Folks –

I am trying to get a good looking transition between an existing wood floor and the new wood floor which is going into a small addition we put on our house. The old/existing is strip oak, the new is 3 1/4 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick solid birch (Mirage brand, prefinished). The way the old  and new rooms come together is through a large opening (a bit distinct, but basically one large room), so that the place where the old and new floors join is 11 feet long. The new joists run perpendicular to the existing, so the new birch flooring needs to run perpendicular to the old/existing oak. I’ve been fiddling around with ways to make that transition appear less jarring, and the management team (aka wife & daughter) like the look of having the first few courses of the new flooring run parallel to the existing, which means running parallel to the  joists of the addition. Question is, is this going to cause problems from those few courses not having as much support ?

The first parallel course of the new floor  is actually right over the addition’s  first “joist” (a doubled 2×10 ledger attached to the existing house) so that should be fine; it’s the second and third courses that I’m worried about. The spacing to the next joist is only 14″, and that joist is an engineered wood I-beam. The span which that beam runs is 14′, so it is pretty solid. The subfloor is Advantech flooring panels.  I can jump up and down over that area and do not feel any give or bounciness (I’m 170 lbs). Do I have enough strength in the joists and subflooring? Will the Advantech hold the flooring nail (standard L-shape flooring nails) well enough (since they won’t be going into any joist)?

I’d be appreciative of any thoughts.

Ken in North Granby, CT