Making a Mobile Display Floor

Did you notice my lovely wood display floor in some of my recent posts?

Most of us are not fortunate to have a lovely studio space where we can set up backgrounds and displays for our picture taking. I know I don’t. So I was looking for some ideas of mobile displays. Simple things that can be brought out easily and then be put away without taking up a lot of space. I looked at the vinyl floor mats and stuff like that and besides the cost of the nice looking ones, they were still sort of clunky when it came time to figuring out where to store them when not in use.

I have a lovely friend who cut up some flooring boards. You know, the kind that slide together with little lips and slots. I am sure there is a technical term for the ridges and where the ridges go into neighboring boards but since I am not a floorer and no one will depend on my accurate use of construction terminology we will just call them slots and ridges. Just hit me that they are tongue and groove, right? All right, who really knows that anyway? Tongue and groove or slots and ridges, the end result is the same. They slide together and sort of stay in place. Once the boards are secured to something the slots and ridges hold things together nicely.

So, what to do? What to do? Nailing them down onto some big piece of plywood makes them clunky and cutting down the plywood to manageable size is not convenient. So, I had a light bulb go off above my head. I often have light bulbs flashing away up there. I tacked the boards to a canvas framed painting that I had done years ago, never liked, never got rid of, and felt no remorse in covering up. I tacked down the board with a nail thicker than the board. Then slid the next board’s groove into first board’s slot and tacked that board in place. And so forth.

Result, a handy, mobile floor that looks great for macro pictures. The frame of the canvas painting provides handy hand holds when putting mobile floor away after using. Away right now means standing it up next to the foam core boards covered with patterned paper, which are leaning against the wall on the shelf where I take the pictures. I have a few more boards that I plan to stain for a different finished look.

If you want to do this yourself, local hardware stores have cheap flooring boards with tongue and groove edges for a reasonable price. These aren’t the $20/linear foot boards. These are the $15-20 for a cello wrapped bundle eight feet high. It would look nice if a few were offset also, I think.

I just love it! It works so well and is so handy and I think the resulting photos look great. It's wonderful to have a handy friend with leftover wood from a house project who cut up a few leftover boards into the perfect working size.