practicefloor

..Build Your Own Practice Floor

You will find below, photos of the practice floor that my husband built for our two dancing daughters, well actually he built it for one of them because the other is too lazy to practice!

This is the completed floor. It is made from two pieces of flooring that here in Australia is called "yellow tongue". It is a tongue in groove system where one side has a strip of yellow plastic along the edge that fits into the groove on the side of the piece next to it. It is what we call "particle board". Around the edge is a strip of pine that is wider than the flooring so that it raises the flooring off the ground. If you didn't have alot of room you could make the same floor with only one piece of the flooring.

This is underneath the floor. Hubby screwed a flat piece of pine along the middle join just to give it support incase the tongue in groove wasn't strong enough. We also got some small rubber "feet" from the hardware store and screwed them around the edges and along the middle just to give a little more cushioning. The actual floor that our practice floor sits on is a floating timber floor on a concrete slab so I am a bit paranoid about injuries due to dancing on such a hard floor. The rubber feet also protect the "real" floor from scratching.

This is just a close up of the centre join.

This is the centre join from the top. We originally screwed it from underneath so that there were no screws on the surface of the floor, but ended up having to put this one in because it was lifting a little. The flooring is attached to the frame with screws all around the outside of the frame going into the edge of the flooring. If you look closely at the bottom right of this photo you will see one of the screws. You will need to put lots in, all around the edge. You could put the flooring on top of the frame but then you would have to screw down into it and we were worried that the screws might lift up and be dangerous.

Lastly, two photos of the underneath to show how the floor is raised on the frame and the rubber feet that we used. So far the floor has held up well. About the only draw back is that it is quite heavy so you wouldn't want it to be something that had to be moved around alot. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me and I will pass you on to Hubby who would be only too happy to talk building with your Hubby!