Hardwood Flooring – Creative Transition
Jerry18
| Posted in Construction Techniques on
I’m moving some walls around and adding HW in areas that will match the existing HW which is white Oak. I’m looking for some creative ideas to transition from the HW in the hallway to the bedrooms at the doorways. All flooring runs the same direction and will be the same height. Instead of fingering in the new HW or adding a raised saddle (threshold), I wanted to do something different. I was thinking of maybe a contrasting HW or an inlay of some sort, but I’m not sure if that would look right. Has anybody done something like this? Any ideas?
Jerry
Replies
I used 3 1/4" Kempas in my Living room and straight into my dining room which are seperated by a 5' opening with some old pocket doors. I was runnign the flooring from the living room through the doors and into the dining room. The problem I ran into was that in order to get it all done seamlessly, I would have had to be working on both rooms at hte same time. This wasn't an option becasue I had no where to move all of the furniture to. So in the doorway, I ran a 3/4" wide peice of walnut perpendicular to the flooring and fillid in between the door jambs with the flooring and the finished off with another peice of walnut on the other side. that gave me a sort of a threshold so to speak, and allowed me to finish the one room, then move all the furniture back in. then I continued the flooring into the dining room. So to answer your question, the feature strip will work, but you have to make sure you'll be happy with the way it looks.
Thanks to all for the tips. I think I like the idea of darker wood feature strips with the oak in between. I'm going to play around with that and see how it looks.Jerry
It is fairly common to use a 1 or 2 board transition strip across the door opening. This is a common practice when switching wood species between rooms where the flooring is running perpendicular to the door opening. It looks fine when using the same species as well.
I've done a lot of "flush thresholds" when people don't want a raised threshold and don't want to pay for toothing in. Usually it's the same kind of wood but there's no reason you couldn't make it stand out. Mahogany looks great with white oak.