Recently, we saw some great pins on Pinterest.com about using plywood to install farmhouse style, rustic plank flooring in your home. We love this idea, and after 20 years of installing laminate flooring in every room (sometimes more than once!), we are ready for something new and interesting. We created a video to show you how we prepared our plywood to be used for this purpose.
Many of you may recall that we bought a home in Florida and moved South for a time. Well, we decided we didn’t love it there and missed the sweet little cottage we’ve built out of our 1995 double wide manufactured home up North. So, we sold our Florida home and returned to our former house, which we never sold, but had intended to rent.
Upon our return, we realized that our new king size bed would not fit in our former master bedroom. So, what did we do? We knocked a wall out between the two smaller bedrooms and decided to build a suite! We’re crazy like that sometimes :-).
We’ll share this project as we move through it, but here’s the gist of what we have planned:
- Plywood plank flooring
- Ship lap walls
- Bi-fold 36″ french door (to accommodate us when we are older and potentially needing wider doors)
- Wall of shelving in between to partially separate the rooms and provide closet space
- Barn doors to cover the opening between room sections
- Ceiling undecided (Got any ideas? Please share in the comments!)
Our first installment is the preparation of the plywood for the flooring. While we’ve seen many blog posts about how to lay the floor, like this terrific one from LittleGreenNotebook.com, we haven’t seen any video showing how to go about cutting the wood yourself. Many blog posts suggest Home Depot will do this for you. We inquired about that, but they would only do a few cuts free of charge and we needed 88 cuts…for starters. They would do it for .50 per cut but why add $44 more to a project when you don’t have to?
For our flooring, we chose plywood that was smoother on one side in 4’x8′ sheets at 15/32 thickness. (Thank you to reader Michelle for reminding me to include this! :-)
This video demonstration shows how we set up the saw, how we worked together, the sanding process, the time it took, and how much flooring we got in the amount of time we spent. We hope you will find it useful.
We’re hoping to make a decision about color and finish for the flooring next. While we love the light color of the floor in LittleGreenNotebook.com post (and I’m loving it again now that I’ve popped over and looked at it once more!), we also love what Centsationalgirl has goin’ on with her floors. We think a light floor with all of the light walls and ceiling might me overkill.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. We’d love to have you’re input!
Take a moment and subscribe to the MyMobileHomeMakeover Youtube channel so you don’t miss a thing!
Enjoy…
Nice video. I really enjoyed watching it. It's good to know how to prepare a plywood plank floor.
Wow! I just watched your bed-making video. What a beautiful process. Very nice! Thank you for visiting our site.
If you are installing your flooring to a standard plywood subfloor after that the blind nail and also adhesive technique is the very best setup for you. You could use this method for ache, wide plank flooring, hardwood or reclaimed floor covering. Very well made video & thanks for sharing.
Thanks for visiting, Rick. And thank you for sharing your site. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Very good video.
I think a lot of tradesmen could learn a thing or two from this tutorial.
Hi Beth, I just found your blog while having my morning coffee and perusing the web for blogs about mobile home makeovers. We have just bought our final mobile home, after having rented a brand new one for three years. We are a disabled couple but we want to put our own stamp on our new home. I was looking for the easiest way to do our flooring when I stumbled upon your blog. What teamwork! I wish we could do the cutting ourselves but that isn't possible. I think I can handle the sanding and staining though. I can't wait for your next video. We will be working on our home as you are working on yours, from what it sounds like. I am so anxious to get started. Good luck on your room makeover and flooring!
Hi Debbie! Thanks so much for visiting our site. We're so glad to have you checking up on us here :-) Congratulations on your home purchase!
Regarding our flooring project, we did the sanding and staining by hand by the board.
We are planning to put the flooring down next weekend (fingers crossed!) and we have already stained each board because we had to do the work in bits and pieces as we had time.
It went really smoothly and was really nice to rub it in by hand and see the character of the wood come out in the boards. We used water-based stain so we could work on it inside when the weather was bad, and will use water-based urethane once the floor is down. The cutting was easy and quick once we got going, but if we were a bit older, I could see being more challenging for us.
We love to see what others are working on and dreaming up for their manufactured homes. When you get started, please feel free to post your progress on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/mobilehomemakeover
Happy remodeling!
I’m ready for the 2nd video. I keep looking everyday.
Thanks for visiting!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video. It will be a few weeks before we have another video ready. The organizing of our project has made it difficult to get the floor down. We need paint on the walls, a door up, staining done, etc. I wish I had one ready today, because that would mean the floor would be done! :-) Hopefully soon.
This was great! Can't wait for the next video! One question: What was the thickness of the plywood that you used?
Thank you, Michelle. We're glad you liked it! Thank you for pointing out my error in forgetting the width of the plywood. I will add it to the post now.
We used 15/32 thickness plywood.
~Beth