Saw on the tube some trendy little high design house with birch plywood flooring, as in 4×8 sheets. I s’pose this could be a nice look in a contemporary house, but I see that the best you’re going to get for a solid wood surface is 1/8″ of birch. What’s that give you, one VERY CAREFUL sanding come refinishing time, then what? Am I missing something?
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That sounds like a horrific idea...
Justin Fink - FHB Editorial
Yeah, but I'll bet that architect thinks it looks cool ...
Idea is to use it in areas without alot of traffic...living rooms, sun rooms, bedroom etc. Screwed and plugged so that when and if refinish time comes around, you replace rather than refinish. OR, a quick, economical way to have a wood floor that may be easily replaced with higher buck goods when finances allow.
I think it looks nicer cut into 2'X2' squares with chamfered edges.
I used red oak veneer plywood like that with 3 coats of poly and get lots of favorable comments from non-archtect visitors.
Edited 9/22/2005 1:42 pm ET by johnnyd
Edited 9/22/2005 1:43 pm ET by johnnyd
Do you have any pictures?
This is a guest bedroom
pix like yours are what makes this site great!
Might be a great pic but a gross floor!
Thanks. I like it and may use a modified version of your floor.
I was thinkin the same thing (2 X 2 squares) with some 1/4" rips of walnut between squares
greg
I've seen pictures of a birch pw done in 2x2 with 1/4" aluminum strips in between them - looked very cool.JT
Shop I used to work for cut 3' X 3' squares of OSB, sanded it smooth and laid it in a pet store, owner had a limited budget.
I seen it 4 years latter and it shows some wear in the high traffic areas but not bad considering how much traffic it got.
I don't believe that I'd use it in my home though. I guess if it was very contemporary Id consider it.
Doug
OSB makes more sense to me; lay it 5/8 or 3/4 thick, and you can sand till doomsday, though I don't think you'll ever wear it down. And who would see the wear? I laid 1/2" OSB in an architect's studio, and it looks real nice. It also looks great stained unusual colors, like dark red or green. I've seen that done on OSB wall paneling.
I would watch out for the veneer thickness on run-of-the-mill birch plywood. It is like micro-thin.
More expensive, but maybe with more veneer thickness, might be baltic birch, available in 5x5 sheets. Cut into 29-7/8 squares, it might make a nice look.
I saw in a book where Bucky Fuller recommended masonite panels for floors--just 4x4 tempered sheets laid down loose. He thought they would be great. I think they would be a little slippery, might warp, and be easily damaged, but don't know. I had an idea to use some nice plywood with nice grain for a floor and then clear epoxy coat it, but that probably would be as expensive (more expensive?) than a good hardwood floor.
Certainly no thinner veneer than a lot of the "engineered" flooring, and a lot cheaper.
I respectfully disagree. Plywood face veneers are very thin as compared to the wear surface veneer on "engineered" wood flooring.
You've facebanded plywood with hardwood, right? Remember how careful you have to be when flushing up the top with your RO palm sander? A little heavy and you go right through.
Furthermore, most all the wood flooring products are factory-finished with a coating of toughness you would be hard-pressed to duplicate in a site-applied finish.
In an earlier post, I recommended the thread originator consider baltic birch ply. I though the face veneer might be more robust that that seen on common domestic 4x8 birch ply. A second benefit to the use of bb ply is that it is void-free.
I agree that voids in standard birch ply could be a problem, and certainly better-quality engineered flooring has a thicker veneer than the ply. But lots of stuff they sell for flooring has veneer thinner than any I've seen on plywood.You have to remember that, especially with the advent of engineered flooring, many folks no longer consider wood flooring to be "permanent", and they expect to replace it eventually like they'd expect to replace a carpet. (Except before than happens they'll sell and buy a new place.)So durability isn't a real big issue (with these folks, that is -- we're living with 29-year-old carpeting).
Bruce,
I was all set to jump on ya buddy.. Thought you'd seen the plywood used aroundhere for high end homes and assumed it was Birch..
It's not, it's simply Basswood top layer plywood and the floor comes out really white! So white it's almost a shame to cover it up..
I could see someone on a budget giving it a quick sanding and a coat of varnish etc.. and using it as a tempoary floor untill the imported bloodwood flooring arrives from Brazil.