Using Plywood for Finished Floors. Yes, We Really Did That! Part 1

[Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to my Northern readers! I always say you have the best date for a Thanksgiving gathering. I hope you are enjoying it.]

 I have been wanting to share this post with you for a while! I have so much to say it will take several posts to get to it! 

In the midst of the Tile Decisions Difficulties, we were also making decisions on flooring. As with everything we attempt to do, it was complicated. 

First of all, we had radiant heat for our floor. That was not a bad decision, but the best way to cover a heating system like this is with tile or a spreadable, lightweight concrete type product. Tile was just too harsh of a surface for our living spaces, and the quote for the pour-in stuff was more than we could swallow at the time. It also would have raised the floor level a bit more than planned because of the thickness needed, and that was going to maybe cause a problem with the stair landing. That would have been okay I guess, as the tile that we were going to put in bathrooms and such was already messing with our finished floor levels (we had not considered the "sandwich" that tile takes when we were planning). Still the price was daunting. 

I visited a Cracker Barrel restaurant that had moved into our area, and wouldn't you know I was taking pictures of the floors to show my husband. What about this wood-look tile, honey?

We had to look around for another type of floring. Wood floor has very little ability to spread that radiant heat, but people were saying it could work. Engineered flooring is listed as an option online for radiant heated floors. So we started to look at prices. I have already mentioned that my husband found the quality of some of that flooring rather poor.  We looked at just wood, but that comes with its own set of problems that have to do with the weather and again, prices seemed so high for hardwood. 

My vision for our flooring, especially in the kitchen, was something like an old General Store floor. Something from the 1820s pioneer era that had been walked on for hundreds of years and had that aged, last-forever patina. I knew that with my family's daily usage, it would get all the scratches and dings just like an antique floor, so may as well go for that look in the first place. We were going to be stuck with softwood anyway because of the price of hardwood.

 I also wanted very wide boards, like a tree-slice width! We liked the look of wide boards, but the wider you go the more you pay in the flooring world.

I started looking for more options online, and looking for this little idea that popped into my head: what if we just sliced up plywood? It's like engineered flooring. You can get some really nice plywood too. I found very few online who were actually doing it, or doing it to a tasteful level. Plywood can look like giant zebra stripes or tiger stripes on the floor. The color contrast when stained can be too strong with that effect. But the idea kept with me, and eventually (I do not know how!) I convinced my husband to try it.

So a-shopping we will go, and we were of course looking for really, really nice plywood. Yikes again on prices. Then one day I went to the local lumber outlet store and saw some really cheap, awful, beat-up, horrid stuff. Splinters abounded. It looked like it had been chewed up by a dinosaur. Literally had holes in the top layer. But, it had character! And, it was around $25 for a 4x8 sheet. We picked the best of the stack to bring home and play with it. 

At home, my sons ripped it into 5 and 7 inch wide boards. I think they might have done 10 inch boards too, but there is only so far you can get with plywood before the sliced board looks like plywood. However I was enthused about these you see here. 

 Sanding it was a joke. Those splinters ran deep.

The boards with the tighter "grain" look were of course the most desirable. But even knots were welcome for my General Store floor. 

I will show you more of our experiment in the next post, including what it looked like with various stains and  laid out on the floor.