Solid Hardwood, Engineered and Laminate Flooring - Extending hardwwod to the kitchen

Hi guys, I did my hardwood flooring with the help of this forum like two years ago and we enjoyed our new floors. I installed solid oak 3/4" t&g.

Now we have decided that we would like to extend the flooring to the kitchen against all the suggestion against it but I need your help one more time.

Situation, Kitchen and family room is a big single room. When we did the family room we were not thinking of having harwood on the kitchen but my wife insists now. The hardwood was cut to length at the start of the kitchen. Now that we want to extend the flooring and have the staggered look like it was originally installed I have no idea how achieve that other than removing the cut strips. To do that I have to remove almost half of the flooring in the room, probably more.

Please give a tip on how to achieve the random look without removing so many strips.

Thanks people

Urip

There are several ways you can go about this. One is the way you are suggesting. The other is to turn a board or boards where you left off for the kitchen. You can do it with oak or choose another species to "accent or break up" the two rooms with out haveing a wall. Its fairly easy and will solve your board pulling delema. If you want further info e-mail me

Phil:D

Thanks for the suggestion Phil, turning around one or two boards sound like a great idea, but it defeats the purpose of making the room looks bigger with no breaks. We wanted to have the 'continuous' look because we wanted to 'extend' the kitchen into the family room placing the island a bit into the family room.

This is what I am thinking of doing and the new dilemas that came with it.

The room is only 11' wide. The island will cover aproximately 3' of THE LINE. The pantry on the other side will sit on THE LINE about 2'. The rest of the exposed line I plan to replace those boards as needed as if those boards where damaged. ( Saw the boards, chisel out and replace after removing the tongue) like in the Wood Floors page of this website. I am planning to install there smaller pieces so I know they are perfectly straight. I think that I can get away replacing every other board. The new dilema is that those areas with the replaced boards are the walking areas and I am concerned how those replaced boards will hold after taking the traffic.

I'll wait for your feedback.

Thanks again and regards,

Urip

yea you'll have to pull the header board and then pull out those cuts and lace the new boards back in to get everyhting to flow as if it were one and never any different :cool:

Thanks floorman and Phil, we completed the hardest part in my opinion which is to remove the strips that made THE LINE. I think it looks great and tomorrow we will install the whole kitchen floor .

For the record and to help some other with the same problem I would like to state how it was done.

Adjusted the depth of my circular saw to 3/4" to cut the strips without damagin the subfloor.

Make cuts along the strips that were to be changed and chisel the cut pieces out. As many as possible being very careful not to damaged adjacent strips.

Chisel the middle pieces first to relieve the pressure on the sides.

Groove side come out easily and then you fight very carefully the tongue side in which the nails are sitting.

If you are not into fireworks and sparckles do not make cuts too close to the side on the tongue side. You will also damaged the blade. I did.

the last piece to be removed is the tongue side. We inserted a prybar at the bottom and pry them up very carefully and once the nails gave a little bit we chiseled them out and they slid out easily.

Some damaged to subfloor was inevitable because of the nails sliding out. My solution for that it will be to nail closer in case some nails sit on the damaged part of the plywood.

I will nail on the tongue when possible and finished nails on the top if I feel that there is not enough support.

I am planning to lace the replacement strips by tapping them in. Then tongue nail or top nail where necesary.

Thanks to everybody again and I hope my experience helps somebody else.

I will post anything out of the ordinary if any regarding the installation part.

Regards, and thanks guys.

Urip