My kitchen is tiled and it opens into my dining room which is all wood. I had the guy who refinished my wood floors make a pretty wood saddle to transition the two floors. I'm very happy.

I also had him do the same thing in one of my bathrooms. A saddle/thresh hold was missing and when you opened the door between the bedroom/bathroom you could see the floors meet - and not in a pretty way. He put a small wood saddle there as well. Looks very good.

In our last house we had brick front hall and oak in kit, din and liv. They were the exact same height and we didn't need a saddle. In this house we went from tile in bath's to wood. 1870 building. In one we needed a saddle, we had a soapstone one made to match our bath counter. The other ended up the same height and the wood ran the length so none needed.

What is the nature of your problem? We just redid a few of our floors with slate and new hardwood and had a variety of transition issues, but I'm not sure what you're asking?

I don't like the look of more than one floor in an open area that you described. If each room could be closed of from the other it might work but I don't think you are going to get the "flow" that you want in that space with 3 different floors. What you could do is pick either the tile or hardwood and put a nice ares rug in the living room.

I have an open concept house. I understand what you
are going through. It is so hard to decorate and plan
floors. We went with wood throughout but have chosen to have two different wood colors.

I did find some photos from the web for you to visualize.
Best of luck,
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mc echoed my opinions -
open floorplans are difficult from a number of decorating aspects - i agree if you are going that route, much more appealing to have 1 type of flooring, no transitions necessary

I agree with jejvtr and with mc. However, I would like to add that if this is not possible, at least consider staying with the same color or tone. That will flow better than breaking up the spaces with texture AND color.

I lived with an open floor plan with sheet vinyl kitchen/carpeted family room for 15 years and absolutely hated it.

1. Changing the floors tends to negate the open floor concept if you want your rooms to flow from one to the other. Better to have hardwood throughout and an area rug in the LR. If you want to define separate spaces, you don't want an open floor plan.

2. The carpet/vinyl transition was an amazing, disgusting dust catcher, and the carpet wore a lot faster there than anywhere else. I didn't have a metal strip (which would have looked ugly).

I've changed to one surface, hardwood, throughout the kitchen and FR and am much happier.

Blue

I definitely echo the one type of flooring being the best option. I'd go with the wood and do area rugs.

We have exactly what you're asking about....Tile in Kitchen, Foyer, and PR; Hardwood (Brazilian Cherry) in DR; Carpet in FR & LR. All have transition pieces. What transition piece is used depends on the transition. We have oak transitions b/w FR & Kitchen & b/w LR & Foyer. We have Brazilian Cherry transitions b/w the Kitchen & DR and b/w the LR & DR.

I didn't like the transition-less setup b/w carpet & tile & carpet & wood b/c the tile & wood are hard surfaces while the carpet is a soft surface. That meant I sunk in when stepping on the carpet & if my foot was on the transition point, it was half at one level & the other half at a different level...that hurt my arch!

If you want pics, let me know. I'm at work right now so I can't take any!

BTW, see the attached thread for instructions for embedding pictures in your post. (There is no box to do it like in the Gallery.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Read Me If You're New To GW Kitchens!

buehl, if you could post pics that would ge great!!

I appreciate all of your thoughts and opinions. As I am leaning right now, I am thinking of maybe eliminating the carpet in the living and putting it to all hardwood. I just have a hard time with spending the $$ to place hardwood and then covering the majority of it with area rugs....

Thanks again!

LOL Sara74! We originally had planned all hardwood throughout the downstairs + tile in the kitchen/foyer/PR. But, when the estimate came in well over 10K for the FR, DR, LR, and Office, we decided only the DR would have wood for now...and we DIY'd it. We put new carpet in the FR and left the LR & Office alone (carpet is still OK in those rooms).

Someday, after college for our children, we'll do hardwood everywhere, but not in the near future.

I'll post later tonight.

buehl, just checking in to see if you had a chance to post your pics, I know life is chaotic. Anxious to see how your flooring flows. Thanks!

I have BC in DR, tile in kitchen, and carpet (for now - eventually will do HW, prob. oak) in FR that is open to kitchen. DR has a 4ft wide doorway to kitchen. I just have a strip of BC that they ripped down and beveled the edge to meet the tile (lower) there right now since I am having tile issues. Where the DR floor meets the foyer tile near the stairs they put in a BC T-moulding.

The carpet in the FR was installed after the kitchen tile and the edge is just tucked under. No transition strip. I guess if you stepped right on it, you'd have the edge (started with factory edge there - you don't want cut tile!) and would have the arch issue but we never noticed it. We have the same "tucked" transition b/t the bathroom tile and hallway carpet upstairs.

The area would look larger if you did all the same flooring though, if you can afford it. I really want oak in my FR, but have oak cabinets in kitchen so would not continue them there, stick with tile, even if I have to replace the current tile b/c of installation problems.

I know this post is older, but I never heard anyone address the use of hardwood in a kitchen where one may not be able to address spills in a speedy fashion, thus ruining the hardwood. Someone suggested placing carpets/rugs over the hardwood; but as someone else stated, that sort of negates the reason for putting down the hardwood to begin with.

I'm of the opinion that flooring transitions totally suck and should be avoided whenever and wherever possible. For us, that means wood everywhere except full bathrooms.

The hardwoods in our house, save for the kitchen, are over 100 years old. The ones in my parents' former house are older yet. I think it is a misconception that hardwood floors are more susceptible to spills than other flooring types. While a large leak will ruin a wood floor, it would also ruin any other material. For daily spills, durability is not an issue. We have hardwood in every room except the bathrooms. No material is perfect but I think hardwoods are pretty close :-)

Please help!!!!! This is vinyl flooring and the transitioning strip looks awful,it doesn't even match flooring.

The strip is really long because I have open floorplan.

Any ideas how to make it look better?

If it's all vinyl flooring, why is there a transition strip at all? It looks like a potential trip hazard.

Allen, I recommend starting your own thread with your question. This is an old thread that most people will pass by b/c the original poster obviously doesn't need help almost 8 years later! We've had problems with Pros bumping old threads to draw attention to themselves, so most ignore old threads.

I do agree with Annie, BTW. It doesn't make sense that there's a transition there at all - it should just flow from one room to the next.

Did your installer make a mistake? If so, go back and tell him/her you want it done right - and at their expense, not yours! Unless this is the result of a change you made after the first installation. Even then, they should have made it a seamless transition.

Or...is there a change in floor height? If so, that should have been "fixed" before the flooring was laid down.

It is an on frame modular and it came in 2 pieces . The flooring was already laid at the factory that built it.

I would call in a flooring guy...see if you can't get some of the same vinyl from the factory and have him lay a plank's width of vinyl, cutting it to match on either side of the seam and get rid of the transition piece. He may need to fill in underneath to get the underlayment smooth in that area.