Hi first its depends how you going to dived the are even that its open area the question is if you going to have a island in the kitchen that will separate between the living room to the kitchen or every thing will be open kind of big loft, I saw houses with three deferent kind of floor some times is good some times is so so, depends how you do the connection between them You donÂt have to go with a high price wood for the kitchen; there is many kind of wood that will be chipper then tile for the kitchen, oak, pine or Bamboo in good quality (not the 99c or $1.30). Hope its help, and like you say its hard to say with out the floor plan. Jacob

Thank you Floorguy. What is a rip cut? I had thought the 5" boards would be less waste since there were longer boards than the 3.25" boards I was at first going to order. So the standard is 5% overage on ordering but I need to order more since I went with the 5" wide board? So is 7% enough. After this experience, I do not think I will order flooring on the Internet but instead spend the time finding an installer that I am very comfortable with and trust that would order with me on the Internet if we can't get a much better price from his or her wholesaler. I slept so bad and I am getting more behind in my work. A client just called and I have to finish his work today so I need to get this decision over with. This is so stressful not having samples of the 5" boards (I know I am starting to worry about the width.. wish it was 4" wide and not 5" wide and keep thinking 3.25" board samples I have here are nice... I don't like not seeing the floor down in person in the width I ordered) and not sure if I am ordering enough as well as now wondering since more plastic on my floor after nonstop rain over main weeks is still 100% dry if I should just have glued it so I could put my furniture back right away and not worried about the flooring being so hard to walk on. This way the floor will not be raised with the pad. But I loved the way my neighbor's floor felt that was floated and it felt secure with no popping noises. I just walked on my neighbor's floor again and it is hard but not so hard like I keep thinking and her floor is glued down with no sealer since her installer told her the floor was dry. I think I will call TrueHardwoods.com and ask if I can order one more reducer and 2 T-Molding pieces (I just measured pulling up the pad and rug and putting a skinny catalogue under the 1/2" wood to see how close in height the 3/8th thick tile was with the wood since the tile has thinset under it and the wood will have padding under it and it seems that they are so close in height with only a 1/8th inch difference so now I am thinking maybe I need 2 T-Moldings. One of the installers (the one I am thinking of using that picked up the phone last night) said I need 1 T-Molding. I think I need to find the length of the T-Molding since if it is the length of the reducer at 88", I need two or I will be short. I guess I need to call and find out the length. I will find out the return policy. I have just enough Reducers if I need it for all the areas, unless one cracks while cutting it. I wonder if I should order 1 extra reducer to have 4 and 2 T-Moldings so I have everything? Also the floating glue I want it to be flexible and waterproof or it is better to go with water resistant and flexible? I do not know what I would do without this forum. This has been so much stress for me and thank you for all holding my hand. Thank you Floorguy.

Some might scoff at real stuff next to fake, but I have a few areas of real next to fake in my home which look fine (stucco next to hardie board, real marble next to fake ceramic marble tiles, and wood tile next to real wood to name a few). My wood next to wood tile is running the opposite way and I think it looks fine and was a good tradeoff considering the functional improvement tile provides in combined kitchen/mudroom area and the difficulty of matching 100 year old douglas fir, however 1) The opposite direction run makes sense for the orientation of my kitchen, that is the tile runs with the long dimension of the kitchen 2) Its at natural room transitions, not an abrupt change in an open room 3) The two woods are clearly different from one another so not trying to "match" per se and missing but they are in the same tone family, that is (to my eye at least) both are a neutral brown without any significant grey/red/etc. 4) I carefully picked a tile with some texture to look similar to the 100+ year old original floors. In your case, I'm not sure it works so well. Seems like you have grey "wood" joining with the actual reddish wood in what seems to be an open(ish) area. Also one is sort of a distressed rustic sort of look whereas the other is a shiny smooth (I assume prefinished) look. Seems like you already bought your tile, not sure if you have the opportunity to still change your mind. If you are 100% committed to the floor, I'd do them opposite directions.

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.