Wife and oldest daughter are into ballet and jazz dance. Daughter's big passion so far. (Yeah, she's 7). My wife has been doing it for 20 years.
We were checking out prices of actual dance floors. $$$ OUCH!!!!!!!
The local bowling alley was being demo'd, so I called and asked about wood alley flooring.
Figured it'd be a cool piece of the hometown to put down in the house and they demo company was planning to recycle and absorb 95% of all materials back into the community.
Cool idea.
It's a 13+ foot room to floor, so we got enough to lay down enough strips to cover the width. The length was easy, just had to cut off the 3' on the end of the 16' legth strip. Most of them were 21" wide, but two were 34".
Spent $600 on the wood. Dance floors were $2500 in materials alone. Cool. Saved a bunch and with the floor already partially assembled, I figured it'd save me a lot of labor $$ and time to do it on my own. Yep. SUUUUUURE!!! HAHA
With the sub floor on them they were FAWKIN heavy. Solid hardwood maple is heavy enough without a subfloor.
Got the wood home and began to cut off the subfloor. OMFG that was a long and schitty process. Have about 40 hours into that alone.
Once we got the sheet's down to just the maple and a 1.25" ripped down 2x4 underneath, we needed a way to take out the imperfections and inconsistencies and have some padding. I got lots of suggestions from residential flooring people and dance floor installers...but nothing seemed to help get my floor pieces evened up and eliminate the ridges between the seams.
I just decided to use carpet padding. Gave it some flex. Evened up the uneven parts and gave it some room to bounce and save on dancers knees in the long run.
Cool. I just used the leftover stuff from our re-carpet job upstairs. Perfect.
My wife's dance instructer's husband is an old woodright, so we had him come cleat the sections together. He used wooden cleats and screwed them in. One side from the top, and the other from the bottom. We used small dowels to fill them. I flush-cut them and did all the sanding work with a plate sander and some 80 grit and in some spots a belt.
After the a-holes that delivered the mirrors messed up my sanding job with their muddy and gritty and BLACK soled shoes...I grabbed the orbital palm sander and used 150 grit (that's all I had and it was too fine) and did a light sand. Might have to go back over it with some 80 grit pads.
The wife says a ballet floor can be TOO smooth.
BTW, I can always throw down some wrestling mats up too and have something for my son to work out on. LOL
My dad making a cut so I can get at the lag bolts with the sawsall.
We were checking out prices of actual dance floors. $$$ OUCH!!!!!!!
The local bowling alley was being demo'd, so I called and asked about wood alley flooring.
Figured it'd be a cool piece of the hometown to put down in the house and they demo company was planning to recycle and absorb 95% of all materials back into the community.
Cool idea.
It's a 13+ foot room to floor, so we got enough to lay down enough strips to cover the width. The length was easy, just had to cut off the 3' on the end of the 16' legth strip. Most of them were 21" wide, but two were 34".
Spent $600 on the wood. Dance floors were $2500 in materials alone. Cool. Saved a bunch and with the floor already partially assembled, I figured it'd save me a lot of labor $$ and time to do it on my own. Yep. SUUUUUURE!!! HAHA
With the sub floor on them they were FAWKIN heavy. Solid hardwood maple is heavy enough without a subfloor.
Got the wood home and began to cut off the subfloor. OMFG that was a long and schitty process. Have about 40 hours into that alone.
Once we got the sheet's down to just the maple and a 1.25" ripped down 2x4 underneath, we needed a way to take out the imperfections and inconsistencies and have some padding. I got lots of suggestions from residential flooring people and dance floor installers...but nothing seemed to help get my floor pieces evened up and eliminate the ridges between the seams.
I just decided to use carpet padding. Gave it some flex. Evened up the uneven parts and gave it some room to bounce and save on dancers knees in the long run.
Cool. I just used the leftover stuff from our re-carpet job upstairs. Perfect.
My wife's dance instructer's husband is an old woodright, so we had him come cleat the sections together. He used wooden cleats and screwed them in. One side from the top, and the other from the bottom. We used small dowels to fill them. I flush-cut them and did all the sanding work with a plate sander and some 80 grit and in some spots a belt.
After the a-holes that delivered the mirrors messed up my sanding job with their muddy and gritty and BLACK soled shoes...I grabbed the orbital palm sander and used 150 grit (that's all I had and it was too fine) and did a light sand. Might have to go back over it with some 80 grit pads.
The wife says a ballet floor can be TOO smooth.
BTW, I can always throw down some wrestling mats up too and have something for my son to work out on. LOL
My dad making a cut so I can get at the lag bolts with the sawsall.
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