Beautiful wood floor

I learned a valuable lesson the last part of April - If you show John an idea from Pinterest, he might get the grand idea to start a project right then and there.

When we first looked at our Elmo house, John loved the engineered-laminate hardwood floors in the front room. I didn't see the same thing as he did. I saw the floor was warped, cracked and had HUGE gaps between planks. Sorry we have no before pictures.

Apparently, someone had installed the wood floor when the planks were wet and as they dried over time, each plank cupped, cracked and shrank leaving a washboard effect across the entire floor. And at the end of each plank, there were gaps anywhere from 1/2" to 1 1/2". 

It was a nightmare to clean. A vacuum would not clean it because of the washboard effect. It dumped all the sucked up stuff on the next bump. Sweeping made all the dirt fall in the gaps. Ugh!!!!! My swiffer would only clean the highest points which left a disgusting path behind. We had to go on hands-and-knees with baby wipes and the vacuum hose to clean the gaps. It was pathetic.

So as John and I sat down to the write out our summer must-do/want-to-do list, we listed many, many things. Put them in order of priority. And decided on our top 9. It looked like this:
1. clean out wood pellet stove pipes and cap it.
2. finish painting outside
3. rebuild back deck because it is going to fall apart any day now.
4. install cement 3' sidewalk around house to protect basement from water
5. fix broken downstairs windows
6. install rain gutters
7. install doors and door trim upstairs. Only the main bathroom, coat closet and Duncan's bedroom have doors.
8. move the door in the "master bath" because the sliding door doesn't work
9. do something with master bedroom floor which has only the sub-floor exposed

We usually get 4 or 5 things done depending on time and money. Those in italics were the items we deemed as safety issues and must do! Okay, the list goes on and on but replacing the front room floor was last. 
last: replace living room/entry floor and paint stairs
second to last: build flower bed box in front yard
third to last: paint inside rooms

Dismantling floor

I showed John a pin about painting or staining the sub-floor and the pictures were convincing. So he immediately went to the front room and ripped up the washboard floor within a few hours. Great! A couple of cans of paint, right? 

Too excited to wait

Nope!!!! 

After looking at the horrible condition of the sub-floor, our options changed and our project list got turned upside-down. 

So I showed John another pin where a couple purchased plywood, cut them into strips, installed them like a hardwood floor and stained it.

All cleaned up

Off I went to the local building supply store, purchased 8 sheets of 1/2" plywood, 2 quarts of stain, 1 gallon of polyurethane, sandpaper and other miscellaneous supplies. (In the end, it took more poly, sandpaper and wood putty than we had originally thought.)

Now the real work begins.

I had the guys at the lumber store cut the sheets into fourths so I could get them into my car. Yes, my Toyota Camry trunk and back seat.

John cut them into 4" strips (next time we will do 6").  Because the strips were not cut perfectly straight, it became a jigsaw puzzle to fit them together with minimal gaps which were eventually filled with stain-able wood putty.
 

jigsaw puzzle placement

Since we were doing this our way, we decided to make a few designs. 

We put a 8" border around the outer edge of the living room. 

Seeing another pin, John's creative juices began creating ideas on how to make different designs. 

border

He used an old piece of plywood that was downstairs when we moved in. It had five layers of paint that he had to sand off before they could be created. 

deciding and designing

The upper landing of the stairs has four squares with diagonal planks creating a diamond pattern.  Every other plank is stained and unstained.

The lower landing entrance floor has a double diamond pattern.

upper landing

He thought I was crazy when I asked him to use some of the old floor as the kick plates on the stairs as a constant reminder of what the old floor looked like.

lower entry floor

All of our living room furniture was in the dining room covering my pantry cupboards so it was a challenge to cook without anything from my pantry. 



It took about 6 weeks from beginning to end. It was a challenge but it looks beautiful! We are very proud of it. And it is easy to clean.

finished floor

 
FYI: Things we finished -

Replaced living room/entry floor and painted stairs
Built flower bed box in front yard (it houses our tiny garden of 6 cherry tomato plants and two cabbages along with flowers)
Painted main bathroom and redecorated it, painted front room and redecorated it.