Laying the Floors

Today I (mostly) finished the floors for the attic.  I bought 30 two-foot by three-inch balsa planks at Michael's and cut them all in half longways.  I cut the planks into various lengths and then laid them on the floor in an uneven pattern to make them look natural.  After I got them all laid out the way I wanted  I mentally divided the floor into three sections and then removed each section one board at a time being careful to number the back of each board to make it easier to put them back the way I wanted them.  In this picture you can see the left section is painted and glue down, and the middle section is ready to be marked, painted, and then glued:

Here is a pic of the boards from the middle section.  I started in the back and worked my way forward, numbering each board as I picked it up:

I should add in here that if you're thinking about doing this you should create a budget.  You might think the most expensive part of this project would be the wood but it's actually the spray paint.  The Walnut Tone spray paint is $7 a can at Michael's and I've gone through about 8 cans so far and will need about 8 more before I'm done.  I am very diligent about using Michael's coupons to help keep the cost down so keep that in mind as well.  They usually have a 40% off one item coupon so I pretty much buy a can of it every time I'm in the store.

Once the boards were dry, and this spray paint dries completely in about 20 minutes, I glued the boards to the base.  Let's discuss glue.  Hot glue has a fast drying time and sticks fairly well but wood glue creates a stronger bond and is preferable in my opinion.  Wood glue, though, has a longer open time (the time between when you place your objects together and when the glue sets) and is therefore more difficult to work with.  So I used a combination of the two to make this easy.  I ran a thick bead of wood glue down the center of each plank and then put dabs of hot glue all over the board.  You have to work really quickly here because hot glue sets fast but as long as you have all materials together and you are working very close to the project you should be fine.  The result is that the dabs of hot glue held the boards in place immediately while the wood glue dried.  That beats standing around holding each board in place waiting for the wood glue to dry!

Here's a look at the finished floors (well, I still need to do the half board at the front end):

and here's a landscape view:

In this picture the far left section isn't painted yet but you get the idea.  As I write this I have finished all of the floors and actually moved on to the walls so you will see a wall entry tomorrow!

one more thing for today, though.  Michael's (can you tell I go there all the time?) has golf-ball display cases in their frame/shadow box section that look like this:

 The glass-paned door is held in place by two hinges and is easily removed.  Once removed, you just flip it upside down (all sides are finished so it looks fine upside down) so that the golf ball indentations are now on the bottom of the shelves and not visible.  I will eventually use these in the library at Barkley but little books are expensive so until I get enough of them, it makes an excellent shoe rack for Evangeline: