I think I will start in the Northwest corner of the living room and run the plank north and south. It may be a bit more challenging to work backwards in a smaller area such as the laundry room, but as you can see by the pictures, I am crammed for space. I think for my sanity I would like to get some longer runs done without working backwards so that I can see some progress. I’d love to hear your rundown for my home.

Also, I was wondering your recommendation in the small area between the outside door and the basement steps. It’s the area that goes out of the laundry room and into the kitchen. It is a short, narrow space and won’t allow for full length planks there. Should I try to stagger those to where you see a short end joint or two in that area or will it look ok with just long joints in that space and no butt joints? Sorry if that is confusing to try and visualize; I can try to clarify more if that doesn’t make sense.

Finally, as you can probably see in some of the pics, I have plywood underlayment down in some areas. When I put the LVP in last year, the kitchen had laminate planks over old sheet vinyl or laminate that was on top of 1/4in plywood underlayment. The living room had carpet, but we took out a dividing wall between the living room and kitchen. The laminate and underlayment were glued to the subfloor, so rather than pull all of that up I just used plywood underlayment from Menards to match the height of the living room floor to the kitchen floor. After seeing some of your content, I now see that you don’t like Luan at all. The product that i bought says it’s poplar core with birch face, but some people refer to that as luan plywood. Is that something you think is ok or is that what you are talking about when you use the term luan? When the restoration company took up the old flooring, the underlayment that wasn’t damaged got left. I bought more of that underlayment plywood before I saw your recs against luan. Is what I bought something you think is bad enough that I should eat the $400 or so worth that I bought and pull up what is currently down and attach the plank straight to the subfloor? That will be a slower process as tearing it up takes me longer than stapling new down, but I want this floor to last. Please advise.