Yes, the 1/2" gap is for expansion and contraction of any floating wood product, including cork. The larger the area, the larger the gap needs to be. The manufacturers say 1/2" to protect themselves under any climatic conditions. Off the record, a 1/4" will likely suffice in a 10'x 20' room. Especially in N Ca. I have family over in the Mammoth Lakes area and chips don't even get stale if left open! Therefore, your floor is not going to take on much moisture either. I would use a 1/4" gap and cover with a 1/2" base shoe or so. Be certain to keep the gap consistent, even around pipes and the peninsula. With the floating floor, you will need to use an "overlap stair nosing" on either end. It's hard to find transitions to match cork flooring, so look at matching your other trimwork instead with a stairnosing from one of the hardwood manufacturers. good luck feel free to email me with any questions or for more specifics

Hi madster, Unfortunately, I can't recommend a fabricator in your area, however, here's a photo from the fabricator we plan to use (GA) that could possibly be helpful in giving you an idea of shape, etc. if you decide to go with the glass. Were you planning on using regular glass or crackled glass? I think the crackled glass will be more durable and less likely to break, but the drawback is the price - it's not inexpensive by any means! We've debated actually including it in the design many times for that reason and currently are planning to, but that could change I suppose! We didn't find many fabricators that deal with the crackled glass, but found this one just by doing an internet search. The photo below is fairly close to what we'd like for ours. I'm not sure I'd want it if it would be used on a daily basis or if I had kids - granite might be more practical. I simply like the look of it as an accent and something a bit different, and it will primarily be used when entertaining most likely. Here is a link that might be useful: Advanced Glass Designs

Sophie - I disagree. I did not design this. I have no pretensions to being a designer and for many other aspects of the renovation we have indeed had formal plans drawn up. [I also know from experience that having an architect involved is far from a panacea .... but that's another story or stories]. For this room we knew we needed to replace the large leaky picture window and instead of replacing in kind we asked whether it would be possible and reasonable to build a window seat and what would be involved. We showed the contractor many pictures of window seats and shared the required dimension ranges (not exact dimensions) from various articles. He said a bay window would take care of it and no separate plans were required. I include the manufacturer's literature excerpt that says their Bay and Bow windows can be used as window seats. It seemed (and actually still seems) a reasonable solution. Projection Window Bay and Bow windows are like a piece of fine furniture for the façade of your home. These unique windows project from your home, creating additional space that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as a window seat or displaying meaningful trinkets. Our vinyl windows (typically double-hung or casement windows) are inserted into a solid frame to create this unique look that adds style to any home. Bay windows typically have three lites (one central fixed lite and two flanking operational lites) at 20-25-degree angles. Bow windows most commonly consist of four lites, all of which can be fixed or operational, set at 10-15 degree angles. The contractor asked us to describe what we wanted to the window vendor as well and we did. We never used the term bay window. We only talked in terms of window seat. The window vendor also did not dissuade us or suggest we needed an addition instead of a window. The window vendor spec'd the window we needed. Given that we have 8 foot ceilings - this would have been a really good place to catch that a 52" bay window wouldn't be long enough to provide a seat at a reasonable height off the floor. I think that's the key flaw here - plus someone's telling us that (unless I'm wrong) we weren't going to get the wood backing. Tomorrow should be interesting ...

Floating floors with a "click together edge" requires it to keep the floors intact. A floating engineered hardwood is often a glue-edge technique. This is different from a click-together-edge (but some engineered hardwood floors now offer the glueless floating floor option). The click-edges have LIMITED "grab". Once that grab has been exceeded, the floor will rip itself apart at the narrowest point = doorways (point of least resistance). An floating engineered wood floor has glue that holds the planks together. And glue has a much BETTER hold. The glue allows engineered floating hardwoods to run through pinch points and have longer runs. The installation instructions for this particular floor are quite vague....which is a question I have about the instructions. And the floating floor instructions make mention of transitions....but not WHERE or WHY to put them in. Which tells me there is some sort of limitation....but that limitation has been left out by the manufacturer. The problem now for the OP remains: an uneven floor height in a space that is very small, with three different substrates and three different strategies to work them "flat". I would say even a seasoned flooring installer with years of experience would find this area quite challenging. A DIYer is going to have a ton of trouble just to get this area cleaned up and levelled.