I don't have a picture (I can grab get one if you like), but I did the same thing in my current project - new wood floor in the kitchen going right into existing in the dining room. The floor installer feathered some of the new boards into the dining room floor so it looked continuous, then I had all the existing floors sanded and refinished and stained the old+new 1 color. The result is a transition that looks completely continuous and uniform. Of course I had to refinish all my existing floors to do it. If you don't want to do that the only thing I can imagine working is a perpendicular strip to edge the new and old. It'd be impossible to match the old stain with new perfectly so you'd need something to separate the two. I have a spot in my house where the boards are mismatched so whomever installed it back in the day put a strip. I attached a picture of that.

Wood vs. Engineered Wood? No contest in this case. If the home was built in 1905, put real hardwood in. This preserves the integrity of the home's building materials. Plus, as you can see from the age of these floors, higher grades (i.e. thicker) hardwood can be sanded several times; you usually don't get even one chance to sand engineered wood. The hardwood layer at the top of this multilayered product is simply too thin. Level Floors and Subfloors There are ways to level a subfloor, ranging from replacing parts of the subfloor with thicker or thinner sheets of plywood (or planks, see below), to pour-on leveling compounds that harden to make the entire floor level. What you use to level uneven areas depends on what the subflooring is. If it is plywood or concrete, the compound works. But more likely with this home, on floors at or above grade, there will be wood planks laid at a diagonal across the floor joists. So in your home, the layers were probably joists first, then subfloor planks of wood, then hardwood with tongue & groove joints. You cannot effectively use a pour-on leveling compound on a plank subfloor, as there are cracks between the planks. However, you can lay a new hardwood floor directly on a wood plank subfloor as long as those planks are sound and relatively level. Replace individual planks that have been damaged by water or insects, are otherwise compromised, or even missing (it happens!), with either new planks of lumber, or with plywood of the same thickness as the planks. Any lumber you install, for either the subfloor or finished flooring, should be brought in to your home several days prior to installation, so the materials acclimatize to your typical interior temperature and humidity. Unlike for ceramic or porcelain tile, the subfloor does not have to be perfectly level. And unlike vinyl sheeting, planks or tiles, the hardwood won't "telegraph" minor differences in height, and minor surface irregularities, so the subfloor doesn't have to be absolutely perfect; it should be sound, strong, uniform and essentially level. Your flooring contractor can give you specifics on what upgrades your subfloor may need once the original hardwood is removed. Joists If the floor is significantly not level in parts, or if certain areas feel spongy when you walk on them, I recommend you have your flooring contractor, a home inspector, or structural engineer inspect the subflooring and especially the floor joists. You don't want to invest in a new floor, only to have it become damaged because some joists weren't attended to. Transitions Transitions (a.k.a. thresholds or molding) between existing rooms and the new floor ought to be made of the same wood and same finish (stain, polyurethane, etc.) as the new flooring you are putting down. As wood ages, the finish becomes darker, so trying to make the transitions match the finishes of existing floors is very difficult and not recommended (what will match those floors right now won't match later after your transitions age up a bit). Eventually, the transitions wouldn't match either the new or the old floors! Transitions come in four types: reducer (when the two floors being joined are of different heights), seam binder (when the floors are the same height, and the boards from each are very close to one another), T-mold (when the two floors are the same height, but there is a crack between the two rooms' flooring) and stair nose or stair edger (when the flooring needs to curve around the front of a stair's "tread"--the flat part of a stair upon which you tread!). The transitions for your particular project can be ordered when you order the hardwood, so make sure to include measurements for those doorways/entrances. The contractor can tell you if he/she anticipates there will be a height difference or gap between the floorings, which would require those particular transitions. Dry Air Concerns Consult a local lumber supplier or flooring contractor familiar with your local climate conditions to discuss finishes or other tips for keeping your wood floors healthy in the dry winters. Sounds wonderful! Have fun!

I just saw this, Itsoi. I left the mustard on there for 24 hours and then cleaned it off. It faded completely after a short time (maybe a couple of days, I can't remember). I never heard about conditioning it, that could be a good idea but we've been pretty harsh on ours for the past 3 months and it's holding up really well, so might do that after a year or if a specific room needs it before. I felt that the oil finish would be easier for me to do touch ups on if I needed to. Still have construction going on but we've been living here for the past 3 months. And we routinely throw balls and toys for our dog down the long runway of the living room/hall and I've yet to see her nails scratch up anything! It's been pretty impervious to our kids dripping water in the kitchen also. I don't know how it will look in 5/10 years but at the moment, I'm still really happy with our choice. It seems like a very low maintenance, easy to clean (doesn't show much dirt/dust!) floor. We paired the Rockwood Claystone with BM OC17 on our walls and like the color combo. If you're leaning towards buying it, just buy 1 box and pop it together somewhere you can look at it for a week or so. I think you'll get a pretty good idea then if you like it or not. And if you like it, you can reuse it, win win! Good luck!

Laying the new floor in the same direction as the old floor is not the normal way to go about this. In the building industry, it is more common to see layers that are staggered or "bricked". In other words if layer #1 is laid in a North-South direction, then layer #2 (the top layer) is laid perpendicular to it in an East-West presentation. If you want to run the new flooring in the same direction as the old, you will want to use some underlayment (plywood) over top of the old floor so that you can maintain the "staggered" or "bricked" layering system. That is one way to maintain the North-South presentation. Please work with hardwood flooring professionals who have some experience renovating these old gems. They will have seen what worked....and what didn't. Their experience will be invaluable on a project like yours.