As I am sure I have said before, my daughter is a dancer. She takes tap, ballet, and lyrical classes. Since her classes have gotten a little more difficult this year, I decided to make a floor so she has a practice space. But I don't have a lot of experience building floors. It turns out that this was a lot easier than I expected.

Things you will need:

Foam flooring
Gorilla Glue
OSB plywood
Laminate flooring (optional)

First, decide how big you want your floor. A 4'x4' piece may be sufficient. Since we have an entire spare room to use, our floor is 8'x4'. It is easier to keep your floor in 2' increments. Otherwise, you will need to trim the pieces to fit properly.

The foam flooring I used is the Best Step colored square interlocking foam mats. These can be found at Home Depot or Lowe's. They are 2'x2' and come in packs of 4. That means you will be able to get a 4'x4' floor with just one pack. This will be the very bottom of your floor. It will allow the floor to give a little, which is very important for tappers. Since this is the bottom, it doesn't matter if you pick the grey or the colored mats. My daughter wanted the colored ones.

Glue the mats together as you interlock them. It will be easier to keep everything from falling apart.

Next, you will glue the mats to the bottom (the rough side) of your plywood. Plywood comes in a variety sizes. Choose the size that works best for you. I used two 4'x4' pieces.

Important: Make sure you press the mats fully onto the wood. You want a good strong seal. (My daughter and I walked back and forth on the wood until we were satisfied there weren't any loose pieces.) Let the glue dry overnight.

At this point, you can be finished. The plywood will be sufficient for a dance floor. However, I wanted to make sure my daughter got a really good tap sound so we covered the plywood with laminate.

I took my daughter to Home Depot with me so she could choose the shade of the laminate. She chose the TrafficMASTER floor in Glenwood Oak. (See the picture above.) This particular type of floor is tongue and groove. You can just slip them together and you are done. I elected to glue the laminate to the top of the plywood in order to make sure nothing would slide around. It would suck to have the floor slide out from under you in the middle of a heavy tapping session.

Again, let the glue dry overnight.

And that is it! See, I told you it was easy! I recorded a quick video of my daughter tapping on the floor so you could hear how it sounds.

Since the laminate flooring fits together perfectly, this is also a good floor for other types of dance. There aren't any splinters or grooves in the floor that will cause injury.

I spent a little under $100 for an 8'x4' floor. The actual assembly only took a few hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for the glue to dry. If you have a dancer and need a practice space, this was cheap and easy. I couldn't ask for anything better! Now get dancing!