Okay, let’s talk about this setup I ended up with – what I kinda call the “rubber dancing soft maple wooden flooring” situation. Sounds a bit odd, I know. Wasn’t exactly planned like some grand design.

It all started when my youngest got really into dancing. Not ballet, mind you, but the loud kind, tap dancing. Suddenly, the living room wasn’t just a living room anymore, it was a potential stage. Problem was, we have soft maple floors in there. Looks nice, sure, but man, is that wood soft. You drop your keys, you get a dent. So, tap shoes? Nightmare scenario.

First thing I did was look up proper dance floors. You know, the sprung ones, portable ones. Whoa, the prices! Way out of budget. So, plan B: make the soft maple work somehow. I wasn’t about to rip it out, we’d just put it in a couple years back because it was cheaper than oak.

Figuring Out the “Rubber” Part

So, the floor is soft maple. The dancing involves hard taps. How do you protect it without spending a fortune? My mind went to rubber. Like, putting some kind of rubber layer down.

I tried a few things, let me tell you:

• First attempt: Thin rubber exercise mat. Looked okay, but it slid all over the place the second the tapping started. Useless.
• Second attempt: Heavier, thicker rubber mat, like the kind you see in gyms. Better grip, didn’t slide as much. But it totally deadened the sound. Kid hated it, said it didn’t feel or sound right for tap. Back to square one.
• Thought about getting special rubber taps for the shoes. Yeah, that went down about as well as you’d expect. Defeats the whole purpose of tap shoes.

This whole process reminded me of years ago when I tried to patch a leaky pipe under the sink myself. Watched a video, bought the stuff, thought I was saving a bundle. Ended up with a bigger leak and a call to the plumber anyway. Sometimes you just gotta experiment, right? Even if it feels a bit dumb.

So, where did we land? Compromise, mostly. We got a really heavy, dense piece of rubber flooring remnant. Not huge, just big enough for a practice spot. It still muffles the sound a bit, but way less than the thick gym mat. It barely moves because it weighs a ton.

Now, the routine is: haul the rubber slab out, plonk it down on the soft maple, kid practices their noisy routine, then we haul it back into the closet. The maple floor underneath? It’s not pristine. It’s got its share of marks already, let’s be honest. But this rubber thing probably saves it from total destruction during tap time.

So yeah, “rubber dancing soft maple wooden flooring.” It’s makeshift. It’s a bit of a hassle. It’s not what you’d find in a fancy dance studio. But the kid gets to dance, and the floor isn’t completely trashed yet. Sometimes you don’t get the perfect solution, you just get the one that works well enough for now. That’s just how it goes.