Background:
I am the owner of a house with a large, open floor plan and nasty, nasty carpet. The front door opens to a tile area in the corner of the living area and the rest of that area is carpet. That area continues into the dining area and also takes a right turn down a hallway. Turn left at the end of the hall and and you see an area that where the first half is kitchen/nook with tile and the back half is living area with carpet. No doors, no thresholds.

Problem:
The tile is about 1/4" thick. The wood I want is 1/2" thick. Is that bad...? Should I keep looking for thinner wood? I really like the look of the wood (not completely sure about the quality). I've done some wood working and don't mind if I have to modify/mill transition pieces to make it work (I already plan on doing a 90 degree turn with the wood down that hall and do a small area at 45 degrees...), but is that going to be a tripping hazard or ugly or something since it will bisect the kitchen/living area and also surround the front entry area?

Wood:
The wood I want is "engineered" (if you can call < 1mm wear layer engineered) "Brazilian Teak" 6" wide and 47.5" long. I don't plan on living out my days in this house. I'm looking to increase my home's value and to make my house look less disgusting and be more inviting for my cat-allergic friends.

With planning, I can make that difference work with "T" molding or a square edge molding.

Certain manufactures make 3/8 Teak. I would go solid myself if your on a wood substrate and you could afford it.

I just realized that Teak is an endangered species though.

If you get new Indonesian Teak, it is illegally harvested.

Brazilian Teak is not a member of the Teak family. Just so named because of its visual similarity to real Teak. This is true of most of the South American woods, such as IPE (brazilian Walnut), JATOBA (Brazilian Cherry), etc.
One word of caution, there is still a lot of illegal logging going on in the Amazon basin and areas of Panama. Try to establish "chain of custody" information from your supplier so that you do not become an accidental contributer to the disasters going on in the lumber industry, world-wide.
The proper name for Brazilian Teak is Cumaru, BTW.

It is highly illegally harvested.

Read this, theres a paragraph about CoC in it. Plus the list at the bottom.

http://www.rainforestrelief.org/What_to ... oring.html

That Schoen company had a "Brazilian Mesquite" or so it said, looked up the name of it, turned out it was from the mahogany family. The people had an old mahogany door, matched it pretty good.

Yup, establishing accurate Chain of Custody can be tricky, even for seaoned lumber people. Imagine the average home-owner trying to maintain a responsible attitude for conservation during a renovation.
Thats where we as flooring people have a responsibility to our clients.

Austin Guy: so it would be okay to have a transition down the middle of the room? I guess I will need one no matter what thickness I buy... I dunno, never had to deal with this before. I always lived with all carpet, and the house I grew up in was all 14" or so wide pine boards and doorway thresholds to rooms with narrow 200 year old boards. I actually hated the coldness and dust bunnies of wood floors, but now it's all the rage.

Everyone else: I put the name in quotes because that's not it's real name. Yes, it's Cumaru, which I picked out early on because it's super hard and pretty. Now I read hardness isn't that big of a deal, I dunno. "Brazilian Mesquite," whatever it's real name is, is absolutely beautiful. I wanted it bad. It's what made me fall in love with color variations when previously I had been looking for monotone. But the sample I saw on the floor at Lumber Liquidators was dented and trashed way worse than the other woods around it. That's when I started looking into hardness of woods, the Janka scale, etc. I even added a couple dozen species to Wikipedia's Janka page.

The Cumaru I found looks great, is wide, and is cheap. I will look into how legal it is. But every store I've been to sells many brands and colors of Cumaru (under half a dozen wood names) so I doubt it's black market.

[edit]
I am installing this onto a concrete slap, hence I'm using engineered instead of solid. Just the prep alone would cost another $1+ per sqft for solid and then the cost of buying solid wood. I would love to go all out, but I don't know how much longer I'll live here.

Could this count as a subfloor for a future solid floors?

That LL Brazillian Mesquite is quite beautiful. Heres me at the bottom of the page (as usual ) picture of the mesquite is bottom right hand corner.

http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... hearth.htm

It seems to have a pretty decent top veneer on it ( way more than 1mm) and the finish was pretty good as well. If I remember it was a AO finish. The sample probably was just abused by consumers. Nothing you would to do your floor I bet. Forgot the thickness of this product, might have been 3/8 or 5/16. Went together very well too.

I loved the warmness of the color with the honeys, browns, even a little gray and green. But the Janka rating for it is 1220 so it's softer than oaks and even some pines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_Wood_Hardness_Rating

And I would be putting it in the highest traffic areas of my house, by the back door where I always track in dirt, and around a pool table known for flying balls.

Also, the sample at LL was no where near the doorway so it should have been in better shape than the other samples, but it was beat up. I think I was able to press my thumbnail into a piece. It's also more expensive.

And Teak's rating is less isin't it, not very far off from red oak either. Besides on engineered it's all about the finish.

Now if you were a better pool player...

Cumaru, not real teak. And it's easier (and far more likely) to just buy harder wood

I wasn't going to say this skintigh cus it's been discussed to death but your janka rating means nothing concerning engineered hardwood. OK maybe if it's veneer is a quarter inch thick but not much because the underlying ply's are mostly softer wood and all that jazz.

But good luck on your project.

I had wondered about that. But this stuff is wide, looks great, and most importantly is inexpensive. We'll find out in a few weeks if it was a mistake.