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12.02.2010

Hindsight is 20/20

Dustin and I thought and thought and thought about what to do with the plywood flooring we have laid. Our plan all along has been to paint it. That's why we left a 1/16 inch gap between the boards-- we wanted you to be able to TELL that it was planks and not solid flooring.

Then, people started looking at it as we worked. Everyone who saw it said to stain it. So, we decided to stain it to see what it looked like before we made the final decision. Once you paint, there's no turning back. We though we'd give staining it a shot. (And, we only used 2 quarts that were $9.99 each)




Can you believe that this started as this? It has been a lot of work, but it is worth it! We never expected it to look GOOD, haha. We thought we would want to cover it up all along. Boy, we were wrong.






Yesterday, we hand stained the entire 533 sq ft of this room. It took about 4 and a half hours.



My motto is "work smarter not harder". I threw that out the window with stain fumes on this project, apparently. :)

Had we known that we were going to stain rather than paint, we would have done it with the plywood on sawhorses and in 17 nice big sheets rather than in 136 strips that were nailed to the floor... and we wouldn't have left a gap. We also wouldn't have purchase $50 worth of paint for the floor.  oh, hindsight :) Hopefully the paint we bought for the floor isn't too dark for the hallway walls, I might try to use one of the two gallons there- eventually.



Dustin is starting the poly process today and will finish it tonight or early in the morning. We are going to try to do 4 coats. Hopefully we have enough!

The plan is to shut off the room and the upstairs and crack open all the windows tonight. He'll have a fire blazing to help keep the temperature up while it dries too (yes, poly is flammable, but it's a wood stove just off the garage below that vents straight into that room :)). Meanwhile, we plan to camp out in the living room downstairs to escape the fumes and the chilliness that's going to be upstairs!

If we can't stand it, my mom might get a midnight sleepover with two cats who hate each other (and hate her cats), a needy beagle, and us!

I go back to the acupuncturist later today too. He'll be glad when our renovation project is over :) Although we wear masks, every week he notices that I still have a lot of "dampness" and irritation in my lungs. Part of that is hereditary. My whole family has a chronic cough/throat clearing issue. But, I know that a lot of it is from us doing projects like this trying to make our house cleaner and less 'carpety'. In the long run, it will be worth it, but I wish it wasn't so messy along the way!

**Update** We definitely couldn't sleep here last night so at midnight we packed up both cats (Mom had already came to get Ellie) and headed to Mom's to sleep in the fresh air. It is also drying pretty slowly, so he's only able to re-coat every 8 hours.  Layer 3 is getting applied now. Hopefully layer 4 happens later today. Then, it is just a waiting game for it to dry and cure. Here's to some extra patience :)

*Also, since this is 100% trial and error, I will be posting more of a tutorial once we are complete done. For now, I'll just stick with the handful of pics here and there :) The tutorial, along with a list of items, where we got it all, and the cost, will be posted on December 15.

35 comments:

  1. oh my gosh! It's looking gorgeous! Seriously! Isn't it a lot better than you ever imagined?
    Ohhh, how awful that we have hit such a COLD spell. Welcome to the ohio valley! You never know what we'll get weatherwise. :(
    good luck!
    glad you're going to the acupuncturist today. You need some relaxation! heheheh
    gail

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  2. Oh my gosh! That looks awesome!! I love it!

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  3. Shannon - yes, I follow your blog, but am not a registered follower...
    ANYWAY, the floor looks amazing! You, both, are so talented and crafty.
    If you ever want to travel north and get away from your own projects and work on someone else's... well, our home is always open for your company! ;) Take care!

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  4. Well, when I read the title of your post I thought "uh oh!" but it sounds like you two have the project worked out. Life is just like this project and the older you get the more you'll think about what you could have done faster, better, smarter. The end, if you're happy with the finished project then it doesn't matter. If you only knew all the projects that Hubby and I could have done different, lol.

    My favorite is right after we'd finished marriage counseling at about the 8 year mark of marriage and we decided to paint the exterior of our home. We were really into "compromise" and eager to use our counseling knowledge and be accommodating to each other. Good grief was that awful, just awful and we had to repaint the house in less than a year because it was such an awful color. In hindsight, we should have argued it out till I GOT WHAT I WANTED, lol!

    We laugh almost 25 years into marriage at all our goofs but we are still crazy about each other and that's what matters most.

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  5. That looks AMAZING pal!! I can't wait to see it in person. Nick was telling me about it last night, and the eggs were great btw =)

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  6. Shut the front door! That's PLYWOOD??? It looks awesome!

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  7. The flooring is GORGEOUS! I'm so glad you are posting this. I will definintely keep that in mind for future home improvement projects!

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  8. The floor looks awesome!!

