It sounds like you have an existing boiler. You can do baseboard with hot water. You can do radiant or baseboard with an electric boiler. You can use a boiler to heat a concealed coil and blow warm air through decorative ductwork, similar to a car's heater.

If your basement floor is dry, why not use the gridwork and pex and cover with suitable flooring and heat with radiant?

You can heat from the ceiling with radiant tubing above the finished ceiling. The only problem is what they call shadowing. Think of the heat as the sun. Any area that is shadowed does not get as warm. This would be the floor under the desk for one. If the heat goes in the ceiling you must insulate well above the radiant tubing so the heat does not go up.

Radiant walls work just fine and one doesn't have to disturb the floor or the ceilings - meaning you don't have to sacrifice height.

The radiant heated wainscoting in the photo is a sample of what you can do.

If you want to see the construction details let me know.

Here is a link that might be useful:

if you wanted to build up your floors you could still use in floor heat. you can heat the basement to 75 degrees and the floors are still cold. paulbm