New Floor - Before, during and after

[TroutStream]

Well, just in time for the maiden voyage... and feeling good.


Ripped out 2 layers of old carpet, scraped the floors of old glue and foam. Replaced a section of plywood in front of the door, sealed the floor under the gaucho and installed the laminate. We used a high end flooring with waxed edges and a 25-year warranty. We were told the floor is a composite made with lots of melamine(?) so it should be very resistant to moisture.

I was worried that the floor might be to dark, but it works for us.

Special thanks to all on this forum for their generous advice throughout the process . I don't know where we would be without this forum. We will continue to seek help when needed (brakes, axles, door seals, polishing, awnings, etc....) .

Who knows maybe one day we will be able to help out a newbie.

Our shake-down trip is to a campground right in town (2 miles round-trip) so I expect the running gear to hold up. Our next trip (in two weeks) will test it a bit more.

Thanks to all.

Ken.

[john hd]

very nice!

cool choice of fabrics!

john

[GStephens]

Nice!
GStephens

[yukionna]

!

Question for you -- did you install the flooring under the sofa? Just curious as we need to replace our floor too.

[Chuck]

Looks great! We chose to go the same way w/ a dark material, because it goes with the existing "woodwork". so, what make was the stuff you used? seems dark colors are actually making a come-back; there wasn't much selection when I did mine 2 years ago; ever since, the number of choices has skyrocketed.

Nancy: you probably shouldn't put laminate under the couch. It is a "floating" system, which means that it will move, and needs to be allowed to do so. nailing anything down to the floor on top of the flooring will prevent that, and you could have buckling. (Roy told me that he had some buckling problems with his parquet floor.). They make trim pieces designed for being used up against a "verticle threshold", like cabinets and so forth. I think your cabinets and couches' face frames are all flat on the floor, so you could use those verticle threshold trim pieces, or even a shoe molding. I have some pics in my gallery, but I don't think there's a shot that shows that detail very closely..but I used one of the verticle threshold pieces in front of my front gaucho. Pergo calls this piece an "end molding". they don't have much for pics on their site, though. picture a capital 'L' rotated 90 degrees to the right. the floor planks slide under the long part, while the short part goes flat up against the wall. its glued down to the subfloor.

I may be making a run over to AID later today (I'm off work today), so I could drop those samples off for you.

[Tin Hut]

Great job. I like the fabric as well. Anything tropical works for me.

[TroutStream]

My wife Kathi picked the fabrics. She'll be glad that you like them. They're sort of 40's retro. It's heavy upholstery grade fabric. They were both 50% off as well at a local fabric shop. I've always called her the master of 'dime store decorating'. We had a friend sew them and the whole upholstery job including fabric cost right around $500.

We did stop the laminate floor short of the gaucho as Chuck suggests, though it was real tempting to just run it under as that is what the carpet did. But after consulting this forum, I chose not to screw through the floating floor. I did have to shim the back of the gaucho slightly. I just scraped the floor clean under the gaucho and applied 3 coats of S1 penetrating epoxy sealer.

The flooring was the best that HD had in stock, being in stock was the key as I didn't realize that they didn't keep that all that stuff in the store, and I needed it that day. Waithing 2 weeks was not an option. The think it was called Floor Master. I told the kid/salesman what I was doing with it and he assured me that the stuff would need to be immersed in water before being affected.

Thanks for the kind feedback!

Ken

[JohnG]

I like the fabrics too!

[TroutStream]

Correction: The flooring from Home Depot is called 'Traffic Master'

Ken.

[jdleezer]

A very nice job. I'll consider Traffic Master when I replace my carpet.

[Stefrobrts]

Good job! We have the same dark cabinets as you do, and I've been trying to decide what would look better, dark or light flooring. I like the way yours turned out, I especially like the grain pattern in the floor, very nice!