    Hi there- I found you through the friday blog hop and am your newest follower :) It would be great if you stopped by and returned the love!

    http://www.waveoflifesurfstudio.blogspot.com/

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  9. I'm so glad I found your blog! I've been considering doing something like this too, but haven't found much out there. I love love LOVE the way this looks. Awesome job.

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  10. Hi Shannon...visiting from My Repurposed Life...what a transformation! I've been in love with the painted plywood planks but have never seen anyone stain them. They look terrific! Hope the fume die down soon, too. :)

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  11. Thanks for linking up.
    have a great weekend,
    gail
    ps you already know I love this floor!

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  12. Wow it looks great! I never knew there was such a thing as plywood flooring! Would mopping the stain on have saved your knees? Isn't that how the professionals apply it to regular wood flooring? I seem to remember seeing the stain being poured on the floor then spread with a mop...? Either way, it looks incredible and I can't wait for you to show it with the poly coat on top!

    Michelle

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  13. That's awesome and very brave of you. Turned out teriffic--what a great big room!

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  14. PLYWOOD! Oh my gosh... this is amazing. Plywood of all things. The thing we strive to cover up.

    And just so you know, plywood wears like crazy! I lived with plywood floors for 2 years and they still looked brand new by the time they were (ahem) covered up! I have a feeling you've started a new revolution here. :)

    Donna
    http://funkyjunkinteriors.blogspot.com/

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  15. How did you do this floor? Did you cut the plywood into pieces or????

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  16. Wow, I am truly speechless! I have been thinking putting some kind of plank on my kitchen celing and couldn't decide in what kind of wood to get.

    There you are solved my wood kind question! I think I love you! :)

    Thanks for sharing and make sure do the tutorial as well!

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  17. Wow, the picture sure looks good. I hope you get the floor of your dreams.

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  18. Amazing! I would never have thought plywood could look so good. Are you saying that you would have put the whole sheets on the floor instead of cutting it into strips? I'd love to see more pictures if you could post some when the poly is all done.

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  19. What made you think of plywood as a plank flooring? I love it, it just never thought about that. I wish my daughter and her husband hadn't already bought flooring for their house redo, wonder if they can take it back? Hmm.

    It sure looks good. Great project.

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  20. Wow! That's amazing!

    Thanks for linking up for Friday Favorites last week. Hope to see you again this week. Also, I'd like to invite you to come by next Thursday for my Holly Bloggy Christmas Recipe Party!

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  21. So let me jump on the bandwagon...I AM AMAZED! You are brilliant and you have to feel awesome about this. I love it.

    So...you need to come thrift with Gail and I..would you be in?

    Hope you don't mind if I tweet this...I am in awe.

    Cheers~
    e

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  22. Beautiful! It's amazing what creative people can do. Well done!

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  23. We done the same thing as well. You can check ours out on my blog. We love ours and I don't mind the cracks at all but I love the old look to a floor. We get compliments from everyone that comes over!

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  24. I love this and think we might do this in our hall. I wonder if you could do the staining before you lay it down. Then do the poly after? What do you think?

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  25. We are about to follow in your footsteps and make a plywood wood floor. We have bought the wood, the stain, the glue--we are totally committed to the project. A good friend of ours is skeptical tho...so I'm wondering, is the floor fairly even now that it's been installed for a while? Our friend insists that without the tongue and groove of a traditional hardwood floor, the surface of the floor won't be even. This is really not a deterent to our plans, but I'm curious about this. Your floor looks great BTW.

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  26. thank you for allowing me to use your hindsight ;)

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  27. Your floors look terrific. I am curious about the gap and if that worked out well. In my head I'm seeing that small gap filled with crumbs and dust and debris which might be too hard to clean out. Now that you've lived with it for awhile, I'd love to hear how it's holding up and if you'd do anything differently.

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  28. Hi, I too would like an update. Have the boards warped or curled? Has it held up well as far as scratch and dents go?

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  29. How to you maintain and clean the floor?

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  30. I am hoping that you are still on this blog. This is great and might be just the thing for our bedroom. The work looks like planking and you were a genius to use the little craft paint to get rid of the white! You have had this for a couple years now. How is the floor standing up? I know that plywood layers are not very thick. So, my concern is that it won't wear very well. I would hate to do the work and end up needing to remove/redo in a year or two.
    Also, you said in one spot that you would not leave a space between boards if you knew you were staining. Why is that? Is that your feeling still?

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  31. Thanks for writing such a good article, I stumb led onto your blog and read a few post. I like your style of writing... Hardwood Flooring Orange County

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  32. Wow- it is a beautiful floor! I can't even imagine how hard that was on your knees and back. WHEW! A question- could you do something like this if you have a concrete floor? You talked about nails so I just assumed the flooring was being nailed to a wood subfloor. Congratulations on a job well done. Blessings.

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    Metallic Epoxy Flooring Installer NJ

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