Because of covid, we can’t go camping so I brought Seven (our Bounder) home and got to work on the new flooring project that I have been putting off for a couple of years now.
- The colour and pattern decisions were easy enough – what’s on sale.
I decided to replace the carpet in the slideout with vinyl but without removing the dinette seats to save some work.
I decided to replace the toilet because the old one was broken.
I decided to extend the vinyl up under the dash as far as I could as a noise barrier.
I decided to end the carpet behind the driver & co-pilot’s seats rather than near the entry door.
I found the doghouse was broken so I repaired and reinforced it.
The plywood sub-floor was in excellent shape: I only had to fill in two low spots and grind down a few carriage bolts that were proud of the floor. The vinyl went down quickly but the nooks and crannies took quite a bit of time, especially the carpeted areas. The new toilet went in without a problem.
For securing the underpad and carpet to the doghouse, I used Gorilla Glue aerosol glue. Great stuff. I also used a few screws through the carpet into the plywood to keep the carpet from shifting. I think this is adequate because it won’t get any walking around type foot traffic. Fleetwood used crappy foam underpad on the floor but not the doghouse where they simply glued the carpet down to the fibreglass. Now the floor has vinyl topped by underpad topped by carpet. The doghouse has underpad and carpet. It is considerably quieter.
Fleetwood installed a 24” wide strip of carpet along the floor and about the same width of carpet extended beyond the inside edge of the slideout over this strip. The result was a nice clean transition from the floor to the slideout. It turns out that the carpet on the floor has another purpose: it elevates the bottom of the slideout above the vinyl floor so that they never made contact. I removed the carpet from the floor and installed vinyl that was about twice as thick as the original sheet goods. Now the bottom of the slideout touches the floor.
There’s no way I want my nice new floor scratched so I crawled under the slide to find a way to raise it up. There is no obvious way to do that, so I had to find a way to mechanically protect the floor. A little experimentation and I came up with simply placing three scatter mats along the floor held there by a couple of inches of duct tape so the little carpet stays put as the slideout goes across the top of it. Not perfect but workable.
The slideout goes out then drops down in the last couple of inches of extension resulting in a flat floor. I first glued down the vinyl right up to the edge of the floor figuring the slideout came up before moving in. Wrong! The slide comes in before moving up. Not a lot, just enough to grab the edge of the vinyl and peel it off the floor. I moved the vinyl back from the edge in ¼” increments until I found the sweet spot. Now the slide goes out and in without contacting the vinyl, either at the edge or along the 30” width of the slide. I painted the metal floor rail to make it less obvious and it looks ok for now.
My advice is to stick with carpet in the slideout and on the floor under the slideout carpet overhang.
I work slowly and estimate I put in a total of 40 hours on this project. Materials and assorted stuff ran about $750 but we are happy with the result. Next project is window coverings.
There will be a couple more entries for additional photos.
