flooring personality switch
Folks, I’ve got a flooring question regarding a little brownstone in Lefferts Garden. I’ve taken down the wall dividing the kitchen from the dining room and now am unsure how to proceed with what to do for the kitchen floor so it looks OK with the more formal dining floor. The dining room floor is…
Folks, I’ve got a flooring question regarding a little brownstone in Lefferts Garden. I’ve taken down the wall dividing the kitchen from the dining room and now am unsure how to proceed with what to do for the kitchen floor so it looks OK with the more formal dining floor. The dining room floor is made of one inch by 12 inch slats grouped in bunches of 12 to form squares one square foot big. The kitchen has only its pine tongue and groove subfloor left. Do I try to match the two? Can I go rustic for the kitchen and have a wood floor that doesn’t match exactly, but somehow still works? Or should I have to do tile? Or should I depart hugely and put down concrete?
concrete is the easy way out. more exspisve yea, but man, what a floor. the easist floor ever to keep clean. never a stan, and what a shine
I have ceramic tile and I cook a lot (ususally only in socks) and I have NEVER had a problem. But there is a subfloor under my tile — that may make a difference (not just concrete). So if you like it, go with it. I think that you can have two materials — but you should “border” one — even if it means staining the perimeter of the parquest in the dining area — it will set it off and make the transition understandable (like a rug on a wood floor).
Agree with those who don’t like hard surfaces on kitchen floors. Why all the ceramic tile out there – because it is more “modern” and “upscale” than our childhood kitchen linoleum? Even if you don’t cook a lot, tiles don’t look so good next to old wood. And stuff breaks more easily on tile when you drop it, and hearing a toddler’s head hit it is hard to take (they will fall), not to mention hard on my knees when retrieving things from the floor.
Wood is best. Agree best not to try to match colors – but best to have complementary color. And yes, an inlaid border could be your transition. Love wood floors in kitchens – don’t understand why people think they aren’t durable. If you are a mess, you just put on lots of coats of poly, and perhaps repoly the room sooner if it wears. If you want to paint it, like that idea OK, but not as well as wood color – but be sure to seal it well with poly. Can’t speak to cork, haven’t used it, but like the idea. Like linoleum in general, but think not in your application, with the next room open. Like it best when the entire floor is wood to the eyes, even if the wood changes. Even just wood planks on top of the subfloor would look better.
So, just avoid having a saddle – hated my tile kitchen that was a bit raised from the adjoining old parquet floor – the transition always irritated my feet when they landed on it. So make the floors even in height, however else you transition them.
Agree with poster who says new floor in adjoining room too solves problem, but you may not want to spring for that, and you may like the old wood floor too much to rip it out (I like keeping old wood floors – they don’t make ’em like they used to). Why not use parquet like the next room? Do they make something similar, or better yet, can you salvage the same sort of boards from a home of the same era, where someone is ripping them out? Then you COULD stain the same as the next room. That would be my number 1 choice.
Our seller put in new stone floors in the kitchen and being brand new and well-installed we left them. The stone floors totally kill our feet and legs when we’re preparing a lot of food, but if I wear springy soles with good support I do fine. So there is a way to work with hard stone floors if you must.
Parquet floors with more intricate patterns should be able to transition into plain, wide-plank floor areas okay. I don’t like vastly different floors right next to each other either, but there’s no way everyone has to follow a rule of never pairing different kinds of floors. That’s a bit lazy, IMO. Get creative. Like what about a narrow, decorative inlaid tile border between types of wood? Just an idea to brainstorm.
Lastly, I agree with Brooklynista. If you want great ideas and pleasant exchanges go to Garden Web. It’s what Forum should be but isn’t. Every Forum thread always seems to turn up somebody like the first poster. To the first poster, dude, have you ever heard of a thing called interior designers? They help people design their homes. By giving them advice. Just like people are doing here. It’s a given and goes without saying the OP will in the end ultimately decide what she herself wants. The only result when somebody never asks anybody for feedback or ideas when doing home decor, is more often than not an ugly house. See bad 70’s and 80’s renovations when middle class people didn’t use designers and before the internet or HGTV existed. Those people might have thought their house was pretty but nobody else did!
To me, coming close to matching an existing wood is a visual no-no. I say create noticable difference or match exactly. A little contrast is a good thing.
Bought some cork (which I still have in the basement if anyone wants it very cheap!) but went with linoleum in my ultra-modern kitchen. A little springy, very easy to maintain, and looks kinda cool next to the original (but now stained) wood floor. The kitchen floor’s raised about 4″ to make more seperation from dining area, which helps too.
what will the rest of the kitchen look like, country, modern, etc?
No border of straight planks we could match, no. So just to sum up, a few feedbacks here say it’s best to be consistent looks-wise, whether that’s matching wood as best I can, or perhaps cork. So tiling or linoleum would be strange. What about a wood floor that’s painted? Farmhouse style I mean. I know that’s not consistent, but would the wood aspect rhyme a bit even if the color and texture didn’t exactly match?
I’m in the create consistency camp. I think it’s odd looking when open plan kitchens have different flooring than the living/dining spaces they connect to. Is it all parquet or does it have a border of straight planks you could match?
This is an excellent question–or at least I think so, since my partner and I are wrestling with a similar one. This weekend, after some visits to wood-flooring places, we came to a decision.
First of, I would totally agree with the above rehabbers/cooks: Do not put down concrete, tile, marble, or anything that hard (on feet) or jarring (on eyes).
Difference between your project and ours is, you took down a whole wall between dining room and kitchen (we didn’t take down a wall; our rooms are divided by just a doorway). We ripped up crappy floor tile in foyer/hallway/kitchen, down to the subfloor. We have parquet in dining room, as you do. And we’re trying to figure out what to put in foyer and hallway, which connects naturally to kitchen, and also in that kitchen.
In your case, lacking a wall dividing the two rooms, you now have no natural way to transition from one flooring type to another–you’d have to have a 10-foot, 12-foot, 18-foot saddle on the floor between the rooms, which is a little odd. (Not the end of the world, but a little odd). So you may want to replace ALL the flooring in kitchen AND dining room. That would probably look the best. If you can swing good flooring. Costly, I know.
Personally, as you suggested, I think it’s weird to have fancy oak parquet next to rustic, refinished wide-plank pine that was always intended to only be subfloor covered with something else. We have decided to cover ours with quartersawn oak ($5 a square foot), with a stain that will kinda sorta match the old parquet. Perhaps with a walnut border. Good luck.