Advice on solid wood flooring / tiles

[DrDigestive]

Hey,

Currently trying to plan our flooring downstairs and just wanted a few tips really! We are looking at getting either solid wood flooring or engineered wood flooring throughout the whole of downstairs, but the Mrs wants the flooring to continue throughout the rooms without thresholds or moldings in the doorways. The area that will be done is the living room (approx 4m / 4m), dining room (approx 4m by 3m) and the entrance hallway (approx 2m / 3m ). The dining room and living room have been knocked through, so the only doorway to worry about flooring wise is the one leading from the hallway into the living room.

We have a suspended wood sub floor (wooden floorboards not the chipboard type), so I am thinking of nailing the wood flooring directly to the floorboards with a Porta nailer, but I can't find anything online whether that would cause expansion issues going through the living room doorway.

My next issue (this is the one that's baffling me!) is we are having the kitchen tiled, so essentially we would have the thickness of the plywood I need to fix to the boards, then the thickness of the adhesive, then the thickness of the tile. We want the flooring to be level throughout, so the transition from wood flooring to tiles is basically flat.

Anyone got any advice? I am thinking the tiles we were looking at are between 8 mm and 10mm thick. The kitchen is a pretty small area so any modifications to the flooring height is probably more economic to do there, I really don't want to ply the entire downstairs just because of a slightly annoying difference in floor thickness!

Thank you!

 

[chris1982]

I am planning something very similar, haven't done it yet though. I believe that in large areas (and I guess yours is when combing living room, dining room, and hallway) one has to leave an additional expansion gap somewhere in the middle to ensure that no area is longer than 5-6m. You can buy special expansion joints for that purpose, but I think they are rather ugly. Probably a better option is to put a T-bar in the doorways after all.

 

[DrDigestive]

I am planning something very similar, haven't done it yet though. I believe that in large areas (and I guess yours is when combing living room, dining room, and hallway) one has to leave an additional expansion gap somewhere in the middle to ensure that no area is longer than 5-6m. You can buy special expansion joints for that purpose, but I think they are rather ugly. Probably a better option is to put a T-bar in the doorways after all.

Yeah that sounds like something that would upset her indoors. I've been doing research all day but yet to find anything that isn't American, I presumed wood flooring behaves differently over there so don't want to take any chances!

 

[chris1982]

check howden's.

 

[DrDigestive]

check howden's.

Yeah I haven't decided where we are getting from yet. Our kitchen was from Howden's, it should be arriving on Monday!

Edit: Only thing about Howden's is I read that they tend to fill in any imperfections with sawdust and it can be pretty obvious

 

[vinn]

Gravity, humidity & temperature are worldwide & all affect wood & all other building materials, causing them to expand & contract.
OP, so you propose having a ceramic tiled kitchen floor and solid or engineered wood on the remaining ground floor?
You need to select your materials and ask Mfr's for advice ref. fixing.
You also need a professional heads-up on site - wood flowing uninterrupted through the rooms might cause difficulties.
Existing damp or lack of sub area ventilation might also be a difficulty.