Rental Property Investor · Cedar Park, TX · Member since 2014 · 415 posts · 272 votes
I have a house that I hope to turn into a furnished rental. In the kitchen and the front entry, there is old-style oak hardwood, about 2 inches wide and probably 3/4 of an inch thick. It's in reasonable shape for a 10-year-old house except for one stained area that would need a serious refinishing effort.
The rest of the house has worn-out carpet. I would like to replace the carpet with laminate. The problem is that there is a long boundary where the hardwood extending from the kitchen meets the old carpet in the living room. I think it would look odd to put the new laminate next to the old wood. A seemingly extreme solution would be to tear out all of the oak flooring, put tile in the kitchen and probably the front entry and then finish the rest of the house with laminate. Another costly option would be to fill in the carpeted area with unfinished oak that is similar to the existing oak, then refinish the old floor to match the finish on the new floor.
I'm looking for a better idea. Is there a tile border or some other wood treatment that I could use to make a nice-looking transition between the oak flooring and the new laminate?
Have you looked under the carpet? Depending on the house and when it was built you may already have hardwood down throughout the house. If not, look around on Pintrest (or get your wife to do so, assuming you are married). You may find a number of ideas that would work very well for a rental. If you do not find something there you can explore the tile border, but that might get tricky.
Being a 10 year old house, I assume no wood under the carpet. The answer is, putting laminate next to real hardwood will always show. Putting in new wood is probably well above budget. Would could possibly do the laminate perpendicular to the wood to help make it look like two "styles", however I feel it will never look very good side by side. Why not carpet the rooms again?