Thread: Fence palings as floorboards

Yes they can. The bloke that sanded my floors had used old palings on his livingroom. As far as I know he dressed them and glued them down on a particle board sub floor. Sanded and sealed with a water based floor coating called BONA traffic. I think he just butted them together and used bog as needed for joints and nail holes. A lot of work.

Hi Tony, yes I reckon they could be, and as Grommett describes would be the way to go. As he says, it would be a lot of work, but the result would be fabulous - a mix of new and old timber, just planed down into the intermediate zone - Mmmmm mmmm! Some of them can be surprisingly stable once you get the soft exterior off. You'd probably need to get hold of 3-4 times the quantity required to allow for plenty of rejects.

My whole barn is lined inside & out, floor and ceiling, with old palings (mostly unplaned, except for the door). It has a really nice feel to it.

As the others have said, I too think it would be a lot of work. Also I think that having the base under them is essential - I doubt that they would be strong enough on their own.
The only place that I have used them for flooring was in the nest boxes of my chook house. Of course chooks aren't very heavy, but it did hold the weight of my grandaughters quite easily.

yep,

you dont need to Tongue & grove them you can lay them sqaure edged glued down to partcile board or plywood.

i suggest that you only buff /polvac the floor not sand it as if you sand it will lose its look

Thanks heaps guys, the plan is to do the hallway first as a learning curve then move on to the rest of the house except the bedrooms, well you never know maybe them too! It's a concrete slab so any advice would be great as I now have a plan. What a great forum, Thankyou

Makes good parquetry