Probably… no wait…. definitely one of the best changes we made to our house during renovations was getting rid of the uber gross, stained, sea of cat hair (umm… carpet I mean) and replacing it with wood floors.
We were keeping things as low cost as possible and were willing to do as much work as it took to put down new floors that we both loved and, let’s be honest, wouldn’t care about too much in the near future when the “new” has worn off & bangs & scratches happen here and there. This whole barn house was (and still kinda is) rough around the edges, so we wanted floors that matched and could take a pounding while still looking cool.
Alright.. so, since I practically live on the internet, during my travels across the webz window shopping for renovation ideas, I came across both Hindsvik’s modern plywood floors in their bedroom and Picklee’s rustic farmhouse plywood plank floors she put in her shop. I loved the super wide, raw planks & built in headboard from Hindsvik, and I also loved the worn look & durability from Picklee’s floor.
I’ve always loved raw plywood & building projects that could be disassembled, but in the end, I went with the more permanent installation method I learned from Picklee. It also didn’t hurt that we were working on a barn house, so, no doy! (early 90s reference)… the choice was pretty obvious. We decided to go for Picklee’s style floors … and in the end, I think they turned out like a great happy medium between the two. They’re rustic & barn-like, but still look clean and modern with all the other things we did to the house. So how about I quit talking, and start showing you how we did them!
Of course, the first thing I had to do was go buy a bunch of plywood. I ended up buying the cheap stuff with built in texture. It was 1/2″ x 4′ x 8′ sheets of 3-ply sheathing CDX plywood. (The rough looking stuff they use when building exterior house walls and roofs). I bought them at Menards during one of their store-wide 11% off rebates they do about every 2-3 months. If I remember right, we ended up getting them for about $16 per sheet after the rebate. I made sure to pick through the pile at the store and avoid grabbing ones with huge cracks, big knot holes, chunks missing, etc. I tried to get the ones in the best shape with good texture, but not too “trashy” of a texture if you know what I mean.
Oh, and by the way, I figured out how many sheets I needed by using some simple math. We measured the rooms we were going to cover (all rooms minus baths & kitchen/dining) and estimated it to around 1500 sqft. Each sheet of plywood is 32 sqft (4×8 = 32) … so we divided 1500 by 32 and got roughly 47 sheets. I figured we might need to buy a few extra just in case we needed to cut away knots or I screwed up some cuts or whatever, so we brought home ~ 50 sheets.
We stacked the plywood into 2 piles downstairs and continued working on other parts of the house first. We had to replace a lot of water damaged drywall & paneling, install board & batten on our ceilings, gut the kitchen & bathroom, & work on some other big, messy projects like that before moving on to the floors.
Things were finally starting to shape up downstairs. Once all the drywall was fixed, so we were able to rip out all the carpeting around the piles & start removing staples to get the floors ready. It’s hard to see, but to the right of the picture, there was still a big square of vinyl flooring that had to come up as well.
The downstairs bedroom (soon to be my DIY workroom) had these old pine plank floors that came up pretty easy. They were just nailed down with a few nails and were still in great shape, so we removed all the nails, and stored them down in the basement for future projects.
I was trying to figure out how I wanted to sand the plywood sheets. I could either cut them down, install them, and then sand them down like a normal wood floor…. or I could rent this big flooring sander, knock each sheet out about a minute or two, and then cut them down into planks and install. That thing was a heavy beast, but it worked great. And it was only about $50 bucks for a 3 hour rental from Menards. I decided to go this route, because I also wanted to slightly round off the plank edges with my palm sander before installing them to prevent splinters & snags later on.
Once the all the sheets were sanded, we spent an afternoon slicing them down into 8″ wide planks with the table saw. It took several hours, and it was loud & messy (wear protection)… but we got it done. We could have had a store cut them down for us, but I have a couple reasons why we didn’t.
