The shop office is going to be roughly 750 sf in the new Dust Bowl Speed Shop World Headquarters. I am building a period correct office circa 1957-1964. This will incorporate a storage area for my parts etc. It will also house my vintage living room/lobby. I am stuck on flooring. What kind of flooring would be good for high traffic and mechanic friendly, but still look right? I am leaning towards VCT tile, but it doesn't pop much. Also, the install is a bear. I will warn you I absolutely abhor checkerboard floors, so that is not an option. I thought about a border about 2' away from the wall in a different color to frame out a rectangle shaped like the room. IDK. It makes my head hurt.
A real wood plank floor would be legit, whatever you put in will have to wear like iron though with you walking in with metal shavings and grit on the bottom of your boots....there is no shame in having a plain concrete floor...
If it's upstairs & a wood subfloor, I agree that hardwood will be a nice choice. In my experience laying VCT over wood. Everything needs to be very flat with minimal deflection. Otherwise the tiles will transfer any imperfection. I personally would avoid pre finished "engineered" hardwood & instead use some 3/4' thick Oak planks.
Apitong. It's the wood they use for semi trailer floors. You'll never wear it out and it's not bad looking.
Got any Osage orange trees? Have them cut into planks , let them dry out for a couple years , have them planed down . But that won’t fit into your schedule. Start scouting around for old houses being torn down. Salvage the wood floors Lots of crawling around on your knees and popping in nails with an air nailer . In the living room of our house. We pulled up the carpet 7 years ago and had a wood looking ceramic tile laid down . Our house has floor joist . Havent had any issues yet . Other than if a glass or plate is dropped it shatters all over
DIY option would be a LVP or Luxury vinyl plank. They're a cheaper, water resistant, easier to install option made to look like hardwood floors. I could probably lay 750 sq foot area in a day if it's just a single room & empty. Add another half day if there are hallways & things to work around. Some of them look really nice & mimic real hardwood quite well. The only catch, it's not real wood & it didn't exist in the MCM era. So there is some sacrifice there. The right ones can look pretty damn close to real wood though. If you have a local floor store I'd visit & take a look in person to see if its something that might work for you.
Wood floor is easyish for a novice. Check Menards/Home Depot for a air stapler. For the distressed look, look around and you might find someone with reclaimed flooring. Nothing really compares to a well used wood T&G floor with a story to tell. Either that or put new down and distress it yourself. My brother did a tile job in a house years ago. Woman of the house wanted distressed hardwood. Once all new high buck T&G was installed, she had someone come in with mini horses shoed up and walked around until she got what she liked. Along with dragging a log chain around.
Sometimes I see sections of reclaimed bowling alley lanes at the architectural salvage store. I got most of my fixtures / installations, and all the doors for my house and garage at architectural salvage stores. You never know what you’ll find at those places.
I put VCT in my kitchen/dinette myself, bought most of it dirt cheap from the Habitat for Humanity Restore, had to buy the glue new but that was about it. Turned out pretty cool and looked good at first, but over time it gets dirty/worn and if you put wax on it, it has to be perfectly clean beforehand. Lots of schools and commercial buildings of the period had VCT and kept it beautifully smooth, but they used those huge floor buffers to do it, so it's high maintenance. If you have a nice flat subfloor to go over, and you either are willing to do the maintenance or if you're willing to live with floors that will show a lot of "patina" wear after years of use, VCT has a cool look and can be really cheap, and definitely do-it-yourself possible. I have 130 year old hardwood in the office at the Meat Market, which I spent way, way too long uncovering and repairing so it would be exposed again. I polyurethane'd the living hell out of it when I was done to try to fill in imperfections and seal it up as good as I could get it, that was probably 8 years ago. After years of daily, hard use, the poly has held up incredibly well, like iron. But the floor is a dust magnet, and any gaps in the wood fill up with dirt really easily. A real hardwood floor that's tight, will hold up forever, but it's hard to achieve, especially DIY, and it's expensive. And while exposed hardwood definitely was around in the 57-64 period, I feel like it gives a much more old-timey feel. My kitchen floor screams 1960, my office floor does not.
I have 1" tongue and groove engineered subfloor. Not sure what I need to do with that. Don't know if I need to put a sanded hardwood plywood on top of it?
What should I do with the imperfections. I have several spots where the gap is too wide for my taste and there is one spot where the floor isn’t level at the seam.
