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Flooring on the cheep


knarf180

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Depends on the king of floor. Lately for hardwood I like to cut the iron-on wood veneer strips into "boards" and lay them. Before that I scribed "boards" directly into the kit wood, which is hard on my arthritis. For linoleum I have used the self-adhesive shelf lining material, but for my latest build I found that paint better served my needs. I have used paper and paint chip samples cut into tiles for tile foors and I have found small paper motives to decoupage over painted floors. I have also gotten some nice tile and stone floor effects with spackling compound.

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Welcome Frank,

I haven't used peel and stick but I am thinking about testing out cardstock paper with paint pounced on paper and will coat with Triple thick.

Click on my Westville house- the blue room and yellow room floors are made from Greenleaf tiles and craft sticks. The attic has both craftstick and left over bought floor sticks.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54971771@N04/8010827830/in/set-72157627103452609

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54971771@N04/8010821467/in/set-72157627103452609

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54971771@N04/11695313854/in/set-72157627103452609

You might find this one helpful.

http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=36850

What are you working on?

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I ask at the interior design companies and wallpaper sellers for their old sample books. I have about 7 or 8 already. There's usually a few small-grain or finely detailed papers that I can glue down for flooring.

Scrapbook paper also works well.

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I love using the linoleum tiles from Home Depot. I cut it up with scissors ( $1.50 ) and glue it down like tiles and then I grout it. It looks like stone flooring. In my harry potter castle, I found a tile that looked like wood and just trimmed it to fit the room and glued it down in one piece. It looks great. In my sweet shop, I used scrapbook paper that looked like tiles and I clear coated over it. It looked great.

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I think scoring and staining is probably the least expensive way to get nice looking floors. I've used Printies of wood floors or tiles, flooring papers, wood veneer strips, paint, and most recently home made slate. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Here is the picture tutorial in my gallery of how I made slate on the cheap :)

http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&image=108049

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Micro-veneer is also a good alternative - depending whether or not you want to add some more hours to the build.......

I've also printed parquet patterns on plotter paper (office depot) and found scrapbook paper with interesting tile patterns. Right now I'm thinking of milk-crate or car grilles for tiles, using air dry clay or paper clay - depending on the texture I want.

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Depending on the size of the dollhouse, you can always print out your flooring or use scrapbook paper that looks like wood or tiles. The peel and stick tiles work. I've used them before but I wasn't thrilled with the outcome. I couldn't get my cuts straight enough so when I've wanted really cheap floors, I just finish the dollhouse kits wood floors. They look great if your willing to put in some time to finish them well. Hardwood flooring for free. If you want planks, you can draw or score them right onto the flooring.

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Yesterday, on my blog, I did a "tile" floor with fabric. I haunt quilt shops. They are good for fabric that will work in mini. This particular fabric looks like mini Spanish tile. I cut a template for the floor and use either spray glue or an extra strong glue stick to stick down the fabric to the front and then wrap the fabric around to the back with white glue. If you want to see, just poke "my blog changes daily" below.

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it is true the cheapest floors for a dollhouse is to finish the wood floors that are the floors

a nice stain and polyurethane with some light sanding and buffing....I rarely use anything on the floors but this...

diff color stain makes for dif colored floors...

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  • 1 month later...

This weekend I made hardwood floors with micro veneer. I bought this stuff last year but thought it was too thin for flooring -- since the stuff has no bulk there's almost no visible seam between the strips of wood. I got the idea to go around the edge of each "board" with a Sharpie so there's a black line where the pieces meet. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

 

The veneer I have (purchased off eBay) cuts easily with the paper cutter for nice straight lines, and it has a sticky backing so I didn't even need to glue it. More info and photos are on my blog.

 

 

post-7-0-73363900-1427088309_thumb.jpg post-7-0-65353400-1427088206_thumb.jpg

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I'm doing plank floors with the wood siding strips. Cut in half lengthwise, then cut into random lengths, sanded, stained, glued to the floor then finished. It's been a lot of work, but I'm almost done and I'm really happy with the finished look. It was a long cold winter, so it gave me something to do on snow days. I try to remember to add in a package of those strips when there's a sale and I'm already buying other things.   

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