DIY Flooring!

Guess what?!  The living room floor is done!  You'll remember back in August we ripped out the 20+ year old carpet that was in the living room of our dome.  Click HERE to see that post.  Then we got busy...  selling pots, driving truck for harvest, the holiday season and then *finally* I got the motivation to do the living room floor.  Here's a photo montage of the process.

Cleaning the sub floor with canine helper. 

So. Much. Floor. 

I filled the cracks and deep gouges with a paintable adhesive caulk that dries quickly.  It came in a tube, which was *very* handy.  I would not recommend the stuff that you have to mix and put on with a putty knife... it is hugely messy and comes up with the paint!

Asti, checking out the primer.

Paint and one coat of polyurethane!  I ended up only putting down two coats (two very thick coats) because the stuff I got was very, very solid.  It was thicker than stain, but thinner than paint and went on so very easily.  The problem was my knees weren't up for another coat. 

So close to being done... 

DONE!  Just this morning, Brian got the rest of the quarter round trim on.  When the builders put the wall trim on in 1983, they put it at the height for carpet which left a big gap between the floor and the trim.  Our fix for this was to put quarter round trim around the base of the walls, which works out great.  Brian put a coat of polyurethane on each piece, then we cut them to fit and nailed them down. Easy! 

My husband loves power tools.... and posing for funny photos. ;) 

A close-up of the finished floor!  You can still see the grain, and the lines between the plywood pieces, and a lot of texture, but it's super smooth!  No more will cat buffalos roam and stick to my floor (what Maggie and I call dust bunnies, because they are MUCH bigger than bunnies)!  :)

Ok, a cost estimate!

Two tubes of adhesive caulk (only used 1 1/2): $14 (about $10 used)

Two gallons primer (only used 1 1/2): $44 (about $33 used)

One quart stain cover primer, for the pet stains on the plywood: $8

Two gallons floor paint, mixed to the color I was after, but only used one gallon!: $50 ($25 used)

Two gallons polyurethane (again, only used one!): $86 ($43 used)

130 feet of quarter round oak trim: $51

Brushes: $10

Poly applicator thingie: $7

      Total cost: $187!  Seriously... that is *WAY* cheaper than carpet, snap together flooring, tile, cork flooring or pretty much any other kind of flooring you can buy.  I covered, I think, approximately 6-700 square feet of space with $187.  It's hard to figure the square footage exactly because the living room is round on one side, but based on the total square footage for this level of the house (from the blueprints), I'm guessing 6-700 sqft is pretty close.  That's a whoppin' .26-.31 per square foot.  :) 

So... that's the new floor!  We need to get a few rugs, and move some furniture around and finish up some little projects, otherwise that's it for the living room. Next up, our bedroom and the dog/office.  Painted floors all around!