One hardwood floor meets another...

[Art Mulder]

Hey folks,

Our living room/dining room carpet is as old as the hills and could use replacing. So I'm toying with the idea of replacing it with hardwood.

So far, no big deal. But, I'm also thinking of extending the hardwood into the hallway that leads to the kitchen. This section of floor currently has (equally old) linoleum that runs from the entrance, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. It also leads to the family room, which already has hardwood in it.

Here is where it would meet.
floor1.jpg

So far, I'm thinking that I could either try to match the old family room hardwood (some kind of dark pre-finished oak), which seems unlikely. Or just put in something else and live with the contrast.

Does anyone else have a situation where you have one kind of hardwood butting up against another? How does it look? Are you happy with it? Got any other suggestions?

Just gathering ideas...
...art

[Mark Rios]

Hmmmm......interesting Art. Maybe turn the new wood flooring to run perpendicular to the existing?

You know that there is particle board under the vinyl right? You'll have to pull that up and buy the right thickness material as well to get the surfaces to match.

[Ben Grunow]

Looks like strip red oak to me. Should be no problem to match. Helps to add a saddle (if you can live with it) where the two meet to hide the old finsh and new and the different wood grains (if they are not both going to be finished together).

A good floor company/guy should be able to sand/finish the new and old to match seamlessly.

[Jim Becker]

How about a contrasting strip of walnut to separate the new areas from the old? That way, you only need to get "close" with your color, etc.

[James Reichman]

How about a contrasting strip of walnut to separate the new areas from the old? That way, you only need to get "close" with your color, etc.

I second this. I had the same thing in my house. I used a strip of walnut bordering the room and it made a nice touch.
Good luck

[Chuck Lenz]

You never know, there could be oak flooring under the linoleum. The whole main floor in my house was maple flooring. There was linoleum over it in the kitchen, but I tore all that out and put in ceramic tile. If there isn't any oak flooring under the linoleum in your place I would just run the new oak in the same direction as the old, you don't want to run the new boards 90 degrees to the old because as you know, wood floors do move and in time the transition wouldn't look good. Another option would be to try to find used oak flooring, sand the existing floor and what you just laid down and you should get a good match when you finish it. Personally I wouldn't do the change of board species as a transition between the old oak and the new oak.

[dan moran]

i know id rather see a highly contrasting detail of some kind than a close but not quite perfect attempt at matching.

[Jimmy Newman]

My mother recently did some remodeling in her house and added oak strip flooring to the kitchen and pantry to match the old (40's) oak floor in the rest of the downstairs. Some hardwood floor guys came and put it in, sanded it, played with dying to match, and actually got it very close. It's not perfect, but it looks really good (even with a straight transition from one to the other, no saddle).

[Art Mulder]

How about a contrasting strip of walnut to separate the new areas from the old? That way, you only need to get "close" with your color, etc.

That is what I started thinking this morning, but on a bigger scale. Maybe I could do the LR/DR in a dark-ish hardwood. And then run a light hardwood down the hallway (maple, ash, bamboo...) to serve as a contrast between the two. However, just having a walnut contrast strip might do also.

The house is roughly like this: a FR on the left, and a DR/LR on the right, with an entrance, stairs/hall and galley kitchen (eat-in nook behind it) splitting the house in half. Right now the Lino runs from the front door straight past the stairs, down the hall, through the galley kitchen, and into the eat-in nook. It's like 34-40 feet long of lino, most if only about 5' wide. And I'd like to break it up. In part just so I can break up jobs .. (ie: So I don't have to redo the kitchen at the same time as the front entrance or mudroom.)

You never know, there could be oak flooring under the linoleum.

I should have specified up front - the house is from 1984, it has OSB for the subfloor. The hardwood in the FR is prefinished (has the v-grooves) and is 2-1/4" wide by 3/4" thick. (I confirmed the thickness by lifting up a heating register cover.)

