Fillerbunny

My first pass at the sanding was done with a belt sander and 80 grit paper.  When I started, I was sort of worried that I was going to accidentally sand my way all the way through the floor and into clown territory. In retrospect, I probably should have sanded away a little more than I did, as there are still some roughish patches. I’m not sure how much these will show when the paint is done, so we’ll see how it goes. This is how it looked in the early stages.

 

There’s a lot of DIY posts out there about painting plywood floors. Most of them agree about the basics, but the one thing I couldn’t find any good information on was filling the floor seams. Some blogs say to use caulk, but its not sandable and can shrink. Some recommend bondo, but it cracks when the seams flex with normal temperature changes.  Several agree that using floor leveler doesn’t work well, because its non-sandable and makes the seams more noticeable after painting. All of them recommend against joint compound, but none seem to have an ideal solution.

After several discussions with my Construction Consultant, and what essentially amounted to putting on a blindfold and spinning around the flooring aisle at Home Despot, I chose this product:

 

It’s meant to be used to fill cracks in hardwood floors, so I’m hoping its durable and flexible enough to meet my needs. It remains to be seen if I have chosen poorly or not.

I’m puttying cracks, seams, knots, and random divots. The wood filler instructions indicate it’s to be troweled onto the whole floor and then sanded down,  so I’m experimenting, one area I troweled completely, and the others I just patched. It has the consistency of joint compound, so I’m a little concerned at how well it’s going to work.