Using Plywood for Finished Floors. Yes, We Really Did That! Part 5

 

As the floor marched across the top of the radiant heating, in the delicate process of nailing it down, our man-in-charge (one of our sons) became quite concerned about the amount of dirt everyone was tracking in on the heat spreaders.

Rules and regulations, even blockades began to appear. When he got to the entry, we weren’t allowed to come in the front door. Then when he let us come through, he had the dining room and kitchen blocked off. We were bringing in too much dirt. Because of this blockade, we could no longer access the extra refrigerator, but he would just go in with his (supposedly) pristine shoes and fetch whatever we needed for meals. He then became the “Ruler of Egypt” because we had to go ask him for corn and bread. 

(I cannot recall at this moment about the signs on the door but I will try to remember for you later. I think it had something to do with another project)

The stuff in the kitchen was moved and that was the final bit of plywood flooring nailed down! You can see in this photo that some of the boards were much lighter than others, and I will tell you in a later post how we dealt with that. While this post is not about the final finish, I will let you see another sneak peak of our color decision making process. 

My daughter sanded some plywood so I could do some color sampling. Unfortunately, I could not stand the noxious smell of the regular stain that you get at the hardware stores. You know, the durable stuff everyone else uses? I couldn't even bring the boards indoors that I had stained with that stuff. I could not imagine doing a house-full of floors with it! So I ordered some samples from a place called EcosPaints. Ecos wood stain is NOT SMELLY! I was very pleased about that. As you can see they had a good variety of colors.

(I will fast forward and tell you that since I used that brand until this post, it has not proven as durable as I would have hoped for certain applications, but I will do a post on that at a later date.)

I did like a few of these stains, but the real test eliminated them all!

We gave it the stomp test. 

We stomped all over the boards, and I am sure it was the kids' favorite thing to do that day. Remember the wise advice I had been given about choosing your floor color to match the dirt outside?  Since we have light colored dirt this was going to be a real hard test for any stain to pass. 

Personally, I really liked the darker stain. It had more of the old-General-store vibe I was going for. But  can you imagine the hourly clean up? We don’t tend to take our regular shoes off at the door in this part of the country (muddy boots excepted), although we are getting better at that recently. We still have a lot of construction yet to go through and I wouldn't make anyone take their workboots off. I am not sure I would even require company to take shoes off. So the dark board lost. I thought the lightest oak color might win, but nope, it also showed dirt.

The winner that day was the unmarked board that was simply coated in polyurethane!

 I think the lighter colors went better with the plywood anyway, at least they didn't show the contrast of the safari stripes as bad. (By the way, it's starting to look like legitimate flooring, isn't it?)

To be continued...