DIY Sharpie Wood Floors!

Hello everyone, I'm Chien and welcome back to my channel. If you're new, hit the subscribe button because you'll find new DIY tutorials and new inspiration here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before we jump into the tutorial. I wanted to tell you a little about where I am now. I'm actually in my Chi shed, which we've been building as a space to work, film and photograph in a space for my Etsy shop, all that kind of stuff whatever I don't want it to be just a space for me. I also want to keep it family-friendly, so I'll make sure my kids feel welcome here, as does Bryan, so we can all come together and have a space that's not just mine.

I want it to be open to all of us, so I really designed this space with that in mind. I'm actually in the loft and right below me is my office where I have cabinet and counter space to work on. but this place up here is just for the kids, so this space will be their meeting place. They want to do homework. They want to rest. We'll have a television up here. All that kind of fun stuff for them so they can be around. Here while I work too, with all that said, it's not really a space that anyone else is going to see, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money or time and effort on the floor here because I'm sure they'll probably be a little harsh on that. anyway, but I had this idea instead of installing carpet or a hard

wood

floor up here to just use the existing ply

wood

that's already here in today's tutorial.

I'm sharing with you how I transformed regular half inch plywood into beautiful faux wood flooring, so let's go ahead and get started. I wanted to share with you what this looked like before adding the plywood in case you are also starting from scratch. this is from the office below, you can see the beams that are on the ceiling of the office that act as a base for our plywood. Above we used a combination of construction adhesive and wood screws to attach the plywood to those joists, then it was time. To see the inside of the plywood I used my orbital sander and 80 grit sandpaper.

I really took my time to make sure I smoothed everything out. We purchased a higher quality plywood knowing we were going to do this, so always be sure when selecting plywood. Choose one that has a nice finish on the back, doesn't have a ton of nuts and nicks, and just take your time sanding. I probably spent about an hour going over every inch of the Ford and then just for reference, this space is seven. foot wide by about 12 feet long so it's about 84 square feet so I finished sanding everything and swept it really good so it was nice and clean and now I can go ahead and stain it.

I'm going to use the same. The color I used for the ceiling beams, which is Minwax Dark Walnut. I'm going to use a paintbrush and apply the stain with a brush and then I'm also going to use a rag to mix it all into the wood, rub it in. Well, that way it's not SuperDuper thick, it kind of blocks the excess a little bit and then it will dry faster, so I can let it dry overnight and then we can come back and do the next step, so let's start by showing you the supplies that I have to create this faux plywood plank floor.

I have a square of drywall so that will help me make my lines. They will extend throughout all of this. I also have a four-foot yardstick on hand to help me draw the rest. of these lines all the way and then you can do this in two ways, before you stain this you can add the wood lines, the boards lines and then stain them or you can do like me and stay first and then add your lines on top and to do that I'm using painter's pins these are just Walmart color of course black and I grabbed two of them just to have two on hand in case one runs out so I'll move on. and I'll start working from the end of the loft to the open part and then I'll go back and add some horizontal lines here and there to make it look more jingling and then I'll also add some little dots to those boards to make it look like faux nail holes, we decided to create four inch wide planks, since our plywood is four feet wide, it was divided equally that way, we had evenly spaced planks and I started in the middle.

I didn't really start. on the edge and that way we could work from the middle out and work within those four foot sections, so we finished all the stripes on the wood floor here that go from one side to the other and now I want to add the little marks of detail so these little pieces now look like boards, so I'm going to use a square and make my lines vertical and also add some little nail hole marks and they're not necessarily actual nail holes. Hopefully they'll look like nail holes that way, it'll give it a more authentic look and also a rustic look and hopefully more realistic, so I'll use my painter's paint again for that and then I'll come back and be able to seal all of this up. and that's basically all there is to creating your own faux wood flooring using plywood.

I decided to use three foot long planks, so every three feet I would add a vertical line. That way I didn't have too many vertical lines everywhere. I just wanted them very random. I didn't make a pattern. I would just add a vertical line and then move three feet, mark a line and then the next row I would find a space in between to add another vertical line and then I would get out of there, so the next day I went ahead and let the markings of the paint pencil will dry completely overnight. Today I want to add a coat of top sealer and I didn't want those lines to smudge or stain at all so I wanted to make sure they dried completely before moving on to the next step so here are the

floors

and it might be a little tricky to see on the camera those lines you can definitely see them in person and now I need to clean the

floors

really well before adding the top coat so I have a mop.

I'm going to dust everything really well and then I also have a damp cloth. and once everything is clean and dry, I can add my sealer and this is what I'm going to use for the top coat. It is Minh polycrylic wax and has a transparent semi-gloss finish. I wanted them to have a little bit more shine instead of being really flat, so they look more like hardwood floors than just rustic wood, so I have my paint tray, a roller, and a paintbrush. I want to make sure I do them in smaller sections. I don't want to miss anything, so I'm using a smaller one instead of a larger one and then the brush is so I can go over all the edges there, so like I said, I'm going to go. go ahead and clean the floors first and then I'll just apply probably two or three coats of polyacrylic to protect them so I changed my mind you can see against the wall this is where I painted with a brush and This is where I painted with a paint roller and yeah , it will dry clear but it also dries a little milky if it's also thick and I definitely don't want these bumps all over the finish of this floor, so I'm going to go.

I took a bigger brush and I'm just going to use one brush to apply this finish that way everything has a really nice uniform look so I wanted to share with you what it looks like with the finish and here it is. without the finish you can see it's really bringing the wood to life and giving it such a beautiful finish so SuperDuper is happy with it. I'm going to go ahead and keep painting it. I went and found this three inch brush and it's making this go a lot faster than a smaller brush of course, but it goes very, very fast anyway, I'm going to go ahead and finish and then let this dry. for a couple of hours.

I'll come back and do it. a second coat, possibly a third coat, so here it is after three coats of polycrylic, it's all sealed and kind of shiny, which is what I wanted and beautiful. I know it's hard to see in the video. but when you are in person you can definitely see it. I wish it captured better, but here's what it looks like. I'll also give you some close-ups. I'm very excited that this really turned out so beautiful, of course. I have details that still need to be added here, like molding and all the fun things that will be added here for the kids to come and hang out in this space, but the floors are a big improvement over what was here previously and I would definitely say This project probably costs less than $50 when you include wood stain, polyacrylic, markers, and sandpaper.

It really was mostly time and it's a huge savings if we were to put any type of vinyl flooring here. or something like that, make sure you click the subscribe button next to me so you can follow me. I will post a tour of the loft very soon. You can find the She Shed playlist at the link below and be sure to come find me on Facebook. and on instagram because you will find more inspiration and behind the scenes thank you very much again and see you next time bye everyone