The hardwood in the FR (and one BR) was in all likelihood put in by the previous owner ('98 or earlier) as one of their kids has asthma or allergies.

Hmmmm......interesting Art. Maybe turn the new wood flooring to run perpendicular to the existing?

You know that there is particle board under the vinyl right?

That would give me a whole ton of short 3-4' pieces running crosswise down the hallway, which I think would look a bit goofy. And particle-board? I doubt it. I've never seen underlay which is particle board - plywood, yes, but never particle board. But I was thinking of ripping up the underlay anyways, since I've already had to patch one small bit of lino and discovered that the glue was everywhere, which made getting a smooth surface nigh impossible.

A good floor company/guy should be able to sand/finish the new and old to match seamlessly.

The flooring guy would be me, and the floor would be pre-finished. I wasn't planning on the expense of hiring someone.

[Matt Meiser]

There's such a huge selection available, I would think you'd be able to get pretty close to the existing floor. To hide any mismatch, take out a couple strips from the existing floor and make an oak threshold as wide as the door opening which is stained and finished to blend the two together.

[Bob Moyer]

Hey folks,

Our living room/dining room carpet is as old as the hills and could use replacing. So I'm toying with the idea of replacing it with hardwood.

So far, no big deal. But, I'm also thinking of extending the hardwood into the hallway that leads to the kitchen. This section of floor currently has (equally old) linoleum that runs from the entrance, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. It also leads to the family room, which already has hardwood in it.

Here is where it would meet.
floor1.jpg

So far, I'm thinking that I could either try to match the old family room hardwood (some kind of dark pre-finished oak), which seems unlikely. Or just put in something else and live with the contrast.

Does anyone else have a situation where you have one kind of hardwood butting up against another? How does it look? Are you happy with it? Got any other suggestions?

Just gathering ideas...
...art

Art,

I am in the exact same situation and this will be my Thanksgiving weekend project, my wife has already decided to go with a contrast, we are running the flooring for the living room and hallway perpindicular to the existing flooring in the dining room and foyer. This is the area where the two floorings will meet. I also have two different tile floors to meet one in the side entrance way which is also what is in the kitchen and the flooring in the guest batroom. Can you post photos when you are finished as I will also.

[Sam Shank]

Art,

Your situation looks nearly _identical_ to mine. I'll try to take a photo tonight and post tomorrow.

Here's what I did. On the right of your photo, I had exisiting 2.25" cherry, about 3 years old and nicely aged/colored. On the left, I was installing 4" maple. I put one cherry board (2.25") perpendicular to the way they were laid, then a 4" maple, then another 2.25" cherry. A maple sandwiched by cherry. Then on the left, the maple was running perpendicular to the threshold, parallel to the cherry. It turned out great, and is a nice delinieation between the rooms. (Kitchen in maple, dining room in cherry.)

Good luck, and if you have questions, feel free to ask.

Sam

[Jim Thiel]

Got any other suggestions?

Just gathering ideas...
...art

If I understand, You could tile the entrance (with electric radiant elements underneath) to both cut down on maintenance and segregate the different finishes. I like wood floors, but the front landing takes a bunch of abuse (at least here, when Calvin and Maggie run down the stairs and crash into the sidelites).

Jim

[Art Mulder]

If I understand, You could tile the entrance (with electric radiant elements underneath) to both cut down on maintenance and segregate the different finishes.

Jim,
Nope, you don't understand...

The floor plan is roughly like this:
floorplan.png

right now there is vinyl from the mudroom to the entrance, down the hall, and through the kitchen. I'm thinking of putting hardwood in he LR/DR, and from the DR to the FR, and down the hall towards (but not up to) the entrance. Breaking up that huge run of vinyl would let me do something like upgrade the entry with ceramic tile, for example, without having to also do the kitchen floor (or mudroom, etc)

[Matt Meiser]

You could tile the entrance, hall, and kitchen which would separate the other rooms from the existing hardwood. If you like tile, of course. More importantly if LOYL likes tile.