X-Post: Cork next to hardwood. Any thoughts?

13 years ago

I'm X-posting this in Decorating and Flooring.

I had someone come to look at my living room and dining room today to give me a quote on new floors. There is currently carpet here and hardwood on the rest of the main level, so I wanted to get an idea of what it would cost to extend the wood.

I was aware of an uneven nature to the floor in that the threshhold of a door on one end of the house is 2 inches higher than the threshhold of a door on the other end. I brought this to the man's attention and so he did a little bit of sleuthing about to see why that was.

To make a long story short, we have very unusual subflooring in the house (as in, "huh; in 35 years of working in this town, I've never seen that before") So, while he's going to give me a quote on wood and on carpet, he also wants to quote me cork because he said it has the easy to clean nature of wood, but won't involve all of the work/surprise costs that will likely be involved with wood due to the strange subfloor. I'm willing to consider cork if it would look OK aesthetically. .

Does anyone have any pictures of cork next to oak hardwood? We have a large open transition area between our foyer (oak) and living room (currently carpet). I think it may be too large a space to change from wood to something wood-like. It's OK from wood to carpet because those are two different kinds of floor - does that make sense? Thanks!

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Comments (4)

lascatx
13 years ago
Do a search on Houzz. I looked there when I was considering cork for my kitchen. I wound up doing wood throughout though.
cindyloo123
13 years ago
I'd get another flooring guy out there and without mentioning the subfloor problem, see if he has the same reaction.

A good quality cork costs much more than wood. It's a good floor to use in areas that might get wet, but I would never opt to use it in the LR or DR instead of wood.

To answer the question you asked, it would look fine next to a room with wood.
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Annie Deighnaugh
13 years ago
I don't have a pic but GF went from hardwood to cork in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room....they used a threshold wood board and the transition looks fine.
jakabedy
13 years ago
We have cork (glue-down tiles) next to pavers. Although there wasn't much of a level change, we still had to use a trim strip for the transition. I wasn't a big fan of the transition strip, but it was a cost of doing business. That is the one -- ONE -- advantage of the wall-to-wall carpet the cork replaced: no need for a trim strip.

If you ignore the Poang chair in the photo (I was selling it on CL) you'll see our transition from the pavers to the cork. We stained the oak strip to match the pavers as much as possible (it doesn't look that red IRL). I would think in your case, you would stain it to match the hardwood.