Options to match and level out different floors

[SuiCid3]

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Would like some opinions on the best way to match and level out the following picture. Unfortunately, this is all I have to show at the moment.

The plan is to knock down the wall on the left to open up and extend the kitchen.

You can see in the bottom left hand corner of the picture that the kitchen is floorboards and the room next to it (laundry) is a darker material.
This is actually painted concrete as far as I can tell (something I didn't take too much notice of unfortunately during the time of initial inspection).
This was later confirmed by my building inspection.
Going off the inspection, it also appears as if this concrete may have been levelled out over the original floorboards? (house is on brick pillars, so it's possible to tell from underneath.) If this was the case... how easy/hard would it be to remove this concrete?

If it's too hard, then my second thought is to somehow level both sides and tile over... however, this would raise the level of the kitchen/laundry over the rest of the house, and it would also hide those fantastic floorboards in the kitchen!

Your thoughts?

 

[wylie]

Even if you can get the concrete up, the boards are running the wrong way in the kitchen and you couldn't match the existing boards unless you take up some of the existing kitchen boards and stagger in new (or second hand) boards.

If it was me, I would be taking up the kitchen boards and the concrete layer in the laundry and running new boards (or other flooring) across the whole area.

 

[Rockstar]

Does the laundry have a dry waste in the floor? It may have been wetsealed and bedded over the original boards? What is underneath? If the floorboards have had waterproofing done they would have the stuff stuck fast to them. You would likely have to remove them all and plane them back unless a floor sander could deal with it. Some fibreglass products may just peel off nicely and leave an easy job to re sand the boards. Probably a case of diving in blind and dealing with the issue once the bed is removed.

 

[wylie]

Taking another look at the photo, I'm assuming you would plan on removing the wall beside the fridge? If so, you would have to do something where the wall comes out. Are you widening the doorway on both sides?

 

[SuiCid3]

Even if you can get the concrete up, the boards are running the wrong way in the kitchen and you couldn't match the existing boards unless you take up some of the existing kitchen boards and stagger in new (or second hand) boards.

That's a good point.... something else I didn't even think of.
But why do you say the boards are running the wrong way?
I've never done any work with floorboards so this is new territory for me.

Does the laundry have a dry waste in the floor? It may have been wetsealed and bedded over the original boards? What is underneath? If the floorboards have had waterproofing done they would have the stuff stuck fast to them. You would likely have to remove them all and plane them back unless a floor sander could deal with it. Some fibreglass products may just peel off nicely and leave an easy job to re sand the boards. Probably a case of diving in blind and dealing with the issue once the bed is removed.

No idea on any of these... This will be a newly acquired property so it's likely we are going in blind.

Taking another look at the photo, I'm assuming you would plan on removing the wall beside the fridge? If so, you would have to do something where the wall comes out. Are you widening the doorway on both sides?

The wall along the fridge runs up to where the photo is taken (opposite the last cupboard next to the stove). We're not 100% sure if we want to remove the section of the wall next to the fridge, but definitely the rest of the wall.

          Back Door
 -------|------|----------------
|               |               |
|               |               |
|                               |
|                               |
|               x               |
|               x               |
|               x               |
|               x               |
|               x               |
 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx           ----|
                    Entry

Quick ASCII drawing of the current floor plan.
The xxxx are the walls we are planning to take down to open up the kitchen.
No new doors or widening is planned.
The laundry basin and washing machine is located next to the back door which we are planning to enclose into a cupboard (much like those one's you find in apartments).

 

[wylie]

But why do you say the boards are running the wrong way?
I've never done any work with floorboards so this is new territory for me.

What I mean is that the boards all end at the doorway. If you remove the concrete and just lay new (or second hand) boards up to the existing ones, there will be a line where one room's boards end and the new boards start. It will not look good. You could remove every second board and cut each one back to the next bearer so that the new board ends are not all lining up... "stagger" the new and old but I think it would still look odd unless it is done well and unless you can colour match fairly well.

If the boards were running the other way, you would be able to try to get similar boards and continue into the laundry and it would be much less work. Of course, colour matching can still be tricky.

When we had this issue once, we ripped up the old boards and laid new boards through the whole area. Your kitchen area isn't large but we cannot see what adjoins the kitchen. If the kitchen floor is a continuation of matching boards in the next room or area, it would probably still be better to rip up the kitchen and interlay other second hand boards with the ones you have ripped up so that it "blends".

It also appears there is staining near the corner and some ring marks from paint tins or something. So I guess you would need to sand and re-stain the kitchen. Again, what you do does depend on what is in the adjoining room that we cannot see in the photo.

(Looking at the photo again, I wonder if that corner of the kitchen was once a toilet. We have a "stained" area that looks similar. The boards are slightly darker than the surrounding area. We found the old "blueprint" and realised there was a toilet there and the boards are stained from water, urine?, from long ago.)