I have finally decided that I can’t take my concrete shop floor anymore. Since I’m in the hardwood floor business, a hardwood floor is a natural fit. I also wanted to add some details. The hitch was building the floor too high with sleepers, plywood and 3/4″ flooring and creating at least a 2″ lip at my garage door, (The floor is already poured 1″ higher than the driveway). A refinish that I am currently on gave me inspiration…… a “top nail” floor.
For those who aren’t familiar, top nail floors were popular during the Victorian era thru the turn of the century (some installers still do them). They consist of 1/4″ or 3/8″ material top nailed into a subfloor, usually 1X pine or poplar. The actual flooring is not tongue and grooved, but simply butted tight nailed through the face. Installers were careful to align nails and keep even spacing. This thin material allowed for very intricate patterns and geometric designs. The floor I am currently refinishing includes herringbone patterns, diagonals, Greek keys, Celtic knots, weaves and uses 4 species of lumber, white oak, walnut, cherry, maple. This is over 1400 sq. ft. and encompasses 5 rooms and two hallways. The floors are still tight and very few of the boards have worked loose.
The Plan: Replicate a border and field pattern. Using 1/2″ pressure treated plywood trowel glued and powernailed to the concrete floor, 1/4″ flooring material (will saw in half the stacks of leftover flooring I have accumulated). Trowel glue and gun 5/8″ brads thru the face of the flooring. Trowel fill, sand and finish. This will raise the finished floor only 3/4″ and hopefully, showcase my shop.
I’ll update posts on the progress…also a good reason to finally buy a digicam.
Replies
looking forward to seeing some pics
Ditto on the pics.
Post em here or in the gallery. Some before shots, progress shots, and finished shots sure would be nice. Whatta ya say? Remember, a picture's worth a thousand words!
Davo
I want to know about sawing in half the flooring you have. I have a shed full of extremely thick maple salvaged from a flooded gymnasium. It was a clip style floor there are no nails. It's 2" thick, with a good 1/8" of varnish on the top. I haven't figured out what to do with it. The tongue and grooves are all gooped up with sand and varnish. I thought if I resawed it, it would get too narrow by the time I recut new tongues and grooves. So what are you doing with your stuff on the sides? Running it through a jointer or something? Is it tongue and groove material? I have a 12x12 addition that's going to need a floor soon. I'm wondering if I should use the maple. It's about 250 miles away. If I plan to saw each piece in three, I can haul enough in one trip. Should I saw off the top and throw away the piece with the varnish or just put that side down? The bottom has a kind of bumpy thing going on. Should I cut that off, too? How does one resaw this kind of thing? Band saw with a fat blade as seen on New Yankee workshop? I don't have one, but I might could find a friend that does.
I started messing around with some boards over the weekend. First I sent the boards thru the table saw and removed the tongues and the grooves. I then cleaned up both edges on the joiner. Next I was able to resaw the boards on my band saw with a thin kerf blade and slow feed rate. I sawed them at a heavy 1/4" and got two passes out of each board just missing the relief cut on the bottom on the 2nd pass. (The bottom of the board with the relief cut will burn nicely in the shop stove next winter.) I then set up my belt sander and sent each board thru one time on each side to get them all to a relative thickness. I'm not worried about saw marks or perfect thickness as the floor sanding process will take care of the overwood.
I now have 400 sq. ft. of roughly 1/4"X 2" material which started out as 200 sq. ft of 3/4" X 2-1/4" flooring.
This took me about 8 hrs, counting an hour or two of messing around with setups. Now that I have the setups and process down the next few hundered feet should go faster. Next I plan on doing a sheet of plywood with my pattern and seeing how it looks and holds up.