Plank flooring for any budget

As I approach the cusp of middle age the closest I've come to having any design allegiance is that my furniture is the same stuff I had in University, placing me in the Early Student school of décor. The one exception is the bedroom, where I have a high-end mattress, but only because my futon got so compacted it was about to become the next black hole.

So you probably shouldn't take my decorating advice. Unless you have the problem I'm about to describe, or you have hardwood tastes on a paint budget.

Here's the situation. I ripped out my old, musty carpeting. This revealed a plywood subfloor, the perfect base for laying a hardwood floor, or even installing reclaimed pine flooring, available from salvage supply places. But it's going to cost thousands of dollars for either hardwood or the reclaimed pine, even if I install it myself. Plus I can't decide which wood to choose, and anyway, delivery takes five to seven weeks. So I wisely think, why make an expensive mistake now when I can make a much more expensive one in years to come, after lumber prices have gone sky high? Why not just blunder cheaply now, and save the really high-cost errors for later in life when I'm cresting the richly emotional foothills of peri-menopause?

That decided, I filled the plywood's knots and seams with a fantastic floor leveller product called Poly Underlay Plus, made by the LePage people. This stuff is a cement-based product that you trowel on. Happily, it has an extremely low shrinkage rate so you need only one coat, plus it's flexible when cured, so it won't crumble if your floor is a bit spongy. Poly Underlay is paintable after an hour or two. The only trick is that you have exactly ten minutes working time after you've mixed the stuff. If you're not an Olympic class troweller, mix small batches and don't pause for snacks. I mixed a huge batch and it set before I'd used a quarter of it, so now I have a giant, pail-shaped plug as a souvenir of my modest trowelling skills.

Tip: Use a wide cement-finisher's trowel. It moves faster and feathers edges nicely. Oh, and two words: knee pads.

After the Poly Underlay Plus works its magic, scrape off any bumps or ridges. To save chipping problems later, prime with a good acrylic primer. Then choose an appropriate colour of Porch and Floor paint for the topcoats.

By way of honesty, it took me five coats because I kept selecting (*oxymoron alert*) "playful neutrals" and then having to cover them with another shade, which would turn out to be more ghastly than the last. After a pathetic parade of disappointments I marched to the paint counter and confessed to having no design sense. The nice lady pretended she didn't feel sorry for me and picked a fine colour. Moral: Always get a second opinion if your paint has a name like "Inner Fear" or "Rinsed Buffalo". Oh wait, they all have names like that. Get help.

Just before the final coat of paint, carve floorboard 'cracks' using a Dremel fitted with a stone grinding-wheel. Start by measuring and marking plank lines on the floor using a longish 2x4 board for a ruler. You can create random or regular board widths. I did 7"-wide planks but occasionally threw in a 4" or 10" spacing to incorporate existing plywood seams, which look goofy if they fall in the middle of a 'plank'.

Wearing safety glasses, ear gear and dust mask, cut v-grooves along the lines. Vary the depth between 1/32" and 1/8" to forge different degrees of settling and wear. Freehand the carving so the lines are mildly irregular and wobbly, which is how real painted planks look.

Note: I originally intended to use a circular saw to cut the shallow lines, but realized the effect would be too tidily linear. Plus the circular saw tears up plywood, where the Dremel just carves a very pretty line.

Using a Dremel will make you feel like some kind of a god. This was absolutely the most fun I've had since I tried to get the cat to use a pencil. (You just don't appreciate how good life is 'til you've watched something hairy with a grossly inflated ego but no opposable thumb.)

Once you've finished carving, vacuum and give the floor a final topcoat. Depending on the colour you (or the paint counter lady) chose, you could rub a contrasting shade - say "Incandescent Filth" - into the lines to emphasize them. Cover the whole surface with a couple of coats of water-based urethane for a long-lasting finish.

This floor treatment satisfies tight schedules and taut purse-strings, plus it really fools the senses. Here's proof. My brother-in-law Bill, who's a specialist in restoring antique houses, absolutely couldn't tell the floor was plywood. He was completely convinced we had a real painted pine surface. I assured him it was just plywood, but I was dead smug about it. Total cost of doing one large room, including Poly Underlay Plus and paint: Under $100. Sweet.