Plywood floor

[peds]

Morning all,

Anyone ever put in a plywood finish floor? Looking at doing one for the upstairs of our new house. I mean, we can't afford anything else, except maybe a reclaimed palletwood floor...

I'm wondering what thickness (or lack of it) I'd get away with doing. It's just OSB at the moment. 

 

Google images shows a mixed bag of results, some look great, others less so. I imagine a lot of it depends on luck of the draw with what your ply looks like, which is tricky to control. Most people seem to top it with a thick coat of polyurethane, with or without a stain of some kind. 

 

Any opinions? 

[John Skinner]

My brother had a thick ply floor in his flat, put in by the folk in before him. Looks ok and is warm, but you're better off with the OSB. Ply needs to be sealed well and that's going to cost you both money and time. If you don't seal it and you break the surface (moving furniture etc) it starts to peel back and splinter. Then it just becomes a pain in the arse tbh. He had bits where the previous folk had sofa legs, dressers, beds, main walking areas etc that were all worn/splintering.

 

Maybe look around and see if you can find a bulk buy bargain on some laminate. By the time you factor in the ply sheets and all the tins of poly to seal it ... it might work out cheaper?

[AHPP]

Wear crocs until something better or some money turns up. 

[roys]

I had a ply floor down fo best part of a year, purely because I hadn’t bought the laminate to go on top of it as other things kept getting priority.

Must admit I liked it, think it was only about 6mm thick to even out some wonky floor boards, as above I would put some of Screwfix own brand water based floor varnish just to seal it, I didn’t bother as I knew I would be covering mine eventually.

[peds]

11 hours ago, John Skinner said:

Maybe look around and see if you can find a bulk buy bargain on some laminate. By the time you factor in the ply sheets and all the tins of poly to seal it ... it might work out cheaper?

Definitely looking around for cheap floor options, but with 96m² needed, nothing will end up that cheap. My only worry is that the cheapest option will end up being more of the reclaimed teak that we are currently wrestling for the ground floor which, frankly, sucks balls.

 

[peds]

10 hours ago, roys said:

I had a ply floor down fo best part of a year, purely because I hadn’t bought the laminate to go on top of it as other things kept getting priority.

Must admit I liked it, think it was only about 6mm thick to even out some wonky floor boards, as above I would put some of Screwfix own brand water based floor varnish just to seal it, I didn’t bother as I knew I would be covering mine eventually.

 

Could probably spring for thicker than 6mm, but that's good to know.

 

We wouldn't be thinking of it for the ground floor because of all the heavy traffic, but we might get away with it upstairs. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 

 

I quite like the OSB look anyway, but my wife says we can't keep it. 

 

[waterbuoy]

In the days when Exchange and Mart was an actual publication, and before it all went onto t'internet, I bought an old church floor for a couple of hundred quid.  It was long thin strips, such as those found in sports halls, and made very good kindling!  Might be worth keeping your eye out on the 'bay for something similar for that sort of area?

[peds]

We've always got our eye on the local ebay, donedeal.ie, for some good floor. My wife is particularly keen on the idea of an old sports hall or basketball court, something like that.

[Dan Maynard]

Can you seal and sand the OSB then paint it? Wouldn't look like OSB any more....

[peds]

I doubt that would fit with my wife's aesthetic, to be honest. 

 

She was surprisingly receptive to the palletwood floor idea, which I wasn't expecting, and I'm allowed to have it in the shed. Awfully kind of her.