I have 7 year old Harris-Tarkett engineered hardwood glued down onto concrete with a moisture barrier (vinyl I think). The existing hardwood is in a hallway that opens on one side into a carpeted living-room. I want to replace the carpet with hardwood and lace it into the existing hallway wood. Since I don't want to see the existing line delineating the hallway and living room I will have to remove some of the exsiting planks (the strips are perpendicular to the boundary between the room and hallway and cut off flush).

Is this a nightmare? I already accept that color matching will be impossible, but can just the edge strips of the glued down wood be removed to allow lacing in, or do I have to rip out a huge portion of the existing floor. I've got an installer coming tomorrow to give me an estimate, but some advice from the pros would be appreciated.

Yes, you can lace in, if the boards are the exact width dimensions.

This is done just like a damaged board replacement, only instead of one board, there are going to be many.

Rip cut the boards to be removed, twice down the center, and I use a roto-zip and make angled cuts to the corners. Remove the center, first. Then remove the side carefully.

Then your going to need to cut the bottom off the grooved sides, just far enoung to get the new board back in.

Thanks for the info. In your experience, is this job within the capabilities of an average installer? The company that originally installed the flooring only works directly with builders, so I am going to have to go with someone new (and unknown) for this additional work.

you will be able to tell be the look on his face wheather or not he is comfortable doing that kind of work. It's not what i would call easy. simple yes but alot of tedious work involved. typicallly it will come down to time and monies willing to be spent.

The recommendations I am getting are to rip out the existing flooring
and make the transition to the old floor in a darker nearby hallway. Four points are made: 1) the lacing-in will have long term integrity issues because the bottom of the grooved sides needs to be cutoff and the replacement pieces pushed down into place 2) it is hard to get the right consistency of glue between the existing boards 3) The H-T Holston maple currently in place is no longer made, and H-T has changed the dimensions of their replacement material (Kingsport) so that the tongue and grooves won't line up. 4) the color match will look bad forever.

Despite the higher cost, these arguments seem logical. Probably means ripping out and redoing 150sqft of existing wood in beautiful condition.

Any further comments?

We've fingered in plenty of stapled floors, it's not that hard, but a glued down floor? Forget it - no way would we get into that. After removing the old boards and old glue, you'd have to carefully apply the new glue and finger in the new boards without causing the glue to squish up out the seams. You can't just drop them in unless you were to cut the tongue off them and as your estimator said, thats not structurally good. You'd have to slide them in and that wouldn't work well, trying to slide them in over the glue. And if your replacement wood isn't the same dimensions, as you say it isn't - no way. And then there's the color - you don't want to finger in flooring if the color match isn't near perfect.

Fingering in the floor in your particular situation should be out of the question. If you were our customer, we would suggest:

1) Turn a board, and start the new flooring so that it runs inline with the old flooring as close as possible so as not to ruin the visual flow of the floor across the hall into the LR. You still have the turned board there making a visual break, but since its flush, its really not a big distraction.

2) ripout the existing floor in the hall and put in all new. My personal opinion is that is an awful lot of time & $$ just to avoid a visual break, but its all a matter of what you as the homeowner can live with.

Anecdote: We recently went thru a very similar scenrio, but with a nail-down. Homeowner had existing hardwood in foyer that ran between carpeted LR and DR. She wanted new hw in LD/DR, and she didn't want it fingered in because the color match wasn't perfect so she wanted a turned board. OK, no sweat. We turned a board on both sides of the foyer and went with it. However, the color difference between the new wood she had picked out and the existing wood was very obvious. As we always do, we had her take a look and give a final approval on the color before nailing anything in. She said its fine, we can live with the color difference, do it. So we did it. And guess what? 4 months later we were back ripping out the entire foyer and replacing it with the same wood we put in the LR/DR. She couldn't live with it afterall. We happened to be doing this particular job thru a retailer, and much to our astonishment, he absorbed the entire cost of ripping out and replacing the wood in the foyer, including our labor to do it. Our opinion is that it was totally the homeowner's call - she picked out the wood and we gave her the chance, after seeing some of the wood layed out, to change her mind. Why the retailer felt it neccessary to pay to have her foyer floor replaced is beyond me. It didn't hurt us any, it actually put more money in our pocket since he had to pay us to do it, but I thought it was crazy.
Anyway, my point is that unless you are REALLY SURE you can live with something, don't do it. (And if you do it and then decide you can't licvve with it, don't try and get a free new floor out of it, lol.)
So if you can't live with a visual break, go with the added expense of having the foyer ripped out.

DC

The boards not being made anymore is the kicker. That means a transition and maybe running the new flooring at an angle to the existing, or a custom border to throw the difference off.

I have no porblem doing board replacements in a gluedown on concrete. I love them! $250 for the first board, and $50 for each additional board.

The hardest part is existing adhesive removal. If they went over a dusty slab, it makes it real easy. As most of the adhesive comes up with the pieces of the board.