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filaw · Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 1 Location: Redwood City, Ca

I love my open floor plan, especially my kitchen/family room area, which is basically a 15' by 40' rectangle, with the kitchen on one end, and the family room on the other, and from the kitchen you can see through an archway to our open entryway.

This is all well and good, except it's giving me a problem when it comes to floors. Right now the entire first floor, (which is all basically open throughout) is done in a redish oak laminate. It's lovely and I'm very happy with it. However, the one place I don't like it, is in the kitchen. I have always adored the look of stone floors in the kitchen with dark wood cabinets. Something like this:

Can I replace the floor in the kitchen area of my great room with a stone vinyl or laminate and leave the wood laminate in the rest of the house? Will this look completely rediculous? Will it break up the room in an uncomfortable way? Or will it simply serve to give the room a little space definition? Also, is there a way to transition gracefully from the stone to the wood?

Thanks so much for the advice!

thescruff · Moderator Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 4616 Location: Bath

You could put a matching strip diagonally to wooden floor as a transitional piece.

The problem as I see it would be avoiding a step, as whatever you used would need a fixing material, perhaps you could batten between the joists or something and fix a ply