Hi everyone
My house needs a big renovation, and i am planning to change the floors.

I am planning to put new engineered hardwood floor in the hallway, new carpet in the bedroom and living room, and new tile in the kitchen.

current situation: There are solid hardwood floor in the living room, bedroom, and hallway. The hardwood floors are level and plumb to each other in these three areas.

i have attached some pictures here.
http://postimg.org/gallery/1z8trzts/8de4fd7a/
http://postimg.org/image/zbnvann0p/1756f58e/






















Question 1a: After installing the carpets in the living room and bedroom, the carpet itself would be half an inch higher then the hallway(without the new hardwoodfloor on the hallway). Should i place the new hard wood floor over the old hard wood floor on the hallway? or should i take away the old hardwood floor and rise the subfloor a bit higher ,then put the new hardwoodfloor on it.

Question 1b: should i use those interlocking-edge hardwood floor in this project?

Question 2: The other problem i am facing is that i have a water tank heater in the hallway. should i leave the old hardwood floor pieces alone around the heater? and glue new pieces on it around the heater?

Question 3: The other reason why i want to rise the subfloor in the hallway is because i want to put tile in the kitchen. Right now, the kitchen's floor (without cement board and tile) is level and plumb to the hallway. And i believe after installing cementboard and tile in the kitchen, the floor in the kitchen would be atleast 3/4 inch higher than the hallway.

so overall, what i am trying to achieve here is that i would like to keep all the floor at the same height as much as possible.

Thank you for reading this.
Any help would be great.

I'd cry seeing that old border work getting covered...but

Real hodgepodge of flooring you have there. It makes me dizzy just trying to figure it out and I think I have something like a dozen windows open looking at the pics.

Looks like en engineered hardwood in the hall already.

1a: This is really one of those "have to look" at to get a grip on what's going on.

2: Pull the radiator. Going around it would look like a real hack job.

3. ??

After spending about twenty minutes looking at this I'd say remove all existing hardwood and work from there. That way you'll get a more stable sub floor...or what's above the existing.

The old saying. your final floor is only as good as the sub floor under it applies here. Add plywood with new hardwood after removal that brings the new hardwood up to reasonable levels with the other areas.

Hi Ken
Thank you spending time on my problem.

Do you know if the radiator would spill water out if i take it apart?

From your experience, how often do you see people changing their sub-floor? can we even change it? I am asking this is because the house is 60 years old already. And the Hallway's floor produce loud squeaky sound when i step on it. Also, when i step on it, it feels really "hollow" and "weak" to me.

Any suggestion?

Thank you

Sorry, I have absolutely no experience with old radiators.

It's not about changing the subfloor, but creating a good solid base to build any new finished floor on. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the older bordered floor is 5/16" thick because I see it's a top nailed floor. And maybe that hallway floor is... geez...another wild guess...3/8" thick. Looks like engineered, not laminate. You need to see what's under that. It's gotta come out anyway with all the noise it's making

Like Ken said, that border work is awesome in those rooms. You should get a pro in there to look at it, one who resands and finishes. He could do repair work around the radiator.
Doing a click floor over that? Yikes! No no no!

Ok Thank you guys