First off, when we bought the plywood, I asked some of the Menards employees if they would cut the wood down for me, and they said that they don’t cut wood at the store. I know I’ve had Lowes cut wood for me before, and I think Home Depot does too… but apparently not Menards. And if they did, I would have felt bad to ask them to slice 50 sheets of plywood into 8″ wide planks (that’s 5 cuts per sheet by the way). It would have been a loud, messy, couple of hours in the store. They probably would have asked me to never come back again! lol.
The other thing was that we already had a table saw and figured we could easily do it ourselves. I ended up building a quick, little table extension made out of 2×4 boards and some thin luan we had left over from other projects. You can see it in the picture. It helped us keep the sheets level as we cut. The one thing to keep in mind when cutting the planks by hand like this is that it’s easy to accidentally cut them with a slight curve if you’re not careful to keep them lined up to the fence. A few of our planks ended up slightly curved and we had to put them in a separate pile.
Also, when you slice a sheet into six 8″ wide planks, the last one will be closer to 7-1/2″ wide due to the waste cut away by the thickness of the saw blade. We also put those narrower planks in their own pile. We used them for the planks mounted against the walls that would probably have to be cut narrower anyway. (You’ll see what I mean later.)
Once all the planks were cut, we spent a few more hours the next afternoon slightly rounding off the top facing edges with palm sanders to make the planks look a little more old & worn and to prevent sock snags or foot splinters when walking across the floors later.
As you can see, it produced a ginormous saw dust pile that practically filled up a trash bag once I swept it all up. Also, everything else is the house was coated in a soft layer of plywood saw dust. If you’re planning to try making these floors for yourself, I’d recommend cutting them outside or in a shop if your house isn’t a giant construction zone already like ours was.
We moved the cut planks into the gutted kitchen/dining area, so that we could finish putting up the board & batten ceiling and paint everything from the bottom of the walls up. This was also the first taste of how open the downstairs was going to be once everything was finished and cleared out. We could see that it was going to be awesome!
And… boom! By the magic of blog post editing, all the walls & ceilings are now primed & painted. The walls and ceiling boards (the flat parts) were painted semi-gloss white, the ceiling batten trim was painted flat white, and the big floor to ceiling posts were painted gloss white. All that over head painting was messy, and we didn’t want to drip or spatter all over the new floors, so that’s why we painted everything before installing the floors. The subfloors looked like a giant flock of birds were getting over a stomach virus, but that’s ok… they were gonna get covered anyway. 😉
It was finally time to start clearing out the rest of the floor and making some repairs. That big square of vinyl flooring next to the front door was actually hiding a secret. Old, busted up, parquet flooring underneath! Man, it was a hard, sweaty job tearing all that crap up.
The vinyl floor peeled up without too much hassle, but that glued down parquet floor took some real muscle. I used that roofing-shingle-shovel-thing to get under it and pop it up … both in chunks and little pieces. I also discovered 2 holes cut in the subfloor that I had to make patches for. I’m not sure why they were there, but they’re gone now!
The house also had really old, leaky windows that rotted out big hunks of the subfloor underneath. We wanted to get rid of them, so we had to cut them out and make patches for them.
The subfloors were just 3/4″ inch plywood, so we cut patches out of new 3/4″ ply to fit up to the floor joists, built some extra blocking underneath, and screwed them down. Some of the gaps were a tad big on our slightly guestimated-measured & hand-cut patches (oops), so I filled them in with some caulk just in case.
If your floors have any holes or rotten spots, I highly recommend making patches for them before installing flooring. I can only imagine how soft & creaky those spots would get over time if you just left them alone.
Now, since we wanted that relaxed-rustic-modern look to our floors, we made some white wash. It really helped keep the floors from turning super golden “country pine cabin in the woods” yellow once the polyurethane was applied later. Of course, you don’t have to white wash yours if you don’t want. You could just leave them alone and stain or just clear them later after they’re installed.
I messed with different ratios of paint to water… but once it was all said & done, it was roughly a 2 or 2.5 to 1 ratio of water to paint. To make it, I just poured a gallon can of left over flat white wall paint in an old 5 gallon bucket and then dumped in a little more than 2 cans full of water. I used a paint mixing bit in my drill to blend it into a milk consistency, and it was ready to go.
