Apt Blog Title

I've been extremely quiet lately, for that I apologize. I received a message on FB asking if I was still blogging and I think it was the little nudge I needed to do a long overdue update. Life is still flying by at a rate that is frankly quite frightening. We are still accomplishing new tasks on the house and property everyday and winter is (God willing) coming to a close.

Quick recap on where we are personally. Last July we got a bit of a push to jump in and finish the unfinished portion of the house (spare rooms and guest bath). With the arrival of our first child in just about 2 weeks, he gave us that little nudge that we needed to jump back into hardcore construction mode again.

List of current projects...
1) Coop- Just needs siding and it's 100% complete. Hoping to get this summer.
2) Spare room #1 (nursery)- Completely done! Just finished putting some pipe shelving up this past weekend. The room is complete with floor, door handles, trim, even a real ceiling light!
3) Master Bath- Still needs quite a bit of work. There is still not trim up in it. I'm trying to convince Brad to just rip out the current counter tops/sinks and put something new in because I'm super lazy and don't want to paint them. Also, I can't figure out what color I want to paint them anyway. We'll see if I'm successful. We need to put something up around the tub as well. I think Brad is planning on using either the old bamboo flooring we have or the cedar fence planks... In a perfect world, we'd just rip out the tub and shower and do a large standup shower across the wall. We'll see what this summer brings.
5) Door Handles- We have them! They are installed. We can actually close doors without jabbing pencils through the holes.
6) Lighting- We finished the exposed bulb cluster light over the dining room table and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. It was a bit of a pain, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I have everything we need for my mason jar chandelier. Maybe that will be this weekends project. It would be nice to get that one up in the kitchen.
7) Cosmetically we've updated a lot of little things around the house. I'll do my best to get the camera charged tonight and get some updated shots of how things look.

State of Things...

We're moving.


Yeah, I just said that! We are moving this weekend. FINALLY!!!!!! I almost don'g believe that it's true. After this weekend, when I look out my windows this is what I'll see.

 

Below are some rough photos of the state of things. I'm hoping to get over tonight and get some stuff cleaned up for some better shots, but bad photos are better than no photos right. The only major change is that most of the cabinet doors are up now and they weren't when I took pictures on Friday.

DIY Plywood Floor Tutorial

I've never done a tutorial before, but I've had a lot of people ask us about our floors, so I decided to put it out there in case anyone might benefit from our experience. I'll start with a quick back story.

My husband and I stumbled upon a property for sale that we absolutely loved. It was 20 acres, partially wooded, and extremely close to town. The only drawback was that it was also home to a double wide, which we did not particularly love. I like to believe that I am pretty open minded about aesthetics, but this thing was pretty hideous. It was in good condition, but definitely needed a major interior face lift. We eventually want to build on this property and get rid of the double wide, so after successfully closing on the property we started trying to come up with cheap and creative ideas for remodeling. Flooring was extremely difficult because the DW is over 1,800 sq ft and having dogs, we hate carpet. Everything we looked at was going to run us over $2/sq ft and we just didn't want to sink that kind of money into it. So, after scouring the internet for ideas, this is what we ended up doing.

Our first step was picking out Plywood that we liked and was reasonably priced. Not as easy as you'd think. Thankfully, when we were ready to buy the wood Menards was having a sale on 1/4 birch veneer plywood. It was over $10 off a for a 4' x 8' sheet. We ordered a bunk (50 sheets) to start with. This cost us right around $800 and would cover a bit under 1,500 sq/ft. We then had the boards ripped into 1' x 8' boards. 

We toyed around with various ways to lay and secure the boards. We looked at using laminate glue and laying them almost like tile, but that was going to get extremely pricey. Almost the cost of the wood itself. We decided on using a combo of sub-floor glue and nails. At first we were only applying the glue to the center of the boards, but after laying about 2 rows, we discovered that is was better to apply it to the edges to make sure the the boards didn't ever pop up on the sides.

After gluing a board down we then nailed each board in place as well. We made a "nail template" that you can see below to ensure that all the boards were nailed down evenly. You can't really see the nail holes now that they're done, but it was very handy to have. We used a chalk line to start with squared up to the center of the house and then we just started putting boards down like it was a normal hardwood floor.

