You can do sheet products,  liquid applied or parge coating. 

I don't expect them to stay pretty for long, so once it is time to refinish, will a few coats of polyurethane be the best bet?  

Some of the best ones work as hand-written on cardboard with a bent coat hanger stand.  

I did find 1 good contractor in all of this.  2 brothers that did an AWESOME JOB removing all the wallpaper, skim coating the walls, fixing issues in the ceiling drywall and hanging some new drywall.  

I had children and needed to grown thicker roots for a bit, so took a hiatus.

They are now finished with 3 coats of poly .

Was thinking 18 by 18 would be cheaper and use less grout and not take as long to cover the area.The flooring place says you use a little thicker mastic and thinner grout lines.Never laid tile before but it seems easy.Anything else needed besides bucket,trowels,mastic,tile cutter,grout,and spacers,and a level??

To finish it off, you can coat the concrete with a high-density sealer like shellac.

My white pickup had a beutiful coating of black oil based paint overspray from one end to the other....I used like 10 bottles of the stuff but the paint came off just fine and didn't hurt my truck paint.I would also try the talk to him and give him an opportunity to remedy the situation tact first.

I would have the Ohio lien release forms filled out ready to be signed in my coat, a notary lined up to verify his driver license (your lender has a gal who will wait in her car at 6:30 AM for $125).