Do it yourself

But, am trying to remodel. It's a never ending job! We just got done remodeling our basement and moved to this house. This house has great potential, but it's going to be a lot of work. It's an older house (100+ years) and has been in my husband's family since it was built. So, I am stuck between other family members wishes (who don't live here) to 'keep things original' and my wish to update the house to be more of what I would dream of. Hope that made sense!?! So far we have re-roofed, added a forced air heating system, and are currently replastering the walls on the second floor. We have also finished the floors in the upstairs hallway and in two bedrooms. We are planning on splitting one of the bedrooms upstairs into two bathrooms. One bathroom would be for the master bedroom and the other would be for the remaining bedrooms. I would love to move the laundry area upstairs where all of the clothes are, but have heard horror stories about water damage. Any advice on this? We need to update the kitchen area also. Trying hard to figure out how to add a modern functional kitchen and still make it fit in with the character of the house. All of the floors need to be refinished, carpeted or tiled. I don't think anything has been done to this house for years because of a lack of monies. Okay, enough rambling. Here's my BIG question. How big of a mistake is it to remove hard wood floors and lay ceramic tile? I know some people would hunt me down for thinking such a thing, but I have a very high traffic area (which is exposed to water-from people on coming in from the lake) that I feel hard wood floors would be damaged too quickly. Right now they are hiding under those ugly fake wood peel-and-stick tiles. Well, does anyone have a better suggestion? Thanks for listening! I hope to learn a few great tricks and tips from this group! Jeannette