A few months ago, I had a hankering for a dance party. Some friends and I were talking about how much fun we used to have in our 20s and 30s when we went dancing, but we realized those days are behind us — there’s no place for middle-aged women to go dancing.

After bemoaning this for a few days, I had a fantastic idea. I could turn our backyard into a dance club, and my friends and I could dance away without worrying about looking silly or embarrassing our teenage kids. When I mentioned this crazy idea to my dad, he very generously offered to visit us and build a dance floor. What an amazing dad! I was so very excited to see this project come together.

Before my dad arrived, I started brainstorming ways to do this project on the cheap. From our neighborhood listserv, I got four wooden pallets for free. We planned to buy two plywood sheets (4’x8′ each) and put them side-by-side on top of the pallets to form an 8’x8′ dance floor.

When my dad arrived, we scoped out an area in the backyard and carried the pallets back there.

As you can tell, grass doesn’t grow in this spot because it’s so shady, so it was the perfect spot to cover with a dance floor.

We laid out all four pallets in a roughly 8’x8′ square.

But the pallets weren’t level with each other. In fact, they were so off-kilter that we couldn’t have laid plywood on top of them without it wobbling back and forth and possibly splitting under the weight of the dancers.

To fix this, my dad spent a very long time adjusting the pallets to make them level with each other. He switched some of the pallets around, added dirt under them in some places, and attached shims (wood scraps) in a few others to make the pallets taller.

During this process, he kept in mind the place where the two plywood sheets would meet. He wanted that line to be supported by the pallets as much as possible. He didn’t want the joint between the plywood sheets to be on top of a joint between the pallets — if that happened, the structure would be much flimsier. (For example, imagine that the dancers’ movements caused the pallets to shift a bit. If the joint between the plywood sheets were on top of the joint between the pallets, that movement of the pallets would cause a lot of stress on the joint between the plywood sheets.)

After a lot of hard work, the pallets were ready.

We used a drill to screw the two plywood sheets to the tops of the pallets.

My dad’s friend came by, and the two of them spent some time chatting about the best way to finish the project. There was a big debate about whether I should paint the dance floor given the forecast of rain.

We ended up painting a white base coat and then, a few hours later, I used a tape measure and a pencil to draw a checkerboard pattern on the plywood. If you squint at the picture below, you might be able to see the pencil lines.

Then, it was time for the fun part! We painted every other square using some pink paint left over from the treehouse.

After the first coat, I went back and touched up some of the pink paint. But we made a conscious decision not to worry too much about perfection. The point of this project was FUN, and we don’t expect to keep this dance floor forever. Plus, I figure we’ll probably only use it at night, and no one will be able to spot imperfections in the dark.

Because we expect to use the dance floor at night, we added some twinkle lights and then — the pièce de résistance – a disco ball!

And there you have it – this dance floor gives me great joy! It’s not particularly fancy or grown up, but damn is it fun!!

This was a wallet-friendly project, for sure. We spent about $40 for each piece of plywood, and that’s it! The pallets were free, and we already had the shims and the extra paint.

If we wanted to keep the dance floor for a while, we’d add a few thin coats of polyurethane or sparurethane, allowing it to dry completely between coats. We haven’t taken that step yet, but maybe we will in a few weeks.

I am so very grateful to my dad. He’s always up for my crazy ideas, and he makes me feel very loved. I appreciate him so much.