Wow, great feedback! Tibbrix, I'd considered just enlarging the opening. At this point I think DH would pack up and move out until the mess was finished! I'm sure I'm capable of learning how to cut through the studs, add support for the opening, retrim, and hang doors, but most of those will be new for me (though it would be a good excuse to get the miter saw I've been eyeing!). It will take me weeks, and I'm not willing to get the contractor involved in yet another project, this house isn't worth it. Not entirely ruling it out though, I need to do some sketches to see what I'd gain vs this plan first! Momof2 and geokid, thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear it is indeed functional. Lazygardens, I think a barn door would be tight if it fits at all, and would require a much smaller opening than I currently have to have a chance at working. The current closet has about 24 in of depth, the coats only protrude 21 in and the rest is clearance space to get them out (in theory). Adding the 2.5 in of trim, they will stick out about an inch on each side. I did think to measure that, lol! I'm having a really hard time envisioning your idea, what it translates to in my head seems like not much hanging space and a lot of open space between the shallow shelves and the door, I don't think I'm picturing it right. Thanks, greywings! Mclarke, great advice! Tibbrex, I had though about bifold doors if I decide to tackle widening the opening, I'll have to see what regular doors would mean in terms of the ability to open them and move around them in the small foyer area. Nosoccermom, I'll tell DH you like his bike, thanks! The summers he rides, he gets pretty serious and can go 50-100 miles at a time.

Exactly, a bunch of expensive labor prep work with SLC has to be done first. As was previously said. Which the OP does not want to do. And they do not want to spend money on anything but the cheapest possible flooring and the cheapest possible way to install it. Which is a guaranteed failure. I am not going to argue any of these points further because 1. They are false, and 2. You and I apparently don't jive on how we outline our thoughts in text, because had you read any of my previous comments in the manner that I intended them, you might know that they are false. Flooring on top of flooring is still a hack install. It’s like shingles over shingles. Or vinyl siding over clapboards. There’s always someone who will do it. But that’s not the person you should hire. I believe there is a time and place for these type of installs. If you have never been in a situation where your roof has sprung a leak and you are not in a position to pay for a whole new roof, then great for you. But I know several people who have, and their only option was to patch the problem area with shingles over shingles and let that suffice until they could afford the new roof. This is akin to my situation. I have to do something about the tile. I will be doing a "hack job" on my tile regardless, because I know we can not go the proper route right now. Naturally, I would rather keep a single height of flooring in this area, so I posed the question about whether I could carry the flooring over the wood as well. I will repeat again that I don't think it's unreasonable or foolish or wasteful to want to spend a few extra hundred bucks and an extra day of personal labor to have one flooring type on our ground floor if we're going to be covering the tile anyway. This is all rendered quite moot, either way, because we have found that we can attempt the tile repairs ourselves. We had been told that tile repair/restoration was very expensive. We don't particularly care for the tile, so we decided we'd rather not spend money restoring it. We recently found products to fix the problem areas ourselves that may actually somewhat match. So at this point, we are just going to try that. Then if THAT fails, back to this floating floor dilemma.

Simple: Transition strip. Go ahead and lay the vinyl in the space (however you want it) and then drop in the t-moulding/transition strip and then walk away. And yes...you REALLY need to use t-moulding here. The washer drier are heavy enough to 'anchor' the floor inplace. This is a 'no-no' for floating flooring BUT it is allowed in situations like this...when a t-moulding separates the 'anchored' bit from the 'floating' bit. The rest can be floated...but the anchored stuff (like the washer-drier cupboard) needs to be separated by a transition strip. Excellent. Now remove your carpet at leisure. Remember to purchase ALL of the flooring at once (include 5% waste + 5% for 'future repairs' = 10% overage). Vinyl floors are notorious for being on the market for a VERY short amount of time (12-18 months and then never to be seen again).

How about a curved sofa angled in to the corner where the huge sofa is now? And then swivel chairs facing it? (I’d put a different lumbar pillow with this, which also comes in a navy-white trellis pattern. More elegant and more expensive, maybe nice with your existing chair I think if I had swivel chairs like that, and maybe a much smaller sofa in the room I might put a black or near-black jute rug on the floor, or I might keep the rug you have. I would suggest moving the wood cabinet that you are using as a TV stand over to the blue wall but take the TV and mount it over the fireplace, but hide it behind the kind of carved doors on your other cabinets.