carpethardwood-floortransition
I want to replace the carpet in my bed rooms(actually the whole 2nd floor) with engineer hardwood floor. The stair is from 1st floor to 2nd floor which will keep carpet. But I can't imagine how/where I need to do the transition. I don't have any experience, appreciate if anyone can give me some suggestion.
Here is the picture of the current situation:
Generally carpet is self edging,while hardwood floors are not (they usually gap from the wall a bit and call for a molding over the edge).
Install the floor and leave the gap at the first riser, without a molding, and bring the carpet down the riser and blind edge it. You can easily undo it in the future. This would allow you to replace the carpet, as Tester101 says, or to shift back to no carpet. Just add molding.
Yes you need to keep expansion room at the walls for the flooring to move. Particularly at the walls that meet the long sides of the flooring, this is where the movement really occurs. In your picture you have the end grain of a piece meeting your transition strip. That will be no concern for movement there, although I would still get a small gap, minimally an 1/8", most certainly not tight, since the wood does move albeit slightly, in its length. That mainly depends on how much "grain runoff" is in any one piece of flooring, an 1/8" should cover it though. This gap at the wood floor/tile junction is caulked with a flexible caulk, something like, but I am not stuck on the Dap 230 in a compatible color of the grout in the tile floor. You are not done yet. Before ANY caulk is done, the joint area is carefully taped off so nothing gets on the adjacent finished surfaces. The caulk is set in place and wiped down to a clean WET joint. while it is wet have the grout on hand that was used to grout the joints in your tile floor and lightly dust the wet caulk so it dries into the caulk. This will give the caulk that varied natural look of grout, instead of the monocolor that caulk alone can't do. Peel the tape immediately after dusting and let dry, then vacuum the excess dust, the rest will remain.
You may decide to use a ready made color matched sanded caulk, that may work, but I have removed this type of caulk before and it is not as flexible as the "230" I mentioned before. No I am not an affiliate of DAP, I just know what works....
Best Answer
One potential location is on the last rise on the stairs. This is depicted below on my crude diagram. Make the cut of the carpet right under the lip of the top of the 2nd floor. Use a piece of trim to hide the cut and make it finished.
Other options include:
Your second question:
Probably. When you take the carpet up, see if there is a gap under the baseboard. if so, see if the hardwood fits in the gap. If so, you can leave it on. If not, you should be able to carefully remove the baseboard, install the floor, and the re-attach the existing baseboard pieces when floor is finished.