We decided to go ahead and white wash the planks before installing, so that we could wash some out more than others and have a variety of colors to pick from as we were installing them. We sat some old 2×4 boards on the floor and then laid the planks across them to keep them off the floor. Then we just dipped the paint roller in the white wash and rolled it on. They didn’t really look much different when it was first applied and still wet…
… but once they dried… whoa! … big difference. You can see how much lighter they turned out compared to a raw plank here. We laid out and white washed as many boards as we could fit on the open spaces of our floor… and had to repeat a couple of times to do them all. This was our first glimpse at how the floors were going to look… and we liked where things were headed!
Alright, so that’s it for this post. I didn’t want to make this plywood floor post too huge, so I broke it down into 2 parts.
>> Read part 2 HERE <<
Later!
Kevin
){kind=link}
I see you pickled the boards before nailing down did they warp or curl at all..
No, I didn’t notice any warping. Some of the plywood sheets were already curled just a bit when we bought them, but the whitewash didn’t seem to noticeably affect them at all.
Would it be much different if I whitewashed the boards once they were down…it seems a lot easier to do it that way vs plank by plank?
It would probably save some time if you installed the floors first, and then white washed, stained, etc after. We did it before so that we could pick and choose planks based on their various shades of whitewash as we were installing them. If you just want a more uniform color, I’d install them first, then whitewash or stain, then clear.
First off, your floors look amazing. Always wanted to do this in my house but was always missing a few steps in my head. Thanks to your videos those missing pieces have been filled. One question though, what type of plywood did you use? Was it pine, oak, maple or birch.
Thank you
We just used plain ‘ol pine plywood. It was the 1/2″, 3-ply, sheathing grade at Menards. You could get nicer, smoother plywood, but we wanted the texture … plus the low price was an added bonus!
The one issue some people have found with the nicer maple, cherry, birch, etc plywood is that those are usually just thin, 1-32″-1/16″ thick layers laminated on top of regular pine plywood. After enough normal use, they actually wore through that layer, exposing the other wood beneath. If you like the patina of wear patterns, it could look cool. If you want them to always looks high end and pristine, it may be something to think about. Maybe double up on the poly and keep it in check…?
Hey I’ve watched your videos several times, while I am in the process of prepping my house for this upgrade. Curious to your thoughts, all the CDX plywood at the local bigbox stores is in pretty terrible condition. I am thinking of going with a 1/4 inch Oak. I’d also like to do mine in 2×4′ panels instead of planks. What do you think of the importance of a small spacer/gap between each panel vs right next to each other.
Now that we’ve been living with the planks for almost 2 years, I think the gap is less important than I first thought. The way plywood is made with the layers stacked in alternate directions is really stable and doesn’t move anywhere close to as much as solid wood planks. I do like the look that the gaps give our floors, but if I do these floors again somewhere else, I’d make them much smaller. If I did another design instead of the old looking wide planks, I’d probably just butt them together. I’ve seen plywood floors installed in 2’x2′ and even 4’x4′ squares butted together and they looked great. I’d probably still recommend slightly rounding off the top edge corners just at bit with a sander or router to prevent snags or trip ups from any slight difference in board thicknesses.
You did an awesome job!
We’re getting ready to put a floor in our new home but we’re stuck on what we should do.
This is definitely an idea.
How well has it worn? Does it scratch and dent easily?
Do you have an update or link on what it looks like now or know of anyone who’s had plywood flooring for a while?
Sorry for the questions, this is an awesome tutorial, thank you! 🙂
Hey thanks! The floors have held up great for us. We had them for almost 2 years now and they look just like they did when we first installed them. Pine is a soft wood, so if you drop something heavy on them, they will ding & dent. We knew that might happen when we decided to install them, but we’ve been careful not to beat them up and they’ve been fine. There’s little depressions under the couch legs and a couple of dings from dropping things on them, but unless you’re looking for them, you don’t notice them at all. I have an upadate video & post here on my site that shows them after living with them for a year. They look the same now, too.
Looooooooooooove!!