There is an underlayment for some brands. Something like 1/16 thick. I have seen some use red rosin paper as an underlayment. Just roll it out and staple down. In the spots that arent level, you can double up a strip of underlayment. Lay a straight edge across the floor and that should tell you how wide of a strip to cut. If its more that a 1/4" you can taper off with a combination of 1/4 plywood and underlayment. Unfortunatly you will always have a dip or low spot if it is a large step. As far as the gaps go, as long as it isnt more than 3/8" or so it should be fine. Even if it is wider, as long as it isnt in a high traffic area, the planking will support itself decent. As usual, pics would help.
Pulled up ugly wall to wall carpet in my whole house 20 years ago. Used a ton of mineral spirits and scotchbrite pads to clean all the glue and crap off of it, inch by inch. Took weeks, at night, on the weekends. The plan was to poly it, but I got busy at work, a new g/f, etc, and I've not done a thing. Bare, stripped wood, 82 years old. 15 steps from my nasty garage, but I try to remember to wipe my feet when I come in. I love it, and won't ever put anything over it
They make floor patch for these imperfections. In some cases I'll use floor "self leveling" underlayment over the whole substrate if there is alot of uneven areas, divots ect. They also make a non self leveling floor patch. I use it to "hand float" small uneven or low areas with a trowel or straight edge. Occasionally I'll pull screws out of the seam of the subfloor & use an electric hand planer or angle grinder with a demo wheel to get them in tolerance. Sometimes a couple more screws to pull it down will work. Some instances require we use a combo of all these techniques. The floor you choose can dictate how flat the subfloor might need to be. VCT needs FLAT, no exceptions. It's thin and transfers any defects. Old thick Hardwood can use tar paper & roll over imperfections fairly well. LVT or similar will use an underlayment (pad) or have cork attached to the back. That will absorb some of the small imperfections pretty well. The uneven seams will need addressed no matter what. Chances are, your place being new, thick T&G plywood, you're prep should be minimal. Check YouTube for some "how to" videos. They could probably show you in a few minutes what will take me a hour to type & still sound confusing. Think of it like painting a car. The prep work is key to long lasting, good results. It can sound more complicated than it really Is. The labor is the hardest part.
I think the guys that laid the upstairs floor were getting lazy with my office area, because they thought it was attic storage. They left some large gaps that I am not impressed with. Regardless, of the tile type, it needs to be addressed. I'll snap some pics of it.
LVT is cool, but I think some salvaged oak flooring would be awesome. Check with architectural salvage or building demo companies in your area or keep an eye on local ads. Maybe top the floor with a small vintage MCM rug or two to "warm up" the area. Since your office is upstairs, you'll need a good door mat system at the foot of the stairs. If your boots are real cruddy, have a pair of clean footwear you can slip into if needed, same as you'll have for entering the living space from the shop. Someone mentioned bowling alley lanes. Thick and heavy, but I know someone who made a super cool coffee table from a hunk of it. Here's a place that has all sorts of architectural, industrial and building salvage. Fun to browse. They have a couple of locations in the Midwest: https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/bowling-alley-wood/
Check around with local saw mills. They may have leads for someone who does small batch tonge and groove flooring. Might find some a little cheaper. Even rough sawed with a good coat of poly will weather well. Can even rent a floor sander before finishing.
This is not meant to sound snarky, but we don't really have saw mills here. There's not enough trees. I'm sure in MN that's probably true. I would have to drive about 4 hours to Arkansas and find someone with a sawmill. Now, clay we have......Bricks we don't have a shortage of.
Around the Sulphur area there’s sawmills . Every Sunday rain or shine there’s the Dog meet swap meet . It’s north of town on the east side of the highway. The drive in is just before a bridge . It’s in a grove of huge pecan trees . The few times I’ve been there there’s at least one or two guys there selling rough cut lumber. I talked with a guy about cutting up some Osage Orange trees. He told me only if is fresh cut and green . Once it’s dry it will dull blades like hitting a rock .
save all that foo-foo stuff for the ladies lounge. period correct & durable? there's a reason it was called "battleship linoleum." Battleship Linoleum Flooring: Where Did It Go? | The Marmoleum Clique - Forbo Marmoleum Free Samples
ALL PRODUCTS - Green Home Floors Forbo Marmoleum Linoleum-Roll-Sheet 2.5mm Vivace - Sold by Square Yard 79"x16.4" Archives - Green Home Floors i think it's like "kleenex" & "xerox" - proprietary names have defined entire industries they spawned. original linoleum was layers of linseed oil, pigment - probably some white lead tossed in for good measure, and fabric sheeting to hold it all together, and then pasted down with some good old crystalline asbestos adhesive. vinyl composition tiles are, well, tiles.
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