We used 1" straight nails to secure the boards. I really wanted to use hardcut masonry nails, but this would have added not only significant cost, but significant time as well. I would have loved the look that the masonry nails added, but I'm glad we went with the cheaper/faster method.

Measuring and cutting was definitely the most time consuming part of the process. Luckily my husband has a good head for math and took care of it. 

After the floors were down we sanded everything with an electric hand sander and 220 grit paper. We considered the idea for renting a floor sander, but were concerned that we might go through the veneer on the plywood which we definitely didn't want to happen. There were quite a few spots where the boards were slightly uneven where the edges so we sanded those down. In the really bad spots we went ahead and sanded through the veneer to even them out and it gave the floor more of a rustic look which we really like. After sanding we vacuumed the floors and went over them with tack cloth to pick up any remaining dirt or sawdust.

These are the floors after being sanded and prepped. You could potentially skip the next steps and go straight to sealing them at this point if you wanted a lighter floor. We wanted dark almost black floors so at this point we started the staining process.

The stain we used was Miniwax Ebony. You can use any color or brand that you want, just make sure you test it on a board before applying it. Seems like common sense, but I have been known to simply buy a paint color without testing it out first, so I thought I'd mention it. Patience isn't my best virtue.


We used a deck pad stain applicator to apply the stain. We put it on pretty thick to make sure that the edges and nail holes got stained and there weren't any sneaky natural birch spots showing through. We applied stain on 2 rows of boards at a time, allowed it to sit for 5-10 minutes and then wiped away any excess. Then we rinsed and repeated. It wasn't a hard process, but it is frustrating that you can only do 2 rows at a time, otherwise it's too difficult to reach the boards and remove any excess stain.

 After the first coat the floors were a bit splotchy and uneven. Honestly, I kind of liked the way they looked with only one coat. If I hadn't wanted them a little bit darker I may have tried to convince the DH to leave them with only one coat.

After the second coat of stain I was happy we went with 2 the color was just so much richer! It's hard to tell from the photo, but it really warmed up the floors.

Once all the floors had their second coat of stain we were ready for the sealer. We went with a product called Bona Mega Clear HD and I must say I was pretty thrilled with it. We chose the satin finish. There are a couple of ways to apply it but we went with a T-bar. From all the videos I watched it seemed to be the easiest and fastest application method.

I wish I had taken some video of the actual application process, but sadly I didn't. You can find a few different videos on Youtube if you are really interested in it. The sealer took 2 coats. One gallon covered about 550 Sq Ft for us. We let the first coat sit and cure for about 2 hours before applying the second coat.

This photo shows the difference that the sealer has on the color. It really makes everything pop!

Here are some photos of the finished floors. 

As you can see the Bona gave everything a beautiful even sheen.

We left the wood in the bathroom natural because we wanted a darker paint color. This gives you a good idea of how it will look if you decide not to stain the floors and go straight to sealing them.

Well there you have it. We kind of lost track of how much stain we used, but after tallying everything up our cost came in at about $1 Sq Ft. Not too bad. I hope this might help anyone else who is trying to do some low cost flooring. I'll update later on how they are wearing with our 2 dogs as well as some pictures once the baseboards are up.

Finished Floors

That's right! The floors are finally done. I never thought this day would come. It feels so good to be able to put the floors behind us and move on to all the finishing touches. I'm absolutely thrilled with the way the floors turned out.

The Bona Mega really made the floors pop! The picture below shows the difference between sealed and not sealed. I was amazing at the difference the Bona made when we were all done.

Partially sealed floors.

Photo montage of the finished floors!!!

Sealed and completed plywood floors!

Close up of the finished floors.

After the floors we completed we started working on our baseboards. We were able to get them all painted and are hoping to put them up this week. We also managed to install a toilet, first time ever, and it's not leaking which is always good and ripped out the kitchen sink. Goals for the week include getting the baseboard up, counter tops painted, and appliances installed if we're lucky. 

Here are some more photos just for fun!

This photo was taken last October when we first started. Please ignore the McDonalds bag. Sometimes we make poor food decisions when we have not time.

This photo was taken this past weekend. My little DW has come so far!