I've been working with clients on a remodel project in Redding, California. A very tight budget - so creativity is coming into play. We decided on plywood as flooring. Below is the process as described by my clients - avid DIYers.
We wanted wood flooring but needed it to be human healthy and economical at the same time. That was a really tall order and one we started to feel was impossible as everywhere we looked the cost for what we needed grew larger. We took our problem to Charmaine who suggested plywood flooring. This idea blew our minds - we had no knowledge of plywood being used as anything but sub flooring. She sent us some great images of attractive plywood flooring and soon we were SOLD on the idea! Through Charmaine we learned about PUREBOND plywood which is the most human healthy plywood you can buy on the market today. It is formaldehyde free and carb phase II compliant and was an excellent option for my chemically sensitive health issues. The savings over any other wood flooring options with our particular list of needs was incredible! Charmaine saved us over $1500 on the flooring alone!
STEPS:
1) We went to Home Depot (they sell PUREBOND formaldehyde free / Carb Phase II compliant plywood) and for a small fee they will cut the 4x8 sheets right at the store in whatever lengths you desire - we opted for 16"x 8' planks - that makes 3 planks per sheet of plywood. We choose a 15/32 (half inch) birch finish plywood and were very pleased with its beautiful wood patterns. We went through two pallets and hand selected each sheet based on the grain patterns but they were almost all beautiful so you could hardly go wrong.
2) Then we got a special bit for our router and basically routered out a 1/8" wide groove all the way around each plank. (When you look at the cut edge of the plywood - we basically took out the middle section of the ply - to about 5/8" deep). This gave us our way of connecting the planks without the use of nails.
3) Then we bought a sheet of masonite (also human healthy) and had Home Depot cut it into 1" strips for us. We used these strips as the splines to hold the planks together. Basically we created our own floating floor but without the toxic overload many laminates have and ten times the beauty since this is real wood and not an image of real wood.
4) We used a standard 2 in 1 underlayment that we rolled out and then we began to install our floor. We used Elmer's non toxic wood glue to glue every spline into the routered groves and tap it into place. Most of the time the seams meet up perfectly and you quickly learn the best gluing techniques so as to minimize glue seeping onto the finished floor. If you do get some glue bleed just use rubbing alcohol on a rag right away to clean it up. The floors are turning out incredibly beautiful so far! We are really pleased with the outcome!
We chose to start in our bedroom knowing we would learn a lot on that first room (which we did!) so that by the time we got to the living room and kitchen we were a well oiled floor making machine!
We are actually making our own youtube / instructional video of this process as we wish we could have found more specific instructions of plywood floors that didn't involve nailing it down. This was the best video we found on the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izj3c2MkDr4
STEPS:
1) We went to Home Depot (they sell PUREBOND formaldehyde free / Carb Phase II compliant plywood) and for a small fee they will cut the 4x8 sheets right at the store in whatever lengths you desire - we opted for 16"x 8' planks - that makes 3 planks per sheet of plywood. We choose a 15/32 (half inch) birch finish plywood and were very pleased with its beautiful wood patterns. We went through two pallets and hand selected each sheet based on the grain patterns but they were almost all beautiful so you could hardly go wrong.
2) Then we got a special bit for our router and basically routered out a 1/8" wide groove all the way around each plank. (When you look at the cut edge of the plywood - we basically took out the middle section of the ply - to about 5/8" deep). This gave us our way of connecting the planks without the use of nails.
3) Then we bought a sheet of masonite (also human healthy) and had Home Depot cut it into 1" strips for us. We used these strips as the splines to hold the planks together. Basically we created our own floating floor but without the toxic overload many laminates have and ten times the beauty since this is real wood and not an image of real wood.
4) We used a standard 2 in 1 underlayment that we rolled out and then we began to install our floor. We used Elmer's non toxic wood glue to glue every spline into the routered groves and tap it into place. Most of the time the seams meet up perfectly and you quickly learn the best gluing techniques so as to minimize glue seeping onto the finished floor. If you do get some glue bleed just use rubbing alcohol on a rag right away to clean it up. The floors are turning out incredibly beautiful so far! We are really pleased with the outcome!
We chose to start in our bedroom knowing we would learn a lot on that first room (which we did!) so that by the time we got to the living room and kitchen we were a well oiled floor making machine!
We are actually making our own youtube / instructional video of this process as we wish we could have found more specific instructions of plywood floors that didn't involve nailing it down. This was the best video we found on the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izj3c2MkDr4
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