Odd flooring transition, need ideas...

14 years ago

We have a small transition area roughly 6.5' x 4' where our hallway sort of ends and connects to the kitchen, dining room and family room. It's a heavy traffic area obviously. The hall has a medium brown engineered handscraped hickory, the kitchen (right now) has tile and this area, dining room and family room all have carpet.

My dream would be to continue the same hickory throughout the entire 1st floor, but unfortunately, this particular brand product is out of my budget. A flooring guy already told me I should just pull up the wood in the entry to get new flooring so it all to matches. The wood is about 3 years old, just put in by the previous owners to sell. It would be about 300 sq feet. This seems wasteful and also more than I want to spend when my focus is the kitchen.

I can get another less expensive brand that is the same species, width plank and thickness, but the color and style won't match. I know I don't want to keep the carpet, it's low grade stuff and even though it too is only 3 years old, it's showing heavy wear. I'm seriously considering this other hickory for the kitchen and family rooms, but the problem is how to deal with this little bit of space of transition between old and new floors. The wood was installed and cut off in a wierd way, I think it shoud have lined up with the end of the wall, but it has a 6" difference. I DO have enough left over wood to do a sort of band there going in the opposite direction to fill out to the end of the wall, but then what? Should I consider a tile or stone here? Should I make it a bit of a feature? It's not a huge area, less than 30 sq ft, so not much material is needed, but it will be DIY.

Here's some pictures. It's a camera phone with no zoom, so I tried to capture it from a couple of angles. The blue tape would probably be the point where the new flooring starts.

Looking from kitchen

Looking from hallway

Any suggestions to help point me in a direction would be much appreciated!

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Comments (6)

melissastar
14 years ago
What's the plan for the kitchen floor? If you are changing it, you could run the same floor into your transition space. If not, I rather like the idea of something different...possibly a tile mosaic that coordinates with your kitchen and wood flooring, possibly a wood floor with inlays, so it looks markedly different but coordinating with what you've already got elsewhere?
kathec
Original Author
14 years ago
The kitchen has beige tile right now, but I am considering doing another handscraped hickory. It will end up a different color and style. The one I have in the hall has a lot of "chatter" marks, deliberate distressing, but the one I'm considering that's cheaper, is just handscraped, no chatter.

Can inlays be done with handscraped? I've only ever seen it done with smooth floors. I want to avoid a smooth floor here. I have 2 medium sized dogs, so I'm ok with the scratches on the already distressed floor, but it'd drive me nuts on a smooth finish.

A mosaic is something to consider...
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palimpsest
14 years ago
Could you get enough of the hand-scraped flooring to do the small transition area in that and then do the kitchen in the new flooring? You would need to remove a little of the older flooring to weave the new pieces in.
michiganrachel
14 years ago
If you are going to do the kitchen with teh different handscraped hickory, maybe you could just do the transition in this same material. You could have a transition piece placed horizontally between the old and new floor to show the change.

Alternatively, you could do the kitchen in something other than hickory to have more of a transition between the two woods. Same thing, put a transition piece between the two kinds of wood.

In the house we're renovating/building we are using the same floor material (oak), but there is a transition piece between the old and new parts of the house where the wood changes directions.

One more idea, you could do the transition area in wood - the same as the front hall or the kitchen, and do it in a square pattern like you see in old homes. This requires a lot more cutting and skill, but it would look kind of cool in an area like that.

Good luck!
Rachel
formerlyflorantha
14 years ago
Is it a flaw or a feature? Make lemonade from the lemon...

If you were able to put an attractive decorative boundary on the blue rectangle in a darker wood, the wood inside wouldn't abut anything else and could be CLOSE or CONTRASTING in look to the nearby wood. If you ran TWO contrasting colors outside the rectangle, that would be swell. And if you had some kind of fab inlay, you'd be thrilled every time you walk through!

Your space is small enough that you might contact a vendor about remainder materials. Never know what is out there.

Here's a specialty company whose stuff is in a local showroom by me. I have really liked their restraint and good design on many items. [Remember to wipe up after you drool on the wood floor.]
Oshkosh Designs of Wisconsin. Click on the categories at left for more choices.

Can't afford inlay? Another option is to stencil the floor with paint. You can duplicate many inlays this way, an old historic option for those of the middling classes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Czar Floors, if you want to go all out...
formerlyflorantha
14 years ago
bump