I had oak floors installed and site finished (natural), but it sure took way less than 2 weeks for about 1000 sqft. In fact, I was amazed how little smell, dust, and disruption. It took a few days. Maybe interview some floor installers.

Well, maybe it was closer to a week and a half and that includes the waiting before moving stuff back.

There was plenty of dust, although they did a nice job cleaning up. There were three coats of oil-based finish with wait time between coats. My cats and I were basically confined to my bedroom with a makeshift kitchen in the garage.

Just the thought of moving everything out of those rooms gives me pause. Of course, it would be the same for whatever floor covering I choose, but it's still daunting to me.

Ideally I would just move out for a few days, but my cats are an issue. Before I dispense with the idea of pre-finished, I want to consider the angles.

In all fairness, DH was out of town, and it was only bedrooms, i.e. not kitchen, living room, hallway, and not even the master bedroom.
Now, maybe it's less disruptive if you are only dealing with the bedrooms this time around.

I could bunk in the living room and have the kitchen and a hall bath. The problem is my indoor only cats, so I'd have to get creative with a sequestering strategy.

So, while site-finished remains an option, I'd love to hear if anyone used both kinds in adjacent rooms and how it turned out. Would you do it again?

Ugh, I think this is why I've put this off for so long. I suppose I could erect a temp door/barrier in the hall between living and construction space. Or I could have them do two rooms at once and when they are habitable, do the third.

Oly, your RV solution is very good, although with my cats we'd all be insane by the end of the first day.

I've had floors refinished in 3 different houses, and none of them took nearly that long. One even involved replacement of a large area that was flood damaged. Also, like nosoccermom, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of dust. The most recent experience did involve some foul odors, but they dissipated within a day or two. I think the finish was water based. The entire process took maybe 4 days, mostly because they had to wait for each coat to dry. The actual work only took a few hours for 2 rooms.

I'd do prefinished in your situation. I was going to do prefinished to replace a living/dining room floor that needed patching just for speed of installation, but because it's continuous with every other room in the house I had to go with site finished (and refinished). If you have a logical choice for where to end the prefinished, and it sounds like you do, why the heck not?

(Of course, that's after you get a sample and are sure it will look nice and not be too too groovy.)

If it helps, my floors are being done at this very minute and it's only not a big deal because we can avoid the rooms and our stuff is already in storage. It's top nailed oak and the installer delivered the materials a week before installation to acclimate, then installed and filled and waited before the final sand and finish (which is scheduled to take 3 days, not 3 FULL days, but 3 days, which includes molding).

Acclimation of the raw wood might not be all that necessary in your climate (I'm in SF bay area so I didn't expect it, actually), but it seems logical. But we didn't have that much patching so we could step around the pile.

To do the job properly you should match the new material to the old material. Either use the exact same product or make it totally different ... trying to match the same look with two different products, usually ends up looking like a poorly thought out project ... something that a house flipper would do to save time/money.

Fori, can I just say how funny it strikes me whenever I see your new name "Fori is not pleased"?

The join would be where open space meets closed, i.e., bedrooms with doors that close. It's not *that* different from the way it is now, where those rooms have carpet. The wood wouldn't match perfectly anyway, even if we did site-finish. No way am I gonna refinish my existing floors so that everything matches perfectly. That would be a recipe for ending up doing nothing, as I have done for the past 8 years.

My existing wood sat all over the house acclimating for close to a month. That didn't bother me and delighted the cats.

chispa, I wouldn't mind if the new material didn't match. That's no worse than the way carpet doesn't match. But how different would they need to be? I prefer mid to light wood. Would just an obvious color difference do the trick? Would I have to look at a wood other than oak?

I don't even know if my original floor guy is still in business or if he has access to the same wood I have. What about board width? I have 5". Would I necessarily want to match that?

I put pre-finished bamboo in my kitchen and family room, and had the existing oak floors in the rest of the downstairs refinished to match the color. Looked great. Does any of these directly abut - if so, the concern I would have would be stain-matching. Otherwise, I would have no problem having some site-finished and some pre-finished in different rooms.

SJ, yes, all three rooms in question abut the hall with site-finished floor. They are bedrooms off a hallway, not a dining room that flows into a kitchen or family room. A doorway width.

So, here's what it looks like. I'm standing with my back up against the door into the garage. Office on the left, my bedroom at the top, guest bedroom on the right. Hall does a right angle top left (wider than it looks) and ends up in open living space from which you don't really see into the bedrooms.

You have to click on pic to see all of it. Never had that happen before. : \

You have very clean transition points with the doorways. I think you can do pretty much anything in those rooms and it will look fine-- hardwood, cork, carpet, whatever. I wouldn't worry about getting an exact match with your site finished hardwood. In fact, I think I would purposely choose something quite different, so that it doesn't look like "close but not quite".

If you do prefinished hardwoods, I think I'd have them run perpendicular to the existing wood floor, and do a transition strip in the doorways.

jlc712, thank you. I was hoping someone would say that. Also good tips about direction and transition strip. I wouldn't want the wood *that* different, except perhaps in color.

When I extended my HW from the hallway into the adjoining rooms, my floor installers insisted to stagger at the transition, i..e into your bedroom.

Nosoccermom, I could see that if the two woods were a near-perfect match, but how would that work if they didn't?

Glad my photo didn't show the current transition between the hall and my bedroom carpet. During last year's bathroom remodel next door, my cat Zephyr was in my bedroom and had a meltdown, pulling up the carpet at the door. I repaired it with duct tape and stopped noticing it.

A good hardwood floor guy would have no problem sourcing the same wood species and matching it to the old stain. We all have different things we like/dislike in home decor or can tolerate. Different wood products done like this is one of my pet peeves!

