matching hardwood floor

[ashapril22]

We've had our house for about a year and I've finally convinced my husband that pulling out the icky carpet is the smart thing to do! I pulled back the carpet in two spots and just and I suspected, it's hardwood under one section and just plywood under the other toward the front of the house. We think the house was added on to in the 70's. I'm clueless as to what kind of hardwood is used and we are wondering how we go about matching the floor to blend with the half we have to install. We are doing this ourself and want to keep the cost as low as possible! Do the floors have to match or would it look tacky?

[ArmchairDIY]

You may not be able to add hardwood to the missing section. Because removing the plywood may only leave you with floor joist in that area, and you need to keep an underpayment under the new hardwood. Therefore the two areas would be a different levels.
Otherwise finding flooring to match wood species and size should not be a problem. After installing you would sand the entire floor, old and new and finish it. It should be an acceptable match.

[Hardwood Guy]

That's a tough one, considering it sounds like both the plywood and older hardwood is the same vertical height. Armchair is probably right about the floor joists. I see two options but it will never look the same with option #1.

1- Install new on top of the ply and install a one sided reducer that will slope to the existing floor. More to this than a few paragraphs but a start.

2- Install new hardwood over both areas. If money is a concern, cabin grade hardwoods may be an option. They're not perfect, but prices are substantially lower. Most will have quite a bit of color variation.

Here's a tip. Contact a local hardwood dealer and ask if their source has an odd lot list. Odd lot means the manufacturer is trying to sell off material that falls into the cabin grade category. It could be a mismatched stain run that didn't work or basically color variation hardwoods they needed to produce instead of tossing it. Sometimes they may have 5- 10,000 square feet on hand others 400 or 500 etc. and in between.