Interesting flooring option

I bought real solid pre-finished oak flooring from Lumber Liquidators for $1.49 a sq ft. It's not the top grade stuff, but it sure looks beautiful. It's thinner than the expensive stuff, but it is real oak and going to be a lot tougher and longer lasting than OSB

I've made flooring out of 1 X 12 inch wide pine planks. Sand them, route the edges just slightly, nail them down and paint with polyurethane. I didn't even stain them. It's a gorgeous floor. It'll get more rustic, but will probably last forever.

I picked boards with a lot of blue staining because I like the look. Everyone who sees that floor says "Wow!"

Now what about some pictures?
Thanks

I'd love to see some too. Rustic is what I'm looking for. We live in an older log home, so rustic fits.

We had a man that worked for us when we owned the roll off business made a floor like this. The plant we landfilled for Had a resaw outfit in the trailer plant that they ran. One part they made left a perfect 12 inch sqaure drop from 3/4 inch osb. The other by product was a 3 or 4 inch wide drop of 3/4 inch plywood the full 8 feet. His floor was tiled and he put a layer of glue down and and layed a border of the 3/4 inch strips down. Then he put the squares in a grid of OSB and plywood. Then after the glue cured he ran a floor buffer with a sanding pad on it and then varnished it and resanded and repeated. its been there over 12 years now like it new.


One company that still resaws there has alot of triangles and squares we bury that I think about using them on.

We bought 6 inch wide white pine planking from Lumber Liquidators for less than $1/sq foot.
There are a few pics here:

A little more progress on our future home....

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NO! I used (cheap) luan plywood, marked it off into 6" planks, drew them on with pencil! EASY, looks Great! Only problem I had was not buying it all in one lot. Some of my sheets are a different color. I'll deal with that later as money allows, buthis is REALLY a good look! Sealed woth 2 coats of gym floor finish. LOVE IT!

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This thread has me thinking........

We have lots of Blackjack Oak on our place in MO that need to get thinned...probably in excess of 200 trees varying mostly from 5 inches to 10 inches in diameter. I figured those trees would just provide heat in the winter.

I wonder if you could slice those logs like a sausage, perhaps 2 or 3 inches thick, peel the bark and coat with polyurethane. Then lay them like stones and grout them? A good sub-floor would be essential to keeping this floor intact, I would think? Would probably be on a floating slab.

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That'd be cool, tarbe. Sort of like a cordwood look, I would imagine. How would you fasten the log rounds down? You wouldn't want to nail them. Liquid Nail?

i did the paper floor. it is wearing great. if you do get a gouge or mark, rip a new paper piece, put it down and seal. i used a waterbase floor poly, no smell. http://www.backwoodshome.com/nl/nl1007.html scroll down, way long past the recipes, etc. there is a photo of my floor. the appraisers couldn't figure out how it was done.

you could do lots of variations...i used 'contactor' paper, from lumber yard, on a 3ft long roll, by 100 yards or so. the color changes you can see are from using both sides of the roll, one side had more reddish tones than the other. you could stain them with woodstain, or a runny acrylic paint mixture. or even coffee. you could wad them up for more crinkles. you could write cool sayings all over, making your floor a 'good read'. draw or stamp pictures, heck put actual photos down! do not try dried flowers tho.!! they turned black and very ugly. i did that in the closet, was gonna do the bedroom but it was so bad! oh well.

i have no troubles with water, it will turn dark but then goes light again later. i do have heated floor. grease is a slight issue, but it too eventually lightens back up. and, i can always 'patch' it. mops with vinegar or mop n glow, or mostly, just dry dust or vacuum.

That came out beautifully, chewie!
It has an expensive flagstone type of look to it.

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We had this on our kitchen floor (over wood parquet) and while it was WONDERFUL, we were told it's no longer available at the retail level. Had to re-do the floor with something else, and getting that GymSeal off was an incredible pain -- what was left was still impermeable.

Our homestead floor is cabinet grade hickory plywood. We keep kicking around the idea of replacing it with hardwood and then it dawned on me that it IS hardwood. The Amish builder used linseed oil on it for protection so we are thinking of maybe using a different stain on it. I can't say that I am too crazy over the nails that show on it but the overall look of the floor is very unique.

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Let me chime in on the torn paper. It's a little more trouble but if you paint the paper before you tear it, the tears look like veins or cracks in the floor. I did it on a ceiling I think it looks good.

thank you! the edges that are seen easily are simply the paper tearing in half thickness-wise. its very heavy thick paper, if torn just so it tears so its only half as thick, then leaves that cool dark edge when poly-ed down. not quick, but was cheap. in fact, now a guy is gonna pay me to do his floors!

Oh yeah! Great job!

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We will be putting down a new floor when we get closer to the end of this remodel. My plans are a random width yellow pine floor. I just love yellow pine and, even though I am on a slab, I want it and my son said said we could do it. I am looking forward to it.

There are some great ideas on this thread. I've bookmarked some of them. I have laminate in my house and peel and stick floor tile in the kitchen and baths, and I'm not satisfied with how either are holding up (baths are okay, but the kitchen is already in need of some tile replacement, while the laminate has swollen anywhere the slightest bit of water as seeped through - my kids were the masters of leaving wet towels and half-finished drinks lying about ). I need to look into the laminate guarantee, and see if they will pay off on the product where it has chipped, at least. The problem is that to fix the chipped and warped sections, the WHOLE floor has to be taken up and redone - which is going to be a major pain in the tuchus. Might be easier to do the paper floor or stained plywood strips or such. Certainly should be cheaper.

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Chewie - We really like your floors!!!

Loved seeing the pics of your homestead too

It is a little time consuming but I have made a lot of water proof trailer side walls with OSB for horse trailers. A floor could be done the same way. Once you seal it with laqurer then start building up coats of clear concrete sealer. The things I have made had about a 1/8 inch of sealer on it. You have to let each coat dry then sand lightly then another coat and so on, but it will be water proof at the piont. I also do this with a clear apoxy for log end tables and slab work. All have turned out well, But the apoxy would be expensive for the much of it. I used a gallon on a 22x48 coffee table. The apoxy cost me 48 bucks and is a 2 part so a lot of carfull mixing so you do not waste much of it.

We finished the plywood floor in our cabin by staining it, then a clear varnish. It's waterproof, easy to clean, looks great and was cheap!