When we bought our open floor plan house, it already had tile in the kitchen and terrible pet-stained carpet in the living room. When we replaced the carpet with CORETEC plus “hardwood” I was determined not to have a threshold where the tile and hardwood met. Now CORETEC isn’t actually hardwood, it’s a engineered vinyl material made to look like hardwood. The core is made of some kind of foam I was told is derived from bamboo, and you can get an optional cork padding (about 1/16″ thick) as well. This was a good thickness for our needs as it is about as think as the tile in the kitchen. The tile is the run of the mill 1/8″ thick “engineered” ceramic material. The tile had been laid on top of sheet vinyl flooring, and of course the mastic thickness made it a little higher still.
I can’t stand a bump in the middle of the room like you see in many homes where wood meets carpet or tile. I think that transition moulding is a sign of poor craftsmanship. In order to prevent this from happening when we laid the CORETEC, I had to first remove the carpet and all the tack strips. Something I learned is that when you pull out the tack strips, which were nailed to our concrete pad foundation, it leaves a crater. In most cases these are around the edges by the wall and can be ignored, however the transition to the kitchen was more obvious.
To fix both problems (craters and height difference between CORETEC vinyl “hardwood” planks and the tile I used floor leveling compound. For the entire area from the tile itself to about four or five feet back from the tile, I gradually feathered the thickness of the leveling compound so that the height difference between the middle of the hardwood floor and the edge by the tile was imperceptible. When this dried, we laid the vapor barrier, then the vinyl floor tiles. Traditional wisdom says to begin laying flooring at an exterior wall. I made sure to measure the entire width of the room so I wouldn’t end up with a tiny sliver of CORETEC butting up against the tile. In retrospect, I probably should have started laying the hardwood at the tile side instead of the wall in case there’s shifting or uneven walls. In my case everything worked out great!
To fill the tiny gap between the tile and the vinyl planks, I wanted something that would look good and not prevent the floating CORETEC from having a little “breathing room”. I went with a tinted and sanded silicone caulk. Since we had recently painted our grout, color matching wasn’t hard at all. This stuff is great because it stays flexible enough not to impede the floor, and makes a very nice transition to the tile. It was also very easy to use and clean up.
We’ve had this floor for three years now and it still makes me happy every time I look at this transition. The type of silicone grout we used does make it slightly tough to clean if it gets dirty (because silicone if grippy and the sand in it gives it texture) but it isn’t really a problem.