Hi there,
I am in Japan for a few weeks helping my friend in her house.
One of her problems is her hallway floor. It is a kind of fake parquet flooring approximately 1.5 to 2.5cm thick (0.59" to 0.98")
(see attached Photos)
As you can see from the photos there is a hole in the floor 30cm by 25cm or 11.8" by 9.8"
Many Japanese houses are built of wood as is this one, and the house is built on concrete pillars and there is a 55cm or 21.6" hole under the floor down to the ground.
So we either need to fix that hole or re floor the whole hall. (Probably the best option is to re floor the whole hall for as you can see on 1 of the photos, the flooring is in poor condition and looks terrible!)
Also the floor is held up with joists Approximately 40mm by 40mm (1.5") in size and running 25cm (9.8") apart.
Please could you give me any advice on how I might go about doing this. I'm completely new to this sort of thing! Also please could you give different-flooring options / materials. Wood of course, but also other possibilities, I'm struggling to figure out how to fix the hole when there is no floor underneath! (For information: There is no access underneath the house so all the work will have to be done above the hole not below!)
PS. my skill level is beginner but there is no chance of me being able to duck out of this task and getting a flooring specialist in a my friend is broke.
Please use easy to understand terms when replying :-)
Thank you for any help or input you can give me
kind regards Gin

 

Chances are that you can't match the current floor, so the best idea would be remove it & replace it. If the sub floor is in good condition, you could use self stick tiles instead or rubberized flooring. It comes in squares & rolls.

 

That looks like water damage. It is common near exterior doors. People come in from the rain and stand there wet taking off their rain coat and wet boots/shoes. The subflooring needs to be removed back at least to the center of the joists and replaced. Then a finish floor can be installed on top. I would consider this a good time to consider remodeling the hallway and consider different flooring if you want.

 

You will need to remove all the wood in the hallway and then replace the subfloor that is damaged. Your choices from that point are endless and really depend on your taste and budget. Hopefully there is not too much damage underneath. Floating floors are easiest to install.