One of our most popular posts on Picklee features a wide plank farmhouse floor made from plywood planks.We used the simple plywood planks as flooring at the Picklee shop two years ago and they are still holding up wonderfully! In fact, we get questions and compliments on them from customers constantly! I love the plywood floor look so much at the shop that I knew I would eventually do something similar in my own home…well, I finally did!

Brett & I bought our new home this past August and have been working on renovations ever since. One of our projects was to the remove carpeting from our office (carpeting just DOES NOT belong in an office) and add a hardwood floor. By now you can guess that we didn’t end up installing hardwood floors, we saved a ton of money by working with something we already had…the plywood sub floor! Here’s how we did it…

It’s hard to imagine a plywood sub floor looking like anything BUT a plywood sub floor, but I can assure you that its a wonderful option if your going for a look with more character & charm. We were aiming for a chic, coastal farmhouse feel in our office so the painted plywood floor worked out perfectly for us!

This project is super simple, just a bit time consuming. Here’s how our office looked before we began transforming it…

Yep, that’s white carpet…definitely not on my list of “wants” in a home…

First things first, we cleared out the room and ripped out the white carpet (along with the under pad)…

Next, we had to pull out each and every carpet staple from the sub floor. I used a small pair of pliers along with a flat head screw driver, it was a tedious process but it went by quick!

After the sub floor was cleared of staples and nails, we gave it a GOOD vacuuming. This step is super important before painting the floor, for obvious reasons… Yes, that’s a painted heart on the floor, Brett expresses his love in strange ways sometimes… 😉

Oh yea, we painted the room a deep, ocean blue (to go with the coastal new feel) at this point too!

Once the floor was clean, it was time to begin painting! We wanted our painted floor to look a bit shiny, so we decided to use a semi gloss floor paint in a creamy shade of white. First, I cut in the entire perimeter of the room using a large brush…

The next step went super FAST. Brett took out the roller and rolled a solid coat of paint over the entire floor. There are plenty of bumps, nail holes and imperfections on a sub floor, but we embraced them in the name of creating character!

As Brett rolled the paint on, I followed him with a paint brush, touching up any deep holes that didn’t fully cover…

Since this was a floor paint, it didn’t require any top coat, so we simply let the paint “cure” for about 36 hours before putting our furniture back!

Even though the room is a deep, dark shade of blue, it feels so much LIGHTER with the crisp white floor!

It now been 4 months since we painted the sub floor and I’m still LOVING the look! It’s held up great too!

Yes, you can see lines and tiny holes, but that contributes to it’s charm =)

The best part, it that it’s supposed to look “imperfect” so we never worry about damaging it or messing it up!

Here’s a little peak at how our transformed office turned out…there will be many more details on it’s transformation coming soon!

Now that’s MORE proof that a plywood floor can look absolutely beautiful! Find more information on plywood floors here!