
DIY Farmhouse Wide Plank Flooring Made From Plywood

The first place we did a farmhouse wide plank flooring made from plywood was in the dining room earlier in the year.
Now we’re doing the same farmhouse wide plank flooring in the living room. For the most part, both the floors were done the same way, with a couple of exceptions. In this article, we’ll cover what was different with the living room floor. You can see all the details for the dining room plywood floor here.
The dining room’s wide plank flooring took about a week to finish, the living room took a lot longer. The space was a bit larger but mostly it was adding shims and the end grain flooring inlay that added a ton more time to the project.
From start to finish, it took a little over two weeks to finish the living room floor.
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What We Did Different With This Farmhouse Wide Plank Flooring
Just about the same methods we used for both the flooring in the dining room and the living room.
In the living room, we pulled up the old carpet, removed staples, painted the sub-floor a dark color and put down the floor the same way.
The width, length and thickness of the plywood planks was the same, and we cut, sanded, distressed, stained and added 3 coats of polyurethane to the flooring in almost the same way.
Here are the things we did a bit differently.
We Didn’t Sand Between Polyurethane Coats
When we did the dining room floor, we lightly sanded the bumps out of the coat of polyurethane with 120 grit sand paper.
With the living room floors we figured that the bumps would even out a little after multiple coats of poly were applied.
Besides, the bumps would add a bit more texture making the floors less slippery.
The only concern I had was how it would feel walking barefoot on the floor with more texture. Turns out, despite clearly feeling the additional texture when running your hand on the plank, it was barely noticeable when walking on it barefoot.
The Shopping List
Tools List
Here’s a list of the tools we used on this project, it’s basically the same list of tools from the dining room flooring project.
Affiliate links below may be to similar items when exact items couldn’t be found online.
Extra Battery For Finish Nailer
Supplies List
These are the supplies used on this project.
Affiliate links below may be to similar items when exact items couldn’t be found online.
Varathane Cherrywood Gel Stain – we used about 7 quarts
Water Based Oil-Modified Poluyrathane – we used 2 gallons
3″ Natural Bristle brush – 6 brushes to apply the stain
4″ Polyester Synthetic Brush – 4 brushes to apply the poly
Masking Paper – We used the masking paper to protect the deck when applying the stain and poly
A New Character Builder Was Used
The same original cast of character builders were used with the living room floors, a hammer, pliers and a propane torch… and this time we added a utility knife to the arsenal.
For the dining room we would dig into crack in the wood using the sanders to open the cracks up and soften the edges.
This time we used a utility knife to lengthen and widen the cracks in the wood before softening the edges with the sander.
The result was even better than we imagined. The deep cracks we were able to make with the utility knife gave us the farmhouse wide plank flooring look we wanted.
You wouldn’t even guess that it was plywood.
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We Added Shims
The living room floors were much more uneven then the floors in the dining room. To the point where we needed to add shims in the low spots to try and level things off a little.
I went around the floor with a straight edge, and where ever there was a dip, I added the shims.
Since I knew I needed a good amount of shims, I made them out of a sheet of 1/4″ plywood. I cut ripped the sheet into 1″ strips using the table saw.
Once the floor was shimmed, we painted the floor a dark brown color, just like we did in the dining room.
The Living Room Plywood Floor Is Finished!
Like I said, the living room floor took much longer to do than the dining room floor did. It took a little over two weeks to finish, had I not messed up with the wood slice accent flooring, we would have finished in about 2 weeks.
Check out the wood slice accent flooring project here
We love the farmhouse wide plank flooring in both the dining room and the living room. This style was the perfect fit for this house, could not have asked for a better fit.
Between the two floors, I’d say I’d stick to the steps used on the living room floor. Sanding between poly coats seems to have been unnecessary, and using the utility knife to expand on the cracks in the wood added sooo much more character to the living room floor – LOVE IT!
Here’s a few more pictures of the stained plywood floors in the living room floor.
Let me know what you think, is there something you would have done different?
Share your thoughts in the comments below!