DIY Wood Floor For Large Families

I have had many people ask about our floors in our home. So, I'll explain how the floors came about and how we made some plywood our floor, to be used and appreciated.

We were down to the last plans on our home and had tiled the kitchen over our cement foundation. We didn't want to tile the whole downstairs(it is an open floor plan 30X40). It would have been too cold and hard. There was an idea of staining the cement too, but again cold and unforgiving. After mulling over carpet we thought it would be too dirty, living in the country with little boys means a lot of dirt and mud. Wood flooring was expensive and we figured it would be trashed by their cars and other boy activities. So, we thought of tongue and groove plywood.
The floor has liquid nails applied underneath and then 9 tap cons( which are cement screws) in each piece of plywood.The holes are filled with wood putty. After that, we rented a sander and sanded the floors and I went to work personalizing the floor to be ours. My husband chose the verses and we placed them in the center of our floor. I wood burned all the lettering and the dove descending on an olive branch to match the verse. I used a sharpie to fill in the letters.
"...Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh Gal 5:16" and "Quench not the Spirit 1 Thess. 5:19" The dove idea was to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the dove Noah sent out on the ark that returned with the olive branch. It also is symbolic that we the church are the branches and the verses remind us we don't want to be cut off from the source of life Jesus Christ

Since it was a family floor we had a neighbor come over with his wonderful idea to use a blow torch to make our checkerboard idea and put it on the floor. He used some square pieces of wood to leave the areas clear and in about 10 minutes the checkerboard was finished. We finished customization with our cattle brand in a few different areas.

We finally put 4 coats of high gloss polyurethane and let it dry. The only regret is that we wished we used satin poly. Now, we can scuff and sand anytime we want and re-polyurethane the floor when necessary. It has some area rugs in our living room area and they can be shook outside to get rid of the dirt. I use a mop and Murphy's Oil Soap it clean the floor, we use lemon oil sometimes to shine it up, but everyone goes slipping when that happens. Our boys love that part! They just slip on some socks and run the length of the floor into a slide like they were heading into home plate.
The best part is the floor is one to be lived on not protected like it was white carpet! We can clean it, shine it and sand it or use it as an underlayment any time we want.
Oh, and the cost? It was about $9.00 a sheet and 30 sheets were $270.00 covering approx.1000sq. ft. Two cans of poly and supplies $60.00. Sander and sandpaper $30.00 for the day. Wood putty $5.00 a box. It all cost under $500.00 with the tap cons, liquid nails, and other misc. supplies.