You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
Msgriz wrote: Progress report on the plywood floor project:
We have finished the floor in one room so far. Didn't try the checkerboard effect because we found some good 3/4" exterior grade tongue-and-groove plywood decking with one nice sanded side that didn't need a lot of sanding. But the T&G would have made it hard to turn the pieces 90 degrees, so we layed the stuff with the grain all running the same direction and drew on "planks with nails" with a fine point Sharpie marker. Seemed to work just fine.
We glued the 4x8 sheets with construction adhesive, then screwed them to the subfloor with countersunk deck screws, then plugged the holes. We sanded the floor and drew on the planking, then stained it with watered down water-based wood stain to get variations in shades of the planks. We followed the lines of the planks when we stained so that the color would follow the planking pattern. We did a little sanding between 4 coats of waterbased urethane floor varnish.
Because the ends of the 4x8 sheets were not T&G, we had to butt them together as closely as possible. But we still had a little bit of a crack there, so we filled the crack with clear caulk. The caulk cleans up easily off of varnished flooring, so method that seems to work. One thing that helped with the seams was to stagger the 4x8 sheets so that all of the butted seams don't fall in the same place in the floor. Also, using the felt marker along the seam made it easier to hide the clear caulk in the seam - you only see the dark marker line when the caulk sets up.
