What I have always thought is, if you try to "match" an existing floor it looks like you tried and missed. When you go with something completely different, the result is yes, I wanted something different, and here it is. Especially if you lay it in a different direction. Does that make sense?

We are in the process of filling our gaps with pine slithers (they cam in different widths) You can buy them online. You do suffer from bald/ red knees when you hammer them in and then need to chisel them down so they are flush with the rest of the floor but it really does help. What you can also order with the pine slithers is pine saw dust with resin - you mix the two up and can fill the really narrow gaps which the slithers don't fit into. If you don't mind spending the time doing this I would recommend it yourself (especially if you're worried about costs), depending how big the surface is, and then have someone in to do the sanding. The varnishing you can also do you yourself with a normal paint roller. We also recently had a quote for sanding and varnishing and I think it came to £500 for mid size living room and 3 m length hall.

Hi. I'm looking for some thoughts and hope you all could help. We're looking to change the layout of our kitchen. Currently we have a long sitting room / dinning room and small kitchen. Looking to close off the sitting room and combine the dinning room and pitching. We've sketched our thoughts below. Is there anything else we should be looking to add or move to try and make this plan better. Thanks Paul

If I understand correctly you are adding extra floor by bay window feature ? Have you thought as out a window seat to hide the floor issue, can give you more storage and a really useful seating feature (great with kids)