An experimental pine floor installed in a rent house kitchen has held up well. Mr. Brz used a combination of 6 and 8″ boards (the type generally used for shelving), beveled the edges and used Miniwax Golden Oak stain to darken it up a bit. Six coats of polyurethane and 2 years later and it looks exactly the same.

We love hardwood floors in our rentals. Most of the older houses in our investment area have some type of hardwood hidden under the ever-present ratty carpet.  Usually, it’s well worth the cost to repair and refinish. The new polyurethane coatings are durable and we’ve yet to have a tenant mess one up.

A few years ago, we bought this beauty– a 3/2/1 with garage apartment near the college. Built in 1939, it had the original glass door knobs, 5 panel doors, pedestal sinks and cool built-ins intact. 

Heavy sigh  :)

The 90+ year old granny-owner fed us gooey cookies.  She patted our hands. She told stories of the home’s history complete with newspaper clippings. Let’s just say, one should be very careful about eating granny-cookies when shopping for real estate. 

Granny insisted that the hardwoods under the carpet were in A-1 shape; we assumed she was probably right considering the condition of the rest of the house. We made a ridiculously high offer, signed papers, wrote large checks and watched granny grab her bingo cards and head off on a cruise.

After taking possession, we learned granny was right. The oak flooring *was* pristine…until some evil person glued the carpet directly to the floor and nailed the entire perimeter. Fortunately, the floor was salvageable (and hideously over-budget) everywhere except the kitchen where the glue combined with years of spills, grease and gunk to form some type of noxious chemistry experiment.

We considered vinyl flooring but it just didn’t seem to fit the character of the house. A friend suggested a new pine floor using off-the-shelf materials available at any hardware store. We were a little skeptical… okay a *lot* of skeptical. Pine equals soft and tenants are notoriously tough on flooring. After much hand waving and many assurances from his bud that dents were just ‘part of the charm’ and thus ‘proof’ that this would make a perfect floor, Mr. Brz decided to give it a try.

Pine is relatively inexpensive in our area (maybe because we live in the Piney Woods of East Texas). Total cost for the floor ended up being around $1.25/sq ft for materials with Mr. Brz and child-units performing all labor. Boards are a combination of 6 and 8″ wide planks. He used a grinder with a sanding disc to bevel the edges, but found it too aggressive. Still, as the pictures show, it looks fantastic. On a later installation in an upstairs room of our home, he used a palm sander just to knock the edge off– a look we prefer. He top-nailed with 2 1/8″ ring-shank nails, setting them slightly using a framing gun and hand-set any that didn’t play nice, then filled the holes with stainable wood filler.

After the boards were down, he went over everything with a belt sander to even it a bit (nothing too aggressive), vacuumed well with a shop vac and tack-ragged carefully (especially in the bevels), then stained with Miniwax golden oak. Four coats of semi-gloss followed by 2 coats of satin polyurethane completed the job.

Another view of the kitchen floor after two years

The kitchen floor is holding up extremely well. It’s possible the rustic character of this type floor camoflauges dents and scratches but we’ve given it a good going over without finding damage.

We liked the result enough to install the same floor in a couple of rooms at home.

Another pine floor during installation in our home. The black roofing felt underneath can be seen in the upper left corner.

Closer look, before stain

Different angle, before stain and poly

All done~

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Tags: DIY, do-it-yourself, flooring, pine, pine flooring, wide plank, yellow pine