The main floor of my house is berber carpet over a water damaged and generally beat to hell oak strip floor. I think its even just 3/8″ thick-cheap stuff for a bargain house when built. I live in a late sixties (1960’s) townhouse where the modern style is there but not so vibrant. While it would be easier to freshen-up a more traditional place with mouldings, wainscote etc., I can’t get away with that in my place-at least not with a good conscience.
So, my point-I thought an interesting and inexpensive alternative might be installing 4×8 plywood as the finish floor. I’d pull up the old oak, lay down some of that Pergo type foam and then screw the plywood sheets on top.
The plywood ought to have a fairly thick top ply and the sheets could have an 1/8″ gap between them. I’d use exposed fasteners at maybe 12″OC. I might stain the whole thing grey or red -a semi-transparent stain. Top with poly and screen and re-coat every couple three years.
I wonder what anyone has to say about this. Have they seen it or heard stories about problems? I would not plan to really refinish it by sanding and would maybe crank the screws down once in a while.
Replies
I will look cheap and crappy.
I will look cheap and crappy.
At best.Ditch
I'll give you almost the same answer, but I'll use more words.
Lot's of potential problems;
Even cabinet-grade plywood has just a very thin veneer of good wood and that's something like $35 sheet here. I imagine it's possible to get something with a thick top layer, but then it'll cost a lot more and you'll be entering the $ area of ordinary hardwood floors. Too thin & you'll have no chance to sand anything out.
Voids in the ply will cause cave-ins under point loads.
edges will split out
4x8 sheets will be aestetically displeasing to the eye.
What do people think about the plywood floor in Homes (p109)? It looks really nice with the walnut accent, but I was surprised to see them use plywood.
I think that it can be done similarly. I saw another in a design mag someplace witht the common necessary element being that a hardwood strip protects edges and decorates joints. I do not see it as a cost savings at all due to layout and care needed.
What I do see is that because it is a method being featured in magazines, many people will attempt to install plywood floors without necessary precautions or knowhow and end up with trashed floors.
I see the initial post of this thread as a joke, meant to pull our collective legs. If it is serious, sayt so and I will respond seriously..
Excellence is its own reward!
You should check out the new FHB (issue on houses). One of the houses profiled used 3/4" maple plywood as its finished floor. It looks great. It won't stand up to something heavy falling on it, but with a good finish it should easily withstand normal wear and tear.
That's the one we were talking about.
Key to your statement is "With a good finish"
Shouldn't need to count on the finish to make the wood good..
Excellence is its own reward!
My wife and I lived in seattle for a year and you see alot of new ideas for building matirials. I'm thinking you probably got this idea from some place. Dont give up on it, just make sure you do your home work. Alot of things can play into something like this. How much area or we talking about.
You might want to get other resorces on it, try a magazine called dwell.
I've seen a few plywood floors, most often just done to buy time until a finish floor can be installed. One actually looked fairly "nice", it was stained/stenciled/poly'd, the others just painted with deck paint.
The thing is, the plywood already had to be installed, and that isn't the case here. If the thought of pulling the carpet/base/wood floor, and installing plywood floats your boat, lose the foam and nail with underlayment nails @ 6" on the edge & 8" in the field.
I've see a few floors (and walls too) finished with OSB board. I thought it looked very handsome and modern. Cut it into 4x4 sheets - they'll look a lot better than 4x8 IMHO.
Although I'm skeptical, I'll admit that idea intrugues me, too.
If you picture in your mind a large, nearly empty room and gazing at the floor, all these sheet materials seem dubious (unless you like contemporary touches).
But on the other hand, most folks have so much stuff in every room, plus area rugs - and most people don't gaze at the floor - it hardly matters in any practical sense what's on the floor. If the idea pleases you and you don't worry too much about resale value, go for it.
At least it'll be easy to tear off or cover later :-)
BTW, I live in a purpose-built (not converted) loft condo, and my main floor is plywood painted with grey floor paint. Looks pretty good, easy to clean, also easy to damage with sharp heavy things. Cheap and easy to refinish (new coat of paint!)
