Have two questions on mixed media project in entry way. First,wood needs to be 1/8 inch thicker to match-up flush with tile. Any problem with glueing 1/8 inch luan doorskin material to subfloor(OSB) then stapleing 9/16 inch enginered BC to luan.Second ,each 18 x 18 tile will be surrounded by the wood, so I will have to cut the tongues on the ends. Should I then cut groves in ends and use splines, or just but joint and glue? Tile is in diamond pattern. I plan on leaving 1/8 gap around tile,filled with grout-caulking.

Yes, you can glue the thin luan to your subfloor to fur it up. But, do not use a waterbased or latex adhesive. Use a solvent adhesive with an 1/8" notched trowel. Probably could get by with 1/16" trowel. Keeping the T&G is always best whenever possible. It keeps the surface aligned. If you can do it and are willing to, then by all means do so.

I'm doing an inset, into slate over concrete tomorrow.

I'm using ¼" cut into slats, glued and nailed with tackstrip steel nails(with slight gaps between the slats), then gluing 7/16" mannington engineered brazillian cherry to get ¾".

Thanx for input.One more guestion.Am having hard time finding stapler to rent,local stores have nailers for 3/4 inch floors. What name and model# and gauge of staple should I be looking for? Another thought, I recently went to a home show in Portland Ore. million dollar homes, and saw lots of tile surfaces butting up to wood surfaces without any expansion gaps! How can they do this without problems?

I recently saw a comment by a tile guy on these types of floors - said they're not really practical in the long term since the wood wears whereas tile does not. Depending on how wide the wood part is some installers recess it slightly below tile to reduce wear but this may negatively affect appearance.

Was the house a model home or full custom?

I have noticed that the model homes often have many features that the rest of the production homes do not have so they may have had a hardwood installer do it that has no real experience with mixed media (ie. it ends up being a one-off for that tract). If it was simply a tile-hardwood interface read here-

http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... php?t=1184

It may have been engineered wood??

Floorguy, are you saying under the right conditions enginered would be OK butted fairly tight to tile? What about stapler guestion reguarding 9/16 inch enginered?

Even the tile needs expansion! Down here they do it all the ime, and get away with it. I have not seen a failure yet, but we don't have swings in temperature and humidity, as most do.

Exactly - If it's just one board, it will probably just compression set a small amount. If it's more than one board I would expect that it might buckle at the joint under the right conditions.

People usually wet mop tile right?

Rather than using normal cement-type grout between the tile and the wood, use grout caulk. Home Depot and Lowes usually have three colors in stock ... go to a real tile store like Dal-Tile ... they will have grout caulk in all matching colors, in both sanded and unsanded. The unsanded looks like regular caulk, but the sanded looks just like normal grout after it dries. The difference is that it remains slightly flexible.