What are recreational vehicle manufacturers thinking when they decide that 1.) Wall-to-wall carpeting is what every woman wants in her camper. Forcing her to tote a vacuum cleaner with her on vacation….and 2.) Lets make it a light, color, like…off-white!! Meaning, that same woman has to spend her vacation standing at the door insuring everyone is removing their muddy shoes so someone (meaning her) won’t have to shampoo the carpet when they get home from vacation.
I wanted our carpet GONE!!! A couple of years ago John removed the carpeting from the living room and replaced it with bamboo laminate flooring. My man is a saint!!!! Click here to see that post.
Last winter After the washer/drier repair incident that led to most of the bedroom carpeting being removed….(click here to see that post) it was back to living on sub flooring. For those of you who know about our 7 year renovation of our sticks and bricks house, going back to living on sub flooring was giving us both flashbacks.
Soon after we were home, John set out removing the rest of the carpet and installing the same bamboo flooring we had in the living room.
This room presented three challenges for John. The first, was deciding how to handle the step-up over the engine compartment.
The second was the floor panel that allows access to certain parts of the engine. We had a small debate trying to decide how to work around it. In the end we decided that if John or a technician ever needed to access the engine through this access panel, we probably had bigger problems to worry about than cutting through the flooring.
The third challenge was dealing with the difference in height between the tile floor of the bathroom and the bedroom sub floor.
Because of the first two issues, John did not want to lay any additional flooring to raise the new floor up so he built a wedge to bridge the difference.
He glued and screwed it in place.
Now it was finally time to lay the floor. He finished removing everything he could around the base of the walls.
Next to the bed was a wire concealing box and after he removed it, we found we had a little leak. After some poking and prodding John felt that the moisture was most likely “drip-age” when pulling the slide in when it was wet. I told him to not put the box back on, that I would rather see the wire and be able to keep an eye out for moisture.
Following the same technique he used for the living room floor, he laid the bedroom floor.
The wedge worked PERFECTLY!
Now, for the troublesome step-up. He described the problem to the flooring technician and though the technician had never done an installation such as this, his recommendation was to heat the flooring with a heat gun to get it soft and then mold it to the step-up.
It came out really sharp looking; as if the floor was “poured” into place.
The only carpet left in the coach is on the dining room slide, risers, and under our travel seats.
I happily gave my Shark vacuum to my daughter, bought a Eureka Easyclean with a special head that rotates to make sweeping my risers easier, and happily grabbed my broom!