You should go to a local flooring store and pick up some sample boards of prefinished floors. Laying them out next to your existing floors will quickly show you if you like the look or not.

chispa, there's no stain on the old wood. It just arrived at this color. Not sure if the wood itself changed or the top coat darkened. It's the same throughout the house, not just in areas that receive more/less light.

You are right that bringing home sample boards will tell me if it's a look I can live with or not.

Yep, you can do anything with that!

And I agree, a decent floor guy can match just about anything. But you are fortunate and you don't HAVE to! But you can. Or you can do some the same and some different, just to drag it out. :)

I don't know if this will help but we installed prefinished oak throughout most of the first level of our house and we've been really happy with it. It's been about 8 years already and other than one spot under my dh's chair, it isn't showing any signs of wear and that is with a Lab walking on it. It does have the micro bevels but I don't notice them. Since we have oak cabinets, we used a different wood in the kitchen, prefinished Brazilian Walnut with a transition strip. Though impossible to avoid (in our situation) the strips are my least favorite thing about our wood floors.

I've read that prefinished wears better. Overall my existing floors look really good and nothing shows up (e.g., dust and hair that people with dark floors have). I do have plenty of little pinholes in and around where the cats play and chase one another. That's something I accept I have to live with.

I think it may wear better because the finish is quite heavy on it, but I love our floors. Yep, nothing shows on these either, even the dark walnut has been surprisingly easy to care for. Our budget was extremely tight, so we went out on a limb and installed the Bruce Plano Marsh from HD. The wood isn't clear (or select) like a higher grade flooring, some boards have knots or a range of coloring, but I like that. And now its available in the wider planks as well. It's done amazingly well, especially for the price. Some people have said theirs dings easily. We haven't experienced that but we don't wear shoes, especially high heels inside either.

I wear shoes inside, but they're usually flip flops, slippers or something sensible like Clarks. I never wear high heels (wish I could) but, if I did, I would kick them off the moment I got inside.

I read that they can apply more/better coats of finish than is practical on site-finished. Thanks for the tip about Bruce Plano Marsh. I guess I should shop around, get some samples, and see what I'm up against.

My floor guys matched the existing natural oak floors very well. It looks very, very similar to your floors.

We have Anderson prefinished engineered wood floors, no bevel, everywhere except bathrooms. They have held up quite well (15 years) everywhere except near the back door and in front of the kitchen sink , with heavy use, in a rural area. I have a DH and DS that are not careful, and frequently have wet/muddy shoes.

As JLC said, you have nicely finished doorways ... the only time you will see both floors is when you have a door open. And with the difference in lighting, you won't notice slight differences.

Here's how I match or blend finishes: Bring home some samples of the prefinished you are thinking about and lay them in the hallway, parallel to the existing floors. Stand back 10 or so feet and pick the board or boards that you have the hardest time spotting. That's your match. Or, remove the boards that stand out ... what's left is the matching color.

If you carefully pick the ONE board that is just inside the doorway to be as close a match to the older one in the hall it will make the blend almost invisible.

Here, in an 1880s adobe ... the door stops where the pale wood is, and I picked new boards with the brownish tones of the old floor (upper part) to make the new flooring (running side to side) less conspicuous. (there was craptastical 1990s carpet and some wierd sill arrangement to deal with ... nothing in the house is square, plumb, or level).

By matching size and rustic-ness in the new flooring we got a floor that blends with the old. Cleaning and refinishing the old floor (eventually) will make oit blend better.

You guys have given me hope.

JLC, holding 15 years in a rural area is pretty darn good. In 15 years, I will be too old to notice any wear. :)

lazy, thanks for the tips on picking out colors. In my house, all doors are open all the time, unless I have a guest staying over or using the bathroom. I do suspect that I would stop noticing any differences, as I have done with the duct tape carpet repair in my bedroom. Très crack house. It's not like the join is in the middle of a large open space.

The color "match" posted by Lazy-gardens would set off my "color OCD"! If buying the house I would have to factor in refinishing the floors in my offer. For me, they need to be totally dfferent materials or exactly the same, otherwise it doesn't work for me.

Linelle, you have more options if having the same material with a slightly different color doesn't make your eyes start twitching!! ;-)

chispa, I'm likely to be staying in this house for the duration so I really need to please myself. If I were buying a house I liked in an area I liked and the price was right, mismatched woods touching each other wouldn't bother me overly, esp. at a doorway. But then, I keep a dish drainer rack on my counter all the time. We all have our limits. What drives me nuts is tardiness.

Linelle, I love your sense of humor and that you're being realitically true to what you need or want. If matching the colors proves to be more of a challenge than there are a lot of ways to transition. Marble, granite, darker piece of wood like a walnut or a lighter wood like maple. They are a good way to get around having to go through the finishing process you originally said you want to avoid

Linelle, there are lots of pre-finished wood floors out there in "hard wood flooring world" that will blend with your existing site finished floors. Get lots of samples, focus more on the natural, unstained color look first, then focus on the width. Of course, the finish is going to be somewhat different, but I don't think it will be that much of an issue if you get the right color.

I would butt the new up against the existing floors (no fancy transition board) and run them in the same direction. You are lucky that you can do this without it being that obvious because your edge existing board runs nicely into the door facing. I am not even sure that a different width would be that visually obvious if you get the color close. To do this, the thickness would have to be exact of course.

Pre-finished red oak samples

tuesday, wow, that is an encouraging group of images. I see my existing floor represented in many of them. Also, some micro bevels are unacceptable and others I find not bad at all.