Not everyone can afford to put in new hardwood floors throughout their home all at once. Many take it one room at a time. If you have invested in a beautiful hardwood floor in one room and feel it is time to extend that floor to the next room, make sure you hire professionals who can flawlessly recreate your existing floors, blending them seamlessly from one room to the other.
Matching the wood profile of your old floor to the new
You have to be a bit of an artist to install hardwood floors. You have to be able to take an existing wood floor and perfectly match the wood profiles.
Extending old hardwood floors to new rooms is a great way to tie your whole house together.
Photo: Mixed reclaimed hardwood flooring by T&G Flooring in Colorado
If you’re working with site finished flooring, you’ll most likely get boards that are thicker than the original floors, and then you match the profile after the installation by sanding the new floors down to match the old.
If you’re going with pre-finished flooring, the thickness should be matched from the beginning as you don’t sand this wood after installation.
Blend your new floor with your old floor by using transition strips in the doorways. Different length boards are woven in with the old floor in door frames to create a seamless transition between rooms.
Matching the color of your old floor to the new
Even if you have identical wood species and the same finish as the old floor, there are still going to be slight variations in color. Wood may darken with age, so this needs to be taken into consideration when finishing the new floors. On the other hand, some finishes will lighten over time. You see why you need an expert?
Talk to a professional hardwood floors craftsman for the way to extend your old hardwood floors to new rooms.
One way to deal with the lightening or darkening of your finish is to strip down the old floors and refinish all floors at once. If this isn’t possible, you finish the new floor with the same finish as the old and wait. Over time, your floors will even out in color. But, results may vary, and your two floors could end up slightly different in tone and color.
Hardwood floors last a lifetime and will never go out of style. Extending hardwood floors from one room to the next is a great way to tie your whole house together. You can play with patterns, colors, textures and finishes. Let your imagination go, there’s no limit to what you can do. Or rather, there’s not limit to what you can tell a hardwood floors craftsman to do.