Ted’s essays

more re-purposed hardwood floor fun

I continue to enjoy working with the pickup truck full of oak flooringdog cave topper 1 I salvaged out of Missoula for a hundred bucks or so (as I vaguely remember).

I was lucky as all-get-out that I tripped over a great deal on a plastic imitation-snap-together hardwood flooring closeout before I put two months of tedious, dirty labor into making my studio floor out of the real stuff.

I fabricated a metal bar into a fixture to scrape the tongues and grooves back and forth cleaning them up so they would mate together again. I glue, then clamp them together into panels for various uses. Then I polyurethane a few coats on for a finish that pleases me.

Strips of oak hardwood accent the faces of my cheap pine shelves. Oak hardwood panels make shelving unit ends. It is fun and rewarding working with this stuff in small quantities.

My studio is filling up with lovely wood accents and that hand-me-down dog kennel has turned into a pleasing-to-look-at shelf by our entry/exit door.

If you zoom in on that bookshelf above “Scooter’s Cave”, dog cave topper 2you might notice that the side panel is of the same hardwood strips.

Subtle, but part of the plan, is that the new window-sill cover that is highly resistant to Beagle-brain dog prints, is of the same height and design as her cave topper. It all blends together well.

It’s hard telling what else I may find to do with the oak T&G, but if you hang around here every once in a while, you are likely to find out.