Living on the Subfloor in Style!

I have a disturbing habit of destroying the house whenever my husband leaves town for a few days.  Usually something gets demolished, cleaned, resurfaced, or just completely disappears.  This most recent trip of his was no exception.  Below are the before and after pictures of my living room!  I'll let you know exactly how to destroy your own house too!

I'd been threatening to rip out all of our carpets and just live on a painted subfloor for a couple of years now.  Flooring is very expensive, and there's always something more important to spend money on.  However, I have severe asthma, and I have critters running around the house- both the 2 legged and 4 legged types.  Although I broke down and purchased my own carpet cleaner (a wise decision, I still say), that carpet would just never come clean.  It ALWAYS smelled bad.  There had been cats in here before we moved in, and then of course my naughty dogs felt it their responsibility to cover up all those odors.  On top of that were all the normal kid spills, leaks, and goodness only knows what else.  It wasn't just the odors and stains either.  There was ALWAYS hair in the carpet.  I have a Roomba, a regular vacuum, and a shampooer, and I still never managed to get the pet hair out of the carpet.  My normal habit of folding laundry on the living room floor usually resulted in hairy clothes, despite my best efforts at cleaning.  Finally, I could take it no more!



THIS is why my carpet always stank!



 I started by peeling up a corner of the carpet to find out what was underneath.  CAUTION:  If you do get up the courage to peel up a corner of your carpet, you'll never go back!  There is so much filth under there, I promise you you won't want to live with it after that. 

I assumed our subfloor was particle board, but I was delighted to find that it was actually REAL plywood.  Good quality, sturdy stuff.  Yippee!  If your floor is particle board or chip board, I really recommend painting it rather than clear coating it.  It won't turn out all that pretty, and paint is much cheaper.  As the day of my husband's trip approached, I would sneak onto the computer and look up ideas, prices of materials, and equipment rentals.  One evening I kissed him goodbye after a sumptuous dinner at Burger King, went straight home, and by the time I went to bed that night I had ALL the carpet out of the living room. 



Stubbornly, late at night and all by myself, I pushed and shoved ALL of my furniture outside on the deck.  This was my week!  With Tony gone for a few days, I could stay up until obscene hours working, and for this week at least the weather promised to hold (although I found out later, the weather is a miserable liar, and all my furniture ended up under tarps by the time I was through).  The next step was actually peeling up the nasty carpet.  Let's pause here and take a look at some of the tools you'll need if you lose your mind and decide to copy me:

Box-cutter knife with SHARP blades

Flat End screwdriver

Claw Hammer

Pliers- Needlenose and curved (for prying staples)

Metal putty knife/scraper

Wood Filler (not drywall repair paste)

Hand sized sander (Electric orbital sander is ideal)

Good quality dust mask (very important!)

Gloves optional but not a bad idea

Broom and shop vac

BIG dust bin!

Somewhere else to sleep.  We stayed in our RV.  You definitely don't want to be sleeping in the house with the fumes.

Some entertainment!  Big necessity here, especially if you, like me, do your best work late at night when the kids are sleeping.  I had my TV and dvd player rotating around the house with me, and I found a new favorite movie!  I watched it more times than I can count. *sigh*  http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/northandsouth/



Cut the carpet into strips of no more than 3' wide







And here we are, a real plywood subfloor, with all the staples still in it



Rock the pliers to create leverage to pull the tough staples





Using a flat end screwdriver, place your hammer underneath to create leverage to pull up the tack strips.




Once I got all the carpet and staples out, I rented a commercial floor sander.  The $40 rental was WELL worth the expense.  You absolutely MUST sand the floor, even if you're planning on painting it rather than clear coating it like I did.  The unfinished wood fibers will make the floor uncomfortable to walk on in bare feet no matter how much paint or stain you slap on top of it.  A floor sander is not any more difficult to operate than a lawn mower, and much easier on the knees than using a little orbital sander the whole time.

A commercial drum style floor sander with 60 grit paper REALLY stips the impurities off your floor!
Note the filler in the low spots.

 I did not fine-sand the floor after this.  I suppose I could have, but to be realistic, I was short on time, and honestly, this is still just a plywood floor.  My finished floor actually has some wood-grain texture left to it, an effect I've been starting to notice in the nice wood-look flooring on the market.  The next thing I did was to add some artistic stencils.  The stencils really dressed up the floor, and drew your eye away from all the major flaws.  It kind of makes the existing imperfections look like they're supposed to be there.  I just found a design I liked at the local craft store and went with it.  It's a 2 layer design, and I alternated layers, and in a few places I used both layers to make a more detailed effect.  I did a circular design to go under the dining room table, and a "V" shaped design in my living room.

After the stenciling was dry, I started to clear-coat the floor.  I did NOT purchase $50/gallon commercial floor sealer.  I didn't feel it was worth having professional grade floor sealant on a plywood floor.  I used a furniture grade clear sealant on the first 3 coats- which were rapidly soaked up by the soft floor.  For the top coat I did use a commercial grade sealer, which I was lucky enough to find on a closeout sale.  Tip- you MUST sand between coats, or the sealer will not stick properly to the previous coat.  The orbital sander will work great for this, you just need to lightly rough it up and smooth the wood fibers.

