Rustic Flooring And Walls For Your Cabin Decor/Finished OSB Flooring

Inexpensive rustic flooring for your cabin getaway doesn't have to mean a hard packed earthen floor reminiscent to the cabin floors of the early settlers. You can step it up a few notches and have rustic wood flooring for cheap using the method my husband and I just finished on our cabin.

As far as rustic walls go, we also came up with an economical yet rustic chic look that is still light and bright enough to enhance the natural surroundings of any retreat.

The materials we used may surprise you. Although not typical, when finished in the right way they certainly give a rustic appeal that is still packed with high style.

If you haven't guessed from looking at the picture, the flooring that we used is simply the OSB sub-floor. Before finishing the floor, we had many people giving us their doubts. My husband and I, however, like to experiment and figured our cabin was the place to do it. If it was our home, I must say that I probably wouldn't have been as adventurous. I feel like a cabin is a place to express a little more creativity and expression.

The walls are an inexpensive tigerwood plywood. Try telling your friends that you are putting plywood on your walls and imagine the looks you might get! Again, we were taking a risk but had a vision of the finished product that appealed to us.

If you can find OSB flooring without any paint lines on it, that of course would be ideal. We could not and our floor started out with the green paint lines used to assist in nailing.

For starters, whether you need to get rid of paint lines or not, you will want to sand the floor with a belt sander. These can be rented from places like Menards or Lowes. Do not use a drum sander which can tear up any wood floor if you are not careful. Even with the multiple layers of OSB, it is amazing how smooth you can get the wood after sanding. Use a medium grit sandpaper for best results.

After sanding, broom sawdust into any gaps left where sheets of OSB butt up to each other. Then, vacuum thoroughly with a wet dry vac being careful to stay away from the gaps that you just filled. You are now ready to apply your floor polyurethane. We did not do any staining but this is always any option if you want to go with a darker color. We simply applied three very heavy coats of polyurethane specially formulated for floors. The brand we used was Varathane which I would recommend. The OSB will soak up the polyurethane pretty good so don't be afraid to do heavy coats. Ours were almost in puddles. Also, use a painters pad with a long handle extension for applying. It gives a nice smooth finish.

We always applied a coat as we were leaving the cabin after a weekend of work and then would come back the next weekend and it would be dry and smooth. It would probably take a couple of days of drying time for the floor not to be tacky.

After three coats, I love our floor. It is hard and smooth and feels as nice as my hardwood floor at home. All you need to do for a little extra warmth is throw down some area rugs!

 If you take a sheet of plywood and put a stain on it, it will most likely look like paneling from the sixties.  I experimented with a small piece of tiger-wood plywood and honey pine stain.  The result was much too dark.

Instead, I decided to go with a whitewash pickling stain to give a lighter brighter look.  I also wanted to be able to contrast all of the pine trim which we finished in a honey pine stain.  To apply, I simply rolled on the stain and then almost immediately wiped it back off so the grain would show through.

Since there are seams when you put up plain pieces of plywood, we also hung pine battens finished in the same whitewash pickling stain.  This does require a lot of trim but we used the low grade pine firring strips which just added to the rustic feel.