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My living room used to have laminate flooring and I'm switching to 5/8" engineered hardwood. There is a transition from the tiles to this floor. The tile will be a little lower than the new floor. How to handle such transitions? I am told there is no elegant transition available for this.

Tile is at 3/8th from the ground (Already existing) the new wooden flooring chosen is 5/8th thick.

The scenario is the reverse of what is shown in this link. Tile at more height than wooden floor https://www.homedepot.com/p/CALI-BAMBOO-Natural-5-8-in-T-x-2-3-8-in-W-x-72-in-L-Solid-Bamboo-Overlap-Reducer-7104002013/313897106

I am a novice in this field so I don't know many of the terminologies.

I'm requesting your valued advice. Thanks in advance

Zinger_usa20_21
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There are many "transition strips" that you can purchase that will give you an acceptable transition. I happen to like this type as shown below. The best working solution I found for installation was to leave about a 1/2 inch to 5/8 inch gap between the two mismatched floor surfaces. I then laid down a bead of good quality construction adhesive and embedded the aluminum strip into the adhesive. I weight down the strip with some heavy blocks to keep it firmly in place until the adhesive hardens.

Note that I discard the plastic channel that comes with the aluminum extrusion. I never found that the stickum strip on the bottom of the plastic channel would ever stay stuck down and the transition strip ends up loose. My method has held up for years.

These can be had with a variety of anodized surface finishes.

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Picture Source

Michael Karas
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Depending on whether the new floorboards are parallel with the tile edge or at 90 degrees to it, then the following becomes more challenging:

When the boards are parallel, the boards can have a chamfer for the length of the board or at least the length in contact with the tile. So if the floor board is 4" wide then the chamfer can be over 3.5" which gives a smoother transition. This works better especially if things have to be rolled from one floor to the other.

If the boards are at 90 degrees then the chamfer has to be applied to the ends of several boards...

One issue is the existing treatment to the surface of the boards which can make this more of a challenge.

Solar Mike
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