Not a basement-particular recommendation, but we just finished working with Universal Floors on a bamboo installation, and they were excellent. http://www.universalfloors.com.

We also just used a wonderful company AG Floors http://www.agfloors.com/. Juan was the rep and Jose did the work — each was terrific, thorough, fast and gave us a good budget estimate and stuck to it.

I just had flooring put in my basement – an engineered hardwood floating floor. Although I paid someone to do it, it would be easy enough to do on your own. Click and lock – simple. Glue down isn’t recommended especially if you’re using cork (according to my experts)

In a basement, particularly if it’s prone to flooding (i.e., attached rowhome), I recommend you look at something other than hardwood, laminate, or the like. These get too wet, and they’re toast. A little more expensive, but providing you a ton of different looks, is finished concrete. There are a couple companies around that specialize in it.

I agree about wood in the basement. I would not trust that in DC.

I did engineered bamboo in my basement and it was easy to install if you have the right saw. The basement itself is dry with no water leakage issues (there are ways to test for that), but I did have a plumbing issue last spring. Some water did get under the flooring.

If I had to do it again, I would probably do tile. Also I would probably not buy this particular bamboo, which I got form lumber liquidators.