How To Build A Dance Floor

My oldest son recently got married and we DIYed pretty much everything, including the dance floor. When we priced how much it would be to rent a dance floor for one day, I was shocked at how much it was for even a small one. It was $700-$900 to rent a small dance floor. I was confident we could build one for much less that we could then reuse for future events. Here is how to build a dance floor! Or at least how we decided to do it :)

How To Build A Dance Floor

Out of everything, or sweet daughter-in-law was the most excited about having a dance floor. She wanted a fun reception with lots of dancing! So we made figuring out a DIY dance floor a top priority!

Create The Panels

We chose to make our dance floor 16 feet by 16 feet. It took 8 pieces of plywood. We built a base for the plywood and then attached the plywood to the base, creating 8 panels. The 8 panels were then connected to make the dance floor.

I wanted to make sure that it was very solid and that while lots of people were dancing on it, the plywood wouldn't bow. To ensure that wouldn't happen, we created the frame for each piece of plywood and added 5 braces. The braces were each 16 inches apart.

Putty & Sand

Once the panels were all assembled, we used wood putty to fill in small cracks and holes and bondo for any larger areas that needed to be filled.

Once that dried, we used sanders to smooth everything. No one wants to get a sliver while dancing!

Marking The Checkerboard Pattern

We could have made things easy and just stained or painted the whole thing one color and been done. But we wanted to have a checkerboard pattern. We used a chalk line to snap the lines for the 2 feet by 2 feet squares. Then we went back over the chalk lines using straight edges to draw on pencil lines. Originally we were going to use a laser level but it was so sunny it was hard to see. Snapping chalk lines was super fast and worked well.

I then taped off every other square. Instead of running painters tape in long lines across the whole floor, I chose to tape each square individually because if I had run long lines of tape, the tape would have gone inside the lines of ¼ of the squares and I would have had to of taped twice for each color instead of just once for each color.

Staining & Painting The Floor

All of the furniture we were using for the reception was a darker stain color so we stained the dance floor a walnut color. I did the stain first because I knew the stain would more than likely bleed under the painters tape. This way, I could paint over the bleeding. If I had done it the other way around, it would have bled onto the white paint and would have been a mess.

Once the stain was dry, I removed the tape and taped it again in preparation for the paint. Before I started painting the squares white, we painted dark brown paint along the tape to seal it. That is my secret weapon to getting the crispest lines ever. If any of the dark brown paint bled through, it would match the stain enough that you wouldn't be able to tell.

Once the dark brown paint was dry, we painted the off white paint. It took three coats. Plywood sure sucks up paint!

Finally taking the tape off was so satisfying! I always take the tape off right after the last coat of paint is applied before it has a chance to completely dry. If you wait for it to dry, you risk it peeling paint off your project.

Sealing The Dance Floor

I chose to use a water based sealer since we had painted half of it white. I didn't want the sealer to yellow the white paint and oild bases sealers so just that. We applied 3 coats of polycrylic with a sprayer.

Assembling The Dance Floor

I don't have photos of us assembling the dance floor because the day of the wedding was insane. A huge storm came through and we didn't know until the last minute if it was even going to happen. But this is how we did it:

We took the plywood off of the bases. Everything was labeled so we could put them back on in the right order. We then screwed all the bases together so it was one giant base. Then we reattached the plywood to the base. It was so sturdy! There were not any gaps, cracks, or bowing. I danced barefoot all night and never felt anything but a smooth surface.

The Cost Of The Dance Floor

The cost of the lumber was about $350. The cost of the paint, stain, sealer and tape was another $100. So for HALF of what it would have cost to rent, we had a prettier dance floor that we can use again and again for future events.

My favorite thing about the dance floor was that we ALL worked on it. Shane & I plus all our boys and our new daughter-in-law. The groomsmen even came the night before and helped my son paint the edges gold. It was actually a lot of fun working on this together and it was my favorite DIY of the whole wedding.