It's a floor thing

Today, I wanted to show you how I made my wooden floor. Although I've already made it, I hope I can explain it in more detail. To help me out, Willow decided to be my model.

"Let's get started!"

 

You will firstly need your supplies. These are; a thick piece of cardboard, Balsa wood planks or a solid piece of Balsa wood that you can cut and measure to make planks, stanley knife, PVA glue (and of course a pencil for marking and a ruler for measuring.)

The next thing you will want to do is cut your cardboard to the size of the floor you want. This can be any size. For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using the already cut Balsa wood planks so I will use these to measure the length of my floor. 

TIP: You should use thick cardboard. If you have bjd doll boxes you don't plan to use again, these are great to cut up and use for the floor base.

After you've got your cardboard, lay out your planks so that they all line up and cover the cardboard floor base.

Once this is done, carefully add glue to each plank and glue down onto cardboard base. I recommend adding several heavy books on top of your floor during the drying process. This helps to stick your planks to the cardboard and (hopefully) allows it to dry without bowing at the sides.

Once the glue has dried (I leave it overnight), then you can paint your floors and seal with a varnish if you like. For mine, I painted it with acrylic white and once it dried,  I took my pencil and drew in the plank lines making long dark lines where the gaps of the floor would be then I sealed with Jo Sonja's All Purpose Sealer. 

In an earlier post, I had mentioned my wood floor was bowing a bit at the sides. To try and fix this, I added another layer of hard cardboard underneath.

I let it dry overnight with heavy books on top and the bowing is less noticeable now. I think I will add another two layers of thick cardboard beneath the flooring making a total of 5 pieces of thick cardboard including the original piece. I think this will help to reduce the cardboard bowing/warping at the sides. Just remember to always put heavy books on top during the drying process and leave overnight. I will update on this once I add the extra two hard cardboard pieces.

Of course, Willow decided to inspect the flooring and finds it much more stable now. 

I also wanted to share a link I stumbled across that I think I will try when I make the diorama room for the Nendoroids.

1/6 Wooden Floor by OneSixthScale

Dressmaking pins are a wonderful tool when using Balsa wood and foam board. My bookshelf that I built had dressmaking pins to mimic "nails". Just keep in mind that foam board can also warp when glue is applied to it. I used foam board for my very first floor and found I had similar bowing/warping issues from the glue so you could try strengthening it with more foam board beneath or even cardboard.

Do let me know if you try either this tutorial or the Youtube one. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how easy it was to follow/do.