How to: install an inexpensive wood floor that looks like a million dollars

In a past life I had thought of the idea of buying solid oak plywood, cutting it into strips and using it as inexpensive solid oak flooring and I was told that I was an idiot and carpet was chosen instead (a far more expensive option when we had already exhausted our budget). As it turns out I was very right and cutting plywood into strips for a wood floor has been done and it can be gorgeous. And (just for the record) you can put whatever you want under foot, if its wood, then you have a wood floor! It does not need to come out of a box that says “flooring” on it, nope, what makes a floor a floor is the fact that you walk on it. The only reason we did not opt for the plywood-cut-into-strips-option was because we do not own a table saw to cut it ourselves and it still would have been about twice the cost of what we ended up paying. This inexpensive wood floor cost us less then $300.