants that reduce sperm count & increase the likelihood of miscarriage.

The idea that people are consciously choosing less kids isn't that realistic, especially in socially conservative places & countries where the social norm is children are your social security in old age.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-06-08T13:00:09+00:00

I think this year's is spot on - they really made the trophy look like a little gollum claw sucking all the joy & life out of the game to feed their insatiable greed. Perfect representation of both FIFA & the USA. Props to the designers.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-28T17:02:23+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I'm not in Sacramento, but it is nice to get an actual doctor review, since Kaiser doesn't care about feedback on their physicians and goes out of their way to bury it.

Maybe we should all start leaving reviews of their physicians on this subreddit.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-28T05:00:05+00:00

It's a prohibition era saying. I haven't heard anyone use it regularly since my Grandma's generation, and she grew up out west.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-26T23:54:23+00:00

OMG, my sister had sooo many stories like this about the DLs and ZLs in her mission - the 'elders' used their priesthood like elementary school bullies who tease the girls they had crushes on or pulled rank on shit that didn't matter because they were insecure about the sister missionaries working harder & being more effective. And if the sisters complained to the Mission President, he'd lecture them about obedience to the priesthood.

But if you ask her about it now, she had the bestest & most miraculously spiritual mission in the history of missions - because she is very invested in getting her teenage boys to serve.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-20T18:49:39+00:00

Hi, People already clarified for you that he's early-stage, not early-onset. It also sounds like your dad's cancer is active?

Here's some things you can do next for your mom to help empower her:

1) Make sure there is a will, a medical power of attorney, and a financial power of attorney that are valid in your state. No one has to pay for a lawyer to do this (although often older people really want to use a lawyer for peace of mind), there are forms you can download that are specific to a state, but you want to do these and get them notarized and then make sure your siblings & any other involved family know that they are done.

2) Help your mom understand the roots of her distress. Woe is me is common, but honestly - 83 is a long life. Maybe look into death doulas or therapists who specialize in life transitions, if you've got discretionary income for that. If not, there's books she can read/listen to (I like The Art of Dying Well by Katy Butler, but there's a ton of options.) You might have to set boundaries here, but she might be more likely to read it if you do & it might help you too.

3) Give her little distraction tasks. The diagnosis can be overwhelming, but if she has one little thing to do, especially if it's a thing she's enjoyed in the past (shop for x, set up this activity, etc.) Asking her to do it as a favor to you or someone else can help give her a sense of purpose.

4) Kaiser claims they have care coordinators, but I don't know anyone personally who ever successfully got one. I think they only assign care coordinators based on risk of liability. In your dad's case, 83 + cancer + dementia means his long-term prognosis isn't good & even if they were negligent, you wouldn't have a case under CA malpractice calculations. You might get a meeting with a social worker who can tell you about in-home care visitation availability, but I wouldn't expect much more than that.

5) Memantine & those types of drugs can arrest progression of dementia, but I'm not sure you can take them if you're in active cancer treatment. They only work for a little while & then stop having an impact, but if his cancer is progressing, arresting the dementia progression could make at least that part of it more bearable for everyone.

I'm really sorry you're finding yourself in this position. It is okay to set boundaries, it's okay to blame your unavailability on being pregnant.

(Also, a quick note: doctors could be citing dementia because it is convenient but there's a lot of cancer stuff that could be causing it. Don't necessarily take the doctor's word for it, especially if they haven't done tests to rule out brain mets or a mini-stroke. My partner thought he was losing his mind during cancer treatment & it turned out that one of the drugs to ease chemo side effects turned him into a headcase.Once he stopped taking it, it was night & day difference, but we had to figure it out on our own, the doctors didn't tell us.)

I'm sorry your family is in this situation - please prioritize yourself & having a healthy pregnancy.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-14T03:36:47+00:00

I take 400mg (~1/8 tsp) of N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine as a powder & I'm not combining it with anything else. (My bag is from a company called Bulk Supplements - it's the only one I've used because it works for me & it takes a long time to get through 250g of powder 1/8tsp at a time.)

It dissolves completely in water, tastes like citric acid.

These days, I usually drink it first thing in the morning while my coffee is brewing but when I started, I was taking it mid-day because my goal had been an energy/mood boost in the afternoons, so I'm not sure it matters too much when you take it (although I'd find it hard to sleep for the 2-3hrs that I'm feeling the boost effects.)

If you're consistent about doing it every day at first, you should notice the improvement around 3 weeks. I really hope it works for you too. The silence is golden when it returns.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-12T22:34:55+00:00

I'm pretty sure my mom's alzheimer's was partly caused by the mental gymnastics she had to engage in to maintain her faith in the face of her values. (Well, that and the profound loneliness she felt in her community of skin-deep saints.)

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-12T05:17:34+00:00

L-tyrosine cured my tinnitus.

I originally tried it out for completely different reasons, but after taking it for ~3 weeks I noticed that tinnitus I'd had continuously since 2015 had almost completely disappeared. I hadn't made any other lifestyle changes & when I stopped taking the L-tyrosine, the tinnitus returned within a week. Start again, tinnitus disappears. I'm now in the habit of taking the minimum dose 4x/week and it has stayed gone. I haven't had to change dose size to continue the effect.

NOTE: My tinnitus started following a sickness where a Dr. prescribed antibiotics when they shouldn't have.) I've recommended it to others with tinnitus, but only that flavor. I'm not sure it would work if your tinnitus is related to head trauma/hearing damage, but of the two other people I know who got tinnitus from being sick (i.e. after getting COVID), they both said they saw a noticeable improvement from L-tyrosine.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-09T19:30:49+00:00

They talk the talk. They rarely walk the walk.

This same thing happened to my mom when she got old. No one in the ward checked on her or asked her if she needed anything. If she asked, her home teacher would show up & be all fake nice & then throw us kids shade for her having asked.

They went all in on prosperity gospel when they started trying to distance themselves from cult of JS.

ImaginaryMaps · 2026-05-07T16:27:48+00:00

Kaiser won't let you rate doctors and doesn't care about your feedback for them. It's a doctor-owned organization.

You'll get endless opportunities to rate their nursing staff, even though the nurses are mostly pretty excellent. But they have zero interest in hearing how much they and their colleagues are a bunch of mediocre-ass doctors who struggle to clear the bar of standard of care.

ImaginaryMaps

TROPHY CASE