A woman has shared her genius method for transforming her plywood flooring into a wooden-style floor, using instant coffee and permanent marker pens.
Nova Burke, 54, from Ontario, Canada, came up with a thrifty hack when she couldn’t go shopping for wood stain for her floor because of lockdown restrictions.
The DIY buff, who works as a cleaner, decided to use household items to try and achieve a similar effect on her plywood floor
She used instant coffee as a stain and then grabbed a permanent marker to draw lines on the floor to make it look more realistic.
‘I remembered using instant coffee on some furniture at one point after reading about it years ago, so I thought why not try it on the floor,’ Nova explains.
‘I guessed permanent marker would show through my coffee “stain” and I had two one-litre cans of clear coat on hand, so I decided to give it a go.
‘I made sure to vacuum before applying the coffee stain and checked after each application that there were no bits or hairs in it.’
Nova applied two coats of the coffee stain and then two of the clear coat, which took her about 10 hours total, including drying time.
‘For the knot holes, I filled them with the coffee stain and then also filled them with clear coat so they were flush with the rest of the floor,’ she adds.
‘The longest part was drawing the lines and waiting for the stain to dry, but I’m happy with the result and we’re going to do the whole upstairs floor now.’
By choosing plywood and her homemade stain over laminate flooring, Nova estimates she has saved £172.
After sharing the fruits of her labour on Facebook, she was flooded with hundreds of messages from people in awe of the ‘innovative’ trick.
‘This is insanely amazing,’ one person wrote. ‘I would have never thought to do this. It looks gorgeous and I can only imagine how much money this saved you. Great job.’
Another added: ‘I think it looks wonderful. Really well done, isn’t it amazing what we can do when needs must. Keep the momentum going and keep safe.’
‘What a brilliant idea, it really does look like a proper wood floor, you must be well chuffed with it – definitely a keeper,’ wrote someone else.
Several people even decided to test out Nova’s method themselves.
‘That looks amazing,’ wrote one. ‘I need to cover a very similar floor in my living room and was dreading having to lay some sort of vinyl looking flooring. I’m going to use your idea instead now.’
‘Brilliant. I was going to try this but cutting the ply and refixing to make it look like planks – you’ve just saved me hours,’ another person said.
Since moving into her home 18 months ago, Nova has come up with other clever solutions to fix up the house.
To paint the exterior of the property she created a makeshift extended paintbrush by strapping it onto a long pole, enabling her to stand from the safety of a shorter ladder – as she suffers from a fear of heights.
We have to applaud the ingenuity!
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