Use MDF instead. You could cut it up into 2 x 2's, put a small bevel at the perimeter and stain or use a paint wash of different colors or do a checkerboard look. Do the finish first, then install them glued and face nailed. The bevel will hide the variations in the heights of the adjacent members. GW
Overall, I still dislike this idea, but your version has a lot of promise.
For those who are intrigued by wood sheet goods for floors, I'll give you a little encouragement.
On this island of summer homes for the wealthy, there are a number of places that have painted sheet goods in kitchens, laundrys, and pantrys as well as in theliving rooms of some lower cost guest houses and camps. It seems that a well known interior decorator once got a case of the cheapos and painter her own kitchen floor as an intended temporary thing, then drizled varicoloured paint spots and splatters all over it.
Since she was a name brand decorator, the imprimatur went out and it got copied and popular in certain settings. She even started to believe it looked good herself. Her name was Sister Parrish. She has done work for Jackie Kennedy and Fergie.
So all you'uns that want to do this, You can claim to be right up there with the high class crowd!
I still think it looks cheap tho'
;-).
Excellence is its own reward!
<em>If the idea pleases you and you don't worry too much about resale value, go for it.</em>
Let me throw out a counter argument that using sheet goods may not affect your resale value.
First of all, modern homes, for whatever reason, typically get knocked by both the bank and the appraisors. Yet there seems to be an abundance of people yearning to own such a house. We just got back from our city's annual home tour, which is a mix of finely refurbished queen annes and bungalows next to new construction modern warehouse condos and concrete residences.
When walking through any of the modern homes, there is always a resounding 'wow' in the crowd.
I'm not sure why there is a stereotype that modern = no resale, but I'm not totally sold on that it is actually true.
Secondly, one could argue that these are nicely finished subfloors. The new owner don't like it? Fine...just go ahead and lay your finish floor on top...no need to tear up the cheap, unfinishable printed laminate or scratched what's-on-sale-at-the-depot-linoleum.
Anyhoo, that's my thinking...which IS biased, as that's the approach I'm planning on taking with our new house ;o)
If you're going to go through all that work of pulling the old oak floor up and then using the foam....why don't you just put down the Perego flooring or some other brand of plastic laminated type..it would look better and sell better than the painted plywood..
Thanks Everybody for your response-alot more imput than I expected.
I'm quite serious about doing it. I did see the idea in a magazine-in fact next to FHB, Dwell is my favorite mag. Resale on the house is not an issue for me as I'll keep the house at least as long as a plywd floor will last. I'm looking to funk-up the surroundings-it's quite drab now. I like plywood because it's already within my learning curve and it offers a lot of variety whether it be panel size, edge treatment, finishes, etc. I understand that the panel type is the most critical spec and I plan to go back to the APA website to do more research (that site has tons of info mostly PDF downloads).
I think a veneer product over MDF would work better in my situation. This floor will take a beating and I suspect a floor with inherent visual "defects" such as knot patches and rotary veneer will respond better at camoflaging the defects my kids will inflict upon it. MDF is too clean.
Well, thanks again. I move slowly so I'll post back on this in a few months when I've made progress on it.
CLEVESPIN
The shop I worked at had a customer that was opening a store and needed something inexpensive to put down on the concrete floor, the floor that we came up with was to cut up OSB, then run it through our wide belt sander and put a good finish on it, I thought it was going to look like crap but I was plesantly surprised, it wouldnt be for me but it didnt look half bad.
Doug
Anyone been to REI? They use stained osb everywhere and it looks pretty nice. I probably couldn't bring myself to do it because of resale, though.
I visited a high-traffic store in SF yesterday with a nice take on plywood floors. They had 2 by 4 foot strips of plywood, probably glued down (couldn't see any fasteners) in a offset pattern with 1/2" gaps filled with some sort of mortar. The wood was transparently stained green, and the mortar was a darker shade. Looked very good and held up fine in the commercial environment!