Wonderful job …. looks awesome. I am considering this task for our house …. just curious if you have any idea how this would work for a concrete slab floor??? What type of prep work would be necessary since nailing them is not an option? If I were to place furring strips down to attach to it would create a drastic transition between rooms. Thanks for the advice!!!
Hmmm, you would either have to install a subfloor underneath to have something to nail to (and to keep moisture from seeping up from the concrete to the wood) or you could possibly glue the planks down with a solid layer of flooring glue (to double as a moisture barrier).
I was wondering the same thing. I LOVE this! However we have concrete floors as well and were wondering about the glue. The glue costs about $1 per sq ft from what I’ve seen. Kinda kills the mojo of saving money on the planks. 🙁
Love your floors! What do you think about sanding the boards after they are glued and nailed down? I know you suggested to sand or route the edges which I may do before I nail the boards down. I’m also wondering if the boards are leveled? Are some boards higher than others?
Yes, you could install the planks, and then sand & finish them afterwards. I wanted to round off the edges first to prevent snags, plus I think it was a little quicker to sand the sheets beforehand. But like I said, you could install them like regular wood floors and do all the finishing after they’re down. Some of the boards are a smidge higher than others, but not bad at all. It’s just part of the whole “old wide plank floor board” look.
Kevin, great work on the floors. But please explain what material did you use for the ceiling. Also plywood or a different material. Did you bondo the nail/screw holes for the parts not covered with the strips.
Thank you for your response.
Rob
We made our board & batten ceilings using full 4’x8′ sheets of luan air-nailed to the ceiling joists around the perimeter of each sheet. We painted them satin white. Then we made batten trim using 1″x4″ boards (that I cut down to 1″x3″) that were nailed into the ceiling joists to cover up all the edges/gaps of the luan sheets. We used some lightweight filler in the nail holes of the trim before we painted it flat white. It kinda sucked working overhead, but it wasn’t too hard of a job. We like it WAY better than the gross old popcorn ceilings we covered up.
Thanks for posting your step-by-step videos! Where do I access videos 3-5?
Great looking floors!
You can find them either by clicking the links at the end of each video or by checking out my part 2 blog post here: https://diydork.com/plywood-plank-floors-part-2/
Hey man. How’s the floor holding up? I’m planing to start my in a few weeks. Just wondering about what I could do to prevent it from getting messed up if it were to ever get wet. Any suggestions? Thank u
They’re holding up great. I’d recommend making the gaps tighter and putting heavy coats of poly on them to help seal them from water.
Hi. I love the floors. I have laid my own 18mm soft wood ply floor cut into 300mm strips that are now ready for sanding. What grit sandpaper did you start and finish with please?
I just used the 80 grit in the big flooring sander, but if you wanted a bit smoother finish, I’d recommend going over them again with a 120-150 grit.
great info but I just watched 3 videos and had to quit on number 4 to go be sick. To much waving the camera around so I got car sick. I will come back to see the rest tomorrow.
awesome description of the process. How many nails did you use per 8in by 8ft board? I am putting same thing down over vinyl sheet floor in an addition, and had considered screwing them down. Thoughts on nail/glue vs screw/glue?
Also, did you have any issue with the plywood being slightly cupped before installation, as some pieces at menards are not perfectly flat. or did they work out once you glued and nailed down?
thanks for the great work.
I shot 4 nails approximately every 12″-16″ or so, so however many that ended up being. I have seen some floors screwed down. Then sunk the head a little and then used wood filler to cover them up. I’ve also seen floors screwed down with stainless screws and finish washers (those button looking washers). They stuck up a bit, but had a pretty cool look. I’d love to try that out sometime, although my wife hates the look. Some of my planks were a bit cupped. I tried to use the flattest ones I could, but they all ended up laying down flat once they were glued & nailed.
Utterly cool and very clean look, and I can handle a half inch. Thanks very much for the sanding hint. Finishing with deck poly. *Thanks!!*
Hey Kevin- Love your floors! You’ve inspired our own project and I’m now looking into plywood options. In our area (Alberta, Canada)- Pine plywood seems to be next to impossible to find. The only supplier with stock of 1/2″ 4×8 is selling at $110/sheet- defeating the whole “budget flooring” purpose. Have you got any insight on using spruce plywood? It’s readily available and much more affordable here, but I’m curious how it’d hold up being a softer wood than pine. Thanks!
