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suzie_sonnenberg

HELP! Questions about Hardwood Flooring for new Kitchen

5 months ago

Hi! We are currently renovating our kitchen. We took down the wall between the kitchen and dinning room to open up the space to make one large kitchen with space for a large eat in wood dining table. The kitchen space currently has tile floors, while the dining room (along with the family room and living rooms) has hardwood flooring. We decided to put hardwood flooring in the kitchen, as I did not want tile (due to foot injury and bad knees and wanted something softer to stand on), and I do not love the fake wood look of LVP or LVT. I do love the warmth of hardwood.


So, we were told that due to the fact that our current wood floors in the house are from the 70's, putting in new wood and trying to feather in to the dining room floor would just look patchy, so we had to rip out the wood floor in the old dining room with plans to put in new flooring into the entire new Kitchen.

We currently have White Oak 2 1/4" plank hardwood flooring in the living room, family room, and entire 2nd floor of the house, including the stairs, that is stained natural with a high shine, that has patina to a more yellow/dark color - see pictures below.

The doorway from the family room into the kitchen (typical flow - walkway into the kitchen) is a small doorway. The doorway from the "new kitchen" into the Living room is very wide - at this transition the kitchen floor will be perpendicular to the floor in the living room.


Here are the options we are trying to decide between:


Option #1: we put down a different wood floor in the kitchen. I have picked out an Engineered hardwood floor - Provenza New York Loft - Penn Station, which has 7.5" wide planks, lots of character and variation, and the color seems to be a good contrast/works well with our current wood floors.

The benefits of this is we don't have to move out of our house to put the floors down, no smells to deal with etc, and I really love this floor and the look of the wide planks.

The cons - I worry about the transition at the large opening from the kitchen to the living room, even though the planks go in opposite directions. Not sure if this will bug me that it is not the same floor as the rest of the house??? If our floor guy puts in transition strip at the doorways would that work enough to have a different wood floor in the kitchen?

Is it wrong to have 2 different hardwoods in rooms next to each other? Will I regret not having the same floor throughout the house?


Option#2: We put down white oak site finish hardwood flooring in the kitchen to match what is already in the rest of the house, and then buff the old floors and re-stain EVERYTHING to match. The concern is that the wood won't be an exact match due to older floors vs new floors in the kitchen, but I guess would look close enough. If we did this, I am also tempted to take out the tile floor in the foyer and put down the same wood flooring to match the rest of the house.

Pros - same wood flooring in whole house (except for bathrooms and laundry room)

Cons - wood won't match as worry the variation in the new wood wont match the variation in the old wood (there is a lot of variation in the old wood floors). We would have to move out of the house while the floors are being done. We have to move out ALL of our furniture and store it in a rental pod, and hire people to help move our furniture in/out of the house.


I worry I am leaning to Option #1 as it is the easy route, as no one wants to move out or empty all the rooms to redo the floors. We are a family of 5 with a dog!

However, I feel Option #2 is what most people would advise, and this would give the house a more cohesive look. I'm having a really hard time deciding what I really want. I think the EW floors in the new kitchen would look amazing in a vaccuum, but don't know if it will go with rest of the floors in the house and worry most about the open transition from the kitchen to the living room. ---But should I even care about this, OR should I just think about what floor would look best in the new kitchen??


Any help or advice on this would be super helpful!!!


If we decided to put in white oak flooring and refinish the old floors to match ----

1. Should we put in same width planks? 2 1/4" or could we put in 4.5" wood planks?

2. Instead of natural stain, was thinking of staining a little darker to more match the aged wood on the 2nd floor, and to hopefully not end up with the yellowing of the natural stain as it ages.

3. What finish would you recommend for all the floors - matte or satin? Or something else?

4. Oil based or Water base for stain/poly??

5. Should we also put in hardwood floors in the foyer and stain to match (getting rid of the tile that is there)?


For reference - in our kitchen we will have white cabinets along the perimeter with a blue island in the middle (color is "Hudson Bay" by Ben Moore. White quartz countertops with blue veining. Champagne bronze hardware, and a wood farmhouse table that is light colored. (still deciding on backsplash)


Here are some pictures to help you understand our dilemma...


Our Floor Plan - the wall between the kitchen and dining room is coming out - making large kitchen




Our current hardwood floor: this is a picture of the dining room (soon to be kitchen) looking into the Living room and you can see that big open transition between the 2 rooms:



Picture of the floor in the living room:



Picture of the Engineered Hardwood sample we were thinking of for the kitchen next to the flooring in the the living room:




What the transition between rooms may look like:


EW Floors from Provenza website:




Picture of main door way into kitchen from the Family room (view point is from kitchen looking out into the Family room:




Thanks in advance for any thoughts/advice!!!

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