I recently knocked down the wall from my kitchen to our new family room. It's resulted in a step down from kitchen to family room and in the area where the wall was is about 1/2 inch of existing flooring and then 5 inches of plywood subfloor and then you step down into the new room. I don't know how to address the fact that the stair nosing will abutt to ends of boards that are pretty nasty looking and that are about 2 inches away from where the stair nose board would end? If you follow me. The stair nosing will probably be a little short, and now I'm concerned about how to address the existing hardwoods, basically so it looks like a natural transition from one room to the next. Thoughts? Advice?

When we took the wall down between the two rooms it revealed the tips of the boards in our kitchen. they will intersect with the stair nosing and the previous owner had their floors redone so the tips are basically just different looking than the rest of the hardwoods (higher, different finish, a little frayed in places). the boards for our new hardwoods I'm installing are the same as the ones in our kitchen they are Bruce Fulton Strip Low Gloss Red Oak Natural 2-1/4 x 3/4 boards. the stair nosing comes in 6 foot boards and the new entrance is 12 ft so I'll have to use two boards for the length. But its actually your second question I'm having an issue with - about fully covering the exposed riser and also what do I do about the tips of my kitchen boards that will intersect with the stair nosing.

Go with a wider unfinished nosing and finish it yourself. Natural is a easy color. Square off the old floor, then install your nosing. Unfinished nosing comes in lengths as long as 16 foot. Or square off old floor add a strip of flooring, then your pre-finish nosing. Hopefully this makes sense. Good luck.

Or you could chop it off and stick a header board in there. Then butt your stairnose to that. You can do it with a skilsaw and a chisel. I would use a Festool and a multi master. That is a lot of coin to lay out for a single doorway,though. hehee

Chuck,
I like the idea of a header. Makes sense and would look good too.

Hey Chuck:

Speaking of Festool, have you put together any new projects since you invested some good money in their tools?

Nothing really fancy. I did about 200 ft of walnut borders last week. Easy as pie with that festool and a slotcutter.

I have been meaning to make a square-star. I would not need a lot of tools for that. Saw a pretty cool one in this month's issue of Hardwood Floor. Been too busy to play,lateley.