The floor area I worked on was approximately 600 square feet.  On average between all 4 coats, expect to use about a gallon for every coat for 5-600 square feet.  The first 2 coats will soak in quickly and you'll use a lot, but by the time you're on coat #4, it will be a breeze.  Be prepared for each coat to take a little longer to dry, as it is no longer soaking into the floor.

Cost Breakdown of entire project (rounded)

Floor Sander Rental $48 (including 3 sheets of paper used)

http://www.rentalhq.com/MemSiteNav1.asp?alt=totalrentalcenterbiz&pg=HM

Razor Blades $3

Brown stenciling paint $20/gallon (although I only used 1 quart)

Wood crack filler $4

http://www.walmart.com/

Floor Stencil $10.50

Stenciling Roller $6

http://www.michaels.com/

3 gallons DEFT Clear Wood Finish Satin $26 each

1 gallon Zinsser Professional Wood finish Semigloss (Closeout price) $15

4" Paint Brush $9

220 Grit Sandpaper for Orbital sander $6

http://www.lowes.com/

Materials Total: $199.50

Hours invested:  About 40 (working on my own)

Carpet Disposal Cost (unknown at this point)

http://www.carpetrecovery.org/

The Final Verdict

I am very, very pleased with my new floors!  They are beautiful, smooth, unique, inviting, and best of all, they are CLEAN!  I can actually sweep my house and it is clean.  Aaaahhhh.  Everyone who has seen them has also given good reviews, even my hubby!  He probably fears giving the wrong answer on that one though.  I have had a few scratches already from the dog's toenails, which we'll have to start keeping trimmed.  Fortunately, touchups are a cinch.  Just brush it with a little sandpaper, then blend a little more sealant over the top.  I have about a quart left for touchups.  Go for it!

  

A Girl Backing a Trailer

The very first time I backed a trailer (more than 3 feet) I was about 19 years old.  My dad had asked my brother and me to make a run to the dump with my new-to-me 1979 Ford pickup.  “No Sweat!” I thought.

Back when I was growing up, we lived on the outskirts of town, practically within spitting distance of the local landfill.   We didn’t have weekly garbage service, we had a dump trailer.  It was a little steel framed trailer, about 14 feet from tongue to tail, that my dad had rebuilt a few years earlier.  The finished trailer included a removable rear gate and an electric lift, powered off the truck battery by a hot lead.  Very little real work was required… excepting, of course, that you had to get the trailer positioned correctly.
Confidently I drove that little trailer up the sandy foothill roads to the Seaman’s Gulch landfill.  I paid my dues at the gate and several sweaty guys dressed in safety gear pointed me to where I should go.  We waited our turn, and then one of the men pointed me to a tight little spot between two other vehicles.  “Uh-oh,” I thought, but with a bravado I didn’t feel, I whipped the truck around and started doing my thing.  That was about when it all went wrong.

If you’ve ever backed a trailer, you know that the shorter the trailer, the more quickly and jerkily it reacts to the truck’s movements.  You’ve probably also experienced bumpy and hilly conditions.  You know, the kind that throw the trailer off your mark whenever you roll through another dip or bump or rock.  Combine these two complications with a very inexperienced driver, a tight fit, and several people waiting in line behind me and you have trouble brewing.

I backed up, and the trailer promptly jacknifed.  Taking a deep breath, I pulled forward again and turned my wheel the other way.  It jacknifed that way.  Hmm.  I started to sweat just a little.  This could be harder than I thought.  A full five minutes later, I was still pulling forward, back, forward, back.  My brother’s eyes were getting a little big, but wisely he said nothing.  I had already laid down the law in my truck that he was NOT permitted to play his music (“That stuff is crap!”) and he was never, ever, EVER to attempt to sing (“You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with the lid on it!”).   I was sure it was for his own good.  I was a very loving sister.

Back to our tale… Oh yes, there I am, still pulling forward and back!   One of the  landfill attendants stepped up to my open window.  “Honey, do you want me to back that for you?”

“No!” I growled through clenched teeth.  By this time it was a vendetta.  I was going to get that thing backed up if it blew my truck up!  Just about then, steam started rising from under my hood.  I realized that with the combination of the hot weather and the strain on the old engine without any road wind to cool the truck down,  I’d boiled the radiator fluid.  This was getting serious!  My brother, a new driver himself, offered to back the trailer, but I snapped out something about him not being able to do any better.  Like I said, I was a loving sister.

Finally, the trailer cooperated a little bit.  One of the neighboring vehicles had since finished his dumping and had pulled out, and fortunately no one else dared to go for his spot.  I shoved the trailer back as far as I thought I could get away with, knowing that if I missed my main target- you know, by just a little bit- the heavy equipment would scoop it up later anyway.  Sweating and shaking, we clambered out of the truck and proceded to dump the trash with whatever dignity we had left.  The jealous “oohs” and “Aaahs” that our power lift trailer usually evoked were conspicuously absent on this day.

Since that day, I’ve actually gotten pretty good at backing a trailer.  You might say I’m a pro.  But oh, my, that first experience is one that will hopefully keep me humble and patient when it’s my turn to teach my kids how to back a trailer.