My wife and I tore out the wood laminate flooring in our kitchen/dinette/laundry/powder room/foyer. We lay down a floating subfloor (Schluter Ditra) and installed 450 square feet of marble, butting the tiles so there's only a bevel grout line. Looks fantastic and I got mighty good with a wet saw. Took pretty much the whole summer though.
Down side is that I had to recut the doorways and replace the baseboards. It's not as slick as tile and is hard as ... well ...a rock.