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Wood to Tile transition

12 years ago

HI! I have finished my kitchen and put tile in. I am going to put tile on the other side of my living room and my entry. Right now, these areas are transitioned by carpeted living and family rooms.

I have purchased some wood flooring to put in those two rooms. I want the transition to be level and I do not want to put in a transition strip.

There is cement board under my kitchen tile. My tile person is telling me that in the other two areas, she can use a sealer on the subfloor and tile right over that.

Some are telling me to stack the roofing felt to even the height of the floors, and then feather it out back from the transition areas to a single thickness. When I get to the new tile area, she will adjust the thickness of the quickset to provide a smooth transition. Others are saying to put down a thin OSB board to make up the gap instead of the felt paper and then use cement board under the tile.

I'm very confused. lol!

Any ideas? I've provided a pic. I don't have an exact measurement but I think it's almost 1/4" which will require several layers of felt paper.

THANKS!

Comments (3)

floorman67
12 years ago
I would use "floor patch" to add additional height and feather out the height differential to within the flatness tolerance listed by the hardwood manufacturer in their installation instructions (usually somewhere near 1/4" in 8' to 12'), as well as slightly back-beveling the hardwood that meets the tile if there is any gap because of the additional angle the feathering may create.

By the looks of your tile joint shown in your picture, you will not get a perfectly flush transition anyways, because you already have lippage in your tile installation at the doorway that will prevent it. But you can get it close. If you want a perfectly flush transition, that tile needs repaired because it appears to be improperly installed. Lippage can easily be mitigated, and even totally prevented, by controlling the amount of thinset mortar applied and utilising adequate force when setting the tile in combination with a straight edge or level set accross the joints.
don92
12 years ago
First of all, do NOT tile over the subfloor even if sealed, it is not the proper substrate for tile.
I would bring the wood floor slightly higher than the tile then cut the bottom edge off of the groove on the flooring forming a rabbit and have it cover the seam in the tile.
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Anyone can do it Lisa. If you need a header transition on the right side you would square it and install the header with the groove facing out. If the header is on your left, install it with the tongue facing out. When you get to the headers start your rows off the headers, working right to left or vice-versa. Sometimes there will two header transitions opposite from each other and you would need a router. I'm in SW Virginia homebound. I use a piece of MDF to create a template and place the template down on the flooring and then cut the radius using a router.
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Using a diamond blade, one could cut a diagonal line across the tile, either at the end of that handrail or somewhere between the handrail end and the start of the curve and remove a small portion of tile. This would tie the big room upper left to the small area lower right in your picture and you could use standard transition moldings. As to your tile grout issue, you might look into whether you could hire someone to clean and seal the grout or remove it and regrout it. Everything has it's drawbacks including wood. While it doesn't have grout and isn't prone to fracture cracks, it's more sensitive to water, humidity changes, dings and scratches. It should be recoated periodically. High wear areas will need recoating before low traffic areas. On the plus side, many wood floors can be refinished and you can change the color, unlike that pink tile someone thought looked great 15 years ago.
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I did my wood to tile transition without strips (in order to make my place more handicap-friendly.) They just have to make the top surface of the tile and the top surface of the wood be the same height, I think I have about 1/8th inch difference at most between kitchen and living space, no difference between hallway and bath, and 1/8th difference at most between master and master bath. Back at my old home, I had a transistion strip between the dining area and the kitchen - it made it horrible to move from the linoleum of the kitchen back out to the wood of the dining area when I had a broken ankle and was on wheels. Plus the strips really do look ugly. (PS< the wood transition strips look fine, but mine were metal strips... but neither are necessary.) Others have pointed out you can have hardwood throughout, I just simply didn't want to do that. (Actually, my wood floors are broad beam pine, which is soft, anyway.) My build is semi-open, so I had the option in the kitchen to do tile, and so I did.
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Do NOT do that.. Put the wood on all the floor, including kitchen , and use the tile on a backsplash. You are already too close to the sink wall with the island. move it out six inches. Opening the dishwasher is going to be incredibly inconvenient. Shrink the island to four feet. It appears a kitchen that perhaps should not have had an island at all. One where a peninsula may have been better. Hard to say from the limited sketch. No matter what, the space is too small to be cut up with two different floors, no matter the selections.
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woodfloorpro
12 years ago
Consider adding plywood under your thin wood floor to bring it flush. I would leave at least a 3/8" gap next to the tile and fill it with a sand grout caulk or a wood tone one to allow for expansion & contraction.
By adding the plywood you will also match up height wise with most other flooring materials the wood floor abuts.

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