Thanks! Wow, $110 per sheet is pricey. Our pine floors have held up great, but have dinged up in spots where we’ve dropped a furniture corner, etc. They haven’t worn down from regular foot traffic though. I’m not totally sure how the spruce would hold up. I supposed you could buy a partial sheet, lay it out on the floor, and test it out for a while just to see how it holds up.
Hi there, what a gorgeous job you did. Well done and thanks for posting. We’re considering doing this too but would need insulation underneath the ply. Any suggestions please? Just usual insulation for under engineered wood flooring and nail gun through? Thanks
I haven’t seen them installed that way before, so I’m not sure how it would hold up. I noticed that the air gun nails were thin and slick, so they don’t seem to have a lot of holding power if the boards try to move (bow & cup) on you. I think the combination of the flooring glue and the nails is what’s helped them stay put. Regular hardwood or even engineered hardwood floors usually have a tongue & groove system built it to help hold them in place along with the nails.
Hi, What kind of polyurethane did you use.? Some that I have used in the past felt permanently tacky. I’m curious if there is another product that my be better to use. Great job on your project. Thanks, Julia
Flagstaff, AZ
We just used regular satin poly (Varathane brand I think… I don’t remember now, but it’s in the video). It dried hard with a slick finish. No tackiness. I have noticed on some pieces that I’ve stained with oil based stain, that if I don’t let them completely dry before topping with poly, they feel a bit tacky. That could be what happened. Read the container and see how long it says to let everything dry.
VERY informative Thank you. Answered almost all my questions.
In my situation – we had to tear out all the old carpet & pad (pet damage) which was laid over particle board, which was laid over tongue & groove flooring. I am unsure of using 1/2″ ply because of unevenness of the subfloor. Other than cost, did you consider 3/4″ plywood? I WAS considering 3/4″ in 4′ squares. I would appreciate your comments. Thank you.
We went with the 1/2″ plywood to keep costs down, but 3/4″ would work as well. The 1/2″ would be a bit more flexible to fit over slightly uneven subfloor sections (if it’s only slight and you don’t want to try and level it out.) I’ve seen plywood floors installed in 4’x4′ squares like you were thinking, and it looked great. They swapped the grain every other board, so it had a checkerboard effect.
I’m wondering what you’d think if I wanted to use medium grade plywood, cut into planks (maybe 6-8″ I’m thinking) , sand them smooth (outside…!) then use porch and floor paint instead of stain & poly to install in our living room. How do you think they’d hold up? (We do have dogs…. arggh!) We painted our oak hard floor with porch and floor paint in the master bedroom. No poly used over top. With the exception of some minuscule scratches seen only when the sun hits the floor just so, and a couple of teeeny dings, it’s holding up well after nearly 2 years…and yes the dogs go in there, hence the teeny scratches. But do you think its wearing well because its oak or because it’s not quite as high traffic area as the LR? (Actually the only area in the LR I’d really be concerned about is the ‘walk way’ from the front door to through to the kitchen/dining area. Do chime in: Inquiring minds want to know 🙂 P.S. I have watched all your videos 🙂
I think it would work ok. We painted our wood stairs (with a water based clear coat on top) and they’ve held up much better than expected for over 3 years now. There’s a couple of chips and cracks where the wood was split, but they don’t look worn down or anything like that. We don’t really wear shoes in the house, so I’m sure that’s helped a bit too. The plywood would be softer than the oak flooring, so it’s a bit more prone to dings & scratches, but I think the paint would hold up about the same as it has on the oak. The higher the traffic, the more they’ll probably wear down. You could possibly try an oil based paint instead of water based for more durability, although you’d have to keep the room off limits for a couple of days to dry (not to mention it would stink like crazy.)
