The front room is almost done!

Here we are, the end of February and still working on floors.  We have almost finished the front room floor and I must say, it's even more beautiful than the bedroom.  I put down four coats of stain and, so far, 3 coats of polyurethane.  I will put the last poly coat on tonight and then I think will call it done.

So, here it is almost complete,





It's hard to believe it's inexpensive plywood.  This 24 x 12 room cost about $350 from start to finish.  Everyone who walks through is amazed at how good it looks.  My son likes it so much he's planning the same thing on his next floor project. 

and here we have....

The finished floor in the front room....

TADA!!!

So what do you think?

It really was pretty simple all things considered.  It went something like this...

1. Select the 4 x 8 sheets from Home Depot.  We chose to buy finished on one side so sanding wasn't needed
2. Ask Home Depot to cut it into 12 inch planks (that's what we wanted for a farm house look)
3. Hubby laid out the planks how we (I) wanted using a circular saw to cut them down to size as needed making sure to leave about 1/4 inch space next to the wall. (some sanding was needed on a few edges)
4. When it was all down, sized accordingly and pleasing to the eye hubby nailed it all down into place. Planks are fitted as closely together as possible.
5. Enter me...sweep and mop so all debris is gone and floor is relatively clean
6. When I was ready to apply the stain I had a bowl of water and rag along side the can of stain.
7. I had read the plywood would accept the stain better if it was damp so I rubbed the floor with the wet rag and then applied the stain right after.  The process took about an hour and a half to do this 25 x 11 room

Then, daily I applied more coats of stain, minus the wet rag after the first time until I had 4 coats down.  Next a coat of polyurethane every day until I had four coats down. 

Finished Floor!

Whew!  It's done!  Between the job, the cats, church and all the other house fixes, we finally finished the floor.  I love love love it!  What do you think?

Can you believe it's plywood?  Not only is it "just" plywood it's only 1/4 in. plywood.  We're ready to move forward with the rest of the house with confidence.  This pecan stain is pretty but I think I'll go with something a little darker for the front room.  This new house gets a lot more light than I'm accustomed to and a bolder, richer color may be a better choice.

A beautiful discovery

Doug and I have been working on the house steadily since we closed on 12/12/12 and although our progress is slow it's such a delight watching it all come together.  My most exciting project has been the floor.  Since we need to find low cost ways to refurbish this house I started browsing Pinterest to find low-budget inspiration and discovered the beauty of plywood!  Yep...PLYWOOD flooring.  Some people are so creative but I'm not one of them.  I never would have thought of doing a plywood floor but then I saw this...

 Now, isn't that beautiful? This is plywood!!  I found lots more diy plywood floors all over the internet too but this was the prettiest in my opinion.  I emailed this blogger and asked her opinion.  Shannon kindly emailed me back to tell me after 2 years she was still so pleased with it and would definitely do it again.  So I showed it to Doug and we talked about it and now, thanks to some very creative inspiration VIOLA!! Here is my new bedroom floor getting all pretty with a nice pecan stain




 I'm so happy with my new floor.  It turned out so well we decided to do the whole house in plywood.  The only thing we are doing different is a darker stain and a thicker plywood.  My new house gets a lot of natural light streaming through and the floor really could be a darker, richer color so I'm going bolder throughout the rest of the house.  We used 1/4 inch plywood since we were learning/experimenting and if it didn't turn out well I didn't want to end up throwing away too much money.  The rest of the house will be 1/2 inch which is more commonly used. However, I must say even though it's only 1/4 inch it still looks great, way better than laminate and much less expensive.