The closet floor is about 8' x 7' so its just shy of two sheets of plywood. I put foam underlayment on the bare concrete because I had some left over from when I tiled the shed - I put plastic flooring tiles over the plywood floor that came with the manufactured shed and had some left over foam underlayment. OK, so next I put down two sheets of the cheapest plywood I could buy as underlayment. I screwed the plywood underlayment into the concrete. The first six screws went in easy. Then the last few took twice as long, of course. I kept breaking drill bits and ripping the heads off concrete screws. I don't know why the first went in easy and the last took so long (Hint: Murphy's Law).
Most of the tips for making this closet came from various places on the internet. Here was the first time we just got screwed from following the wrong advice. That advice: Who cares about the quality of the wood, just sand it enough and it will come out fine.
How does this look? Cheap plywood, custom cut, machine sanded, hand sanded, stained, and clear coated.
Well the color was wrong, the cheap boards warped, and there were gashes in the boards where huge knots were...Days of labor and money in the trash.
Time to start over making the custom flooring except this time we used a quality hardwood plywood at about $45 a sheet and used a nice color wood stain, clear coat, and wax seal.
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| Drying between coats of stain |
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| It's hot in Florida, even at night, even in November |
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| Can you tell that I added beveled edges with the sander? |
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| Nice, they are all flat. No knots, or warping |
So this was the staining. I spent another day on the clear coat and seal. Oh yeah, I also painted the plywood underlayment brown in an attempt to hide gaps in the wood.
The boards were cut and test fit individually to their exact location. They were installed using brad nails from a nail gun hooked up to an air compressor. Gaps between the boards were filled in using a tinted wood filler (that was a painstaking process).
Sorry but no photos of the finished product. Jump ahead to the last renovation post for a peek at the new floor.
