We love our terracotta floor, but we stopped it at the stairs – here’s why

Committed home renovators David and Andrew Harrison-Colley (better known on Instagram as The Home Boys) are part of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing their thoughts on making a home together and living through the tricky parts. See the rest of their articles here.

Our terracotta floor ends at the bottom of three oak steps. From there it's engineered oak, through the atrium and hallway and all the way to the front door.

We did think about running the terracotta straight through. Quite a lot, actually. But the snug, which opens off the hallway, already has its own brick floor. Terracotta across most of the ground floor and then brick in the snug felt like too much. So we changed floors at the steps, and tried to make the change look like we meant it.

Why oak

The steps sit where the original cottage meets the extension. The terracotta in the extension has underfloor heating under it. The steps and hallway are in the old part of the house and don't. We went for engineered oak from Flooring Surgeons on an insulating underlay, and in that part of the house it feels warmer underfoot than an unheated tiled floor would have.

It sits well next to the terracotta too. Both are warm in colour, but they feel completely different to walk on. That's what we were after: connected, not identical.

The steps we didn't want

The extension is about 400mm lower than the cottage, so there were always going to be steps. The question was what kind.

The architect's first drawings had two separate little flights, one up into the hallway and one up into the study. The revised plan swapped those for one wide flight, but it stuck out into the new kitchen and dining space. We didn't like either.

So we drew up our own. We're not architects, but we can put together a plan a builder can work from. Ours has three steps running the full width of the opening, sitting between the walls rather than spilling into the kitchen. The builders put them up in breeze block to our spec. Making them look nice was down to us.

Where the tiles stop

The join between two floors is often where things look awkward. Here, the terracotta runs right up to the bottom step and the first oak riser covers the edge of the tiles, so we didn't need a threshold strip at that point.

That worked in our opening because the level changes exactly where the flooring does. Not every doorway will give you that.

How we clad them

We clad the breeze block in plywood first, so we had something flat and solid to work on. Then came the oak: bullnose treads cut to length and joined to the oak flooring with a strong wood adhesive, and risers in the same engineered oak so it all matches. Everything was pinned into the ply with tiny nails and the holes filled.

The one hitch was the treads. The bullnose pieces were a couple of millimetres taller than the flooring, so there was a lip where the two met. Not much, but you could see it and feel it. We bought an electric planer from Wickes and took the treads down before fitting them, until the two surfaces sat flush. Least exciting purchase of the whole project, but it's the reason the join works.

We started with the steps and worked outwards: along the hall, under the staircase and up to the front door, where we cut the oak so the coir mat sits flush in the floor rather than on top of it. Doing the hardest, most visible bit first meant everything else had a clean line to follow. It also turned a "weekend project" into several weekends.

The finish

When we posted the steps on Instagram, we promised a follow-up on the finish and never got round to it.

So, for anyone still waiting: it's Osmo Polyx-Oil Tints in Amber (3072), matt. We tried three shades, and Amber was the one that came out warm without going orange.

The door we haven't sorted

There's still one join we haven't dealt with. The snug has its own door off the hallway, and at the moment there's nothing between the oak and the old brick floor. We'll add a proper threshold when we get round to doing the snug.

What worked for us

Look at what's already there. It was the snug's brick floor that made us stop the terracotta.

If the level changes where the floor does, use it. In our opening, a riser hid the tile edge and we didn't need a strip.

Think about what's underneath. The underfloor heating, or lack of it, was part of our decision.

Keep the colour, change the texture. Warm oak next to warm terracotta felt related to us rather than clashing.

Check heights where two products meet. Our treads and flooring were a couple of millimetres out, and we sorted it with a planer before anything was fitted.

The bullnose edge is the bit we're proudest of. It makes the steps look like proper joinery rather than something we put together over a few weekends. Which, to be fair, is exactly what we did.