RV FLOORING

We settled in to our lot very quickly and were back to our southern routine within a few days.  The weather was cooler than last year so we had to bundle up a bit in the evenings but the days continued sunny and pleasant.

While we were still at home, we made plans to replace the carpeting in the RV as it is 9 years old and we never really liked the style from day one.  Stuart brought his small compressor and stapler for the job so we got going on that project a few weeks ago.

We purchased carpet from Home Depot and had to wait a week for delivery.  In preparation, we ripped out the old carpet in the living room including both slides.  We had a faux leather loveseat that was disintegrating so we removed it in pieces to make the whole job easier.

After the carpeting was out, we started looking at the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathroom areas and decided that now was the time to do them as well.  We chose peel and stick vinyl planks to lay on top of the old flooring and it worked well and looks great.

We forged ahead with all the plank first and had to do a major work on the 2 stairs that go up to the bathroom and bedroom.  They were covered in carpet and after we removed it, we decided to finish the stair risers in vinyl plank and do wood treads.  Stuart bought and cut 1” by 12” pine board for the treads and attached a 11/2” bullnose on the fronts.  I stained and finished them in a satin finish.

The challenging part of that mini project was the storage bin in the floor at the top of the stairs.  It was hidden with carpet before and now we had to carefully line up the planks on the lid and do some filler strips.

The stair treads were originally at slightly different riser heights and we always had to be careful to make a big step at the top—definitely a tripping hazard.  When Stuart rebuilt the stairs, he added material under each tread to bring them all to about the same height.  Good stuff.  We are going to spray an anti-slip clear product on them as well.

Once the vinyl plank was done, we moved on to installing the carpet.  We put down 2 layers of carpet pad in the main area and one layer on each slide.  We used the old carpet from the slides as a template for cutting and then we had to get the exposed edge bound off in some fashion.  We took the old and new pieces to the upholstery shop that did our golf cart seats last year but they didn’t have the machine to do the binding work.  They told us of a place that would do it so we zoomed over there and the owner did the work right away.  It only took about 10 minutes for both pieces—what a great find.

The last part of the project was doing the bedroom flooring.  We cut out the old carpet around the bed and dresser and there was a section of carpet that went up the wall and into the closet.  After we removed that vertical section, we saw that there was a steel beam underneath the closet slider doors so we wouldn’t be able to attach carpet again.  Faced with that challenge, we chose to put vinyl plank on the vertical surface and it worked out well.  It took a while for the plank to adhere to the steel but it seems to be holding.  Cutting the carpet was challenging with all the odds shapes and there wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver around the bed.  We measured everything twice before cutting and again, it fit well and looks very good.

It was a lot of work, hard on the knees and backs, but we have the satisfaction of looking at the end result knowing that we did our best.

Now we can relax a while until we dream up another project.