We are in the process of doing plywood floors. We cut the planks but I am noticing that there are alot of splinters. We sanded and it smooths out somewhat. If we sand too much it seems to produce more splintering. We stained and are going to do poly. What poly do you suggest and also does the poly put enough of a seal that it covers up the splintering problem? Have yiu had any issues with splinters after all this time? We have little ones and am concerned with running and splinter injuries.
Hmm, I’m not sure. When We cut our, there were a few splinters, but we sanded all the cut edges with a palm sander to smooth them over a bit. We just used regular oil based poly, but I probably would use a heavy traffic formula next time just to be extra safe. We haven’t had any splintering problems and they’ve held up great. We also don’t wear shoes in the house, so that’s helped keep them in good shape.
Hey Kevin,
Thanks for this informationI I installed Plywood floors over Labor day weekend. I spent more than 50 hours over three days getting the job done. Your site was a great help in doing my floors. Here’s a link to how I did it: http://www.houseonyale.com/category/plywood-floors/
Glad to help out. Your floors turned out awesome!
I am thinking of doing something like this. The only difference is I want to scorch the plywood so the grain is darker. Then instead of a white wash I want to use a light gray to give the wood a weathered look!!
Your opinion would be appreciated!!!
That sounds like it would look really cool!
Hey! I love the tutorial! I’m just curious how are the floors holding up after almost two and a half years? My husband and I are considering doing this to our house but I can’t find much information on the longevity of the floors. Just curious to see if you are still enjoying them, what is maintenance like, would you do it again or opt for engineered hard wood if you had an unlimited amount of money lol? Thanks for your feedback!
They have held up great and we’re still very happy with them. We installed them in summer of 2013, so they are almost 4 years old now and still look just as nice as when they were put down. We do try to be a little careful with them since they’re just pine, so we don’t wear shoes in the house and we don’t have any kids or pets adding to the wear. For or house, I don’t think I would choose any other type of flooring. They work perfectly here.
Hey Kevin,
The floors look great and your blog is very informative. We recently started ripping up carpets in our four bedrooms. The first three bedrooms had oak parquet floors under the carpet, for the most part they were in pretty good shape for being almost 45 years old. We tore up the carpet in the master bedroom, and were disappointed to find only plywood subfloor. Thinking of either doing a wide plank plywood floor stained and urethaned. I was wondering if you would have any suggestions on how to do a parquet floor from plywood?
I haven’t really seen parquet style plywood floors, but I have seen plywood floors installed checkerboard style, and they looked great.
If you put a 1 – 1.5 degree bevel on the edges when ripping it would tighten the seams.
I’ve also been thinking about using plywood for floors, but doing it a bit differently. Instead of cutting the sheets into planks, use a router (preferably a CNC router, but you could do it by hand) to groove the surface to make it look like planks. You could easily create the appearance of random-length planks like you’d have with ordinary flooring. Of course you wouldn’t want all the “planks” to line up at the ends of the sheets, so you’d cut back some “planks” on the ends to fit into mirror-image cuts on the next sheet (okay, I guess you really would need to use a CNC router for this, unless you were very careful). If you used tongue & groove plywood everything would stay nicely lined up, at least in the long direction (if using CNC, you could even cut tongues & grooves along the shorter sides!). Fastening it down would take some creativity since you couldn’t blind nail individual “planks” (just whole sheets). Anyway, it seems to me that this could be easier than cutting real planks, and since there would be far fewer joints to floor would be even more dimensionally stable.
I think I remember seeing a house feature a few years ago that had ceilings cut like that out of big panels. They looked really cool and fit perfectly like a puzzle.
This was so awesome to watch….thanks so much for the step-by-step! I am ‘fairly’ handy and I have all the tools so I am going to give this a shot in one of my tiny bathrooms that only has a clawfoot tub ie no shower so not much moisture to worry about. My house is 108 years old and I have two very small bathrooms. Would you recommend any changes in my project due to the H20 aspect? Also, I will be covering 50 year old linoleum so can I nail into it? I imagine that I should use floor adhesive as well. Thanks a million!!
I think you could probably get away without the gaps between the planks, and I’d put several more coats of poly on them to help with the moisture.