Barn Floors for Dummies

salvaged barnwood used for flooring

If the morning staff meeting runs long and the research staffers don't have time for an extensive web-surfing session to find a DotD candidate, they all keep a few names in their metaphorical pockets for just such an emergency. One such name is Lacy Enderson, who's already taken home fourteen awards from this website. Well, today makes fifteen (yesterday was hectic...), thanks to Lacy's typically useless instructions for "How to Build Wood Barn Floors,"¹ which she posted to good old eHow.com.

Like many an eHow post (and many an Enderson post, for that matter), the original question is ambiguous: does the OQ want to put a wooden floor in a barn? or does the OQ want to use salvaged barn wood as flooring? Frankly, we can't tell. Obviously, neither could Lacy... we say that because Enderson opened by extolling the multitudinous virtues of salvaged wood:

"When constructing a wood barn, gather together recycled wood from old homes, factories and even other barns to add a touch of history to your new structure. Tear down aged timber that was milled a hundred years ago to provide your barn with additional strength, reliability, elegance, and grace. If old wood can be used for barn moldings, wall studs and even furniture, lay it as floor planks, too."

Based on that rather ungrammatical paragraph, it appears that Lacy decided that the OQ was building a barn and wanted a wooden floor; though why she suggested using salvaged wood "even [from] other barns" for "floor planks" isn't very clear. Nevertheless, our intrepid freelancer, occasional author, and sometime counselor forged ahead with her post. And things got even worse... Lacy's instructions for laying a wooden floor – and at this point we are no longer sure, but we think she was still babbling about recycled wood – include such marvels of dumbassery as

• "Place a 6 mill plastic cover [sic] over the coated slab." We think she means "6-mil"... but, that all raised an important question for the staff farmers: "Why would anyone lay a wooden floor on the ground floor of a barn?"
• "Lay 3/4 inch CDX plywood TNG with interlocking lap joints on top of the plastic." Ditto... not to mention, do you have the slightest idea what that means, Lacy?
• "Determine how many solid wood floor planks you will need by measuring the floor space and buying enough to cover the area. Each box of floor planks will specify how many square feet of flooring is in each one." Salvaged barnwood comes in boxes? Is she serious?
• "Using a manual cleet [sic] nailer, made especially for laying wood floors, nail in a 3/4 inch cleet [sic] nail at an angle."  Lacy, Lacy, Lacy: first, the word is "cleat" and second, we think you wanted 1¾" nails, not ¾-inch. We don't think you can even find ¾-inch cleat nails! That's not to mention that your barn wood very likely isn't T&G...

No, as usual, Enderson lacked even the slightest knowledge of this DIY task, conflating putting a wooden floor in a barn with laying a wooden floor using salvaged wood while mangling the instructions for laying a hardwood floor on a slab. Small wonder she's our Dumbass of the Day -- again!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_4610082_build-wood-barn-floors.html

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DDIY - FLOORS