Wednesday, June 4, 2008

I fought the floor, and the floor won

We are back at the Wal-Mart in Casper (map), in exactly the same spot where we stayed Sunday night.

We finally left Home Depot last night around 7, with the new floor in place, the tools cleaned up, and unused materials and tools returned to the store . These latter items included the $12 Armstrong seaming kit -- the material fit so well (and they cut it generously in the store, giving us closer to 7' than the 6' we asked for) that the only seams will be hidden underneath the bed, in between the bed frame and the nightstands. If we even bother to put any material back there at all, the seams won't need sealing, and I probably won't even bother to try to match the pattern.

Still to do are the weird protuberances in the very back of the bedroom, where the floor steps up to make room in the engine compartment for the turbocharger and the top of the radiator. I still have almost two yards of material left over, and I'll need to piece together the sides and tops of those boxy steps. I'll also need to find some 1" nosing to make the corners. With the carpet, it was just "upholstered" in, the same way stairs are done. We left the carpet in place until we have the time and inclination to tackle this part:



That will have to wait for a bit -- I'm giving myself today off. All the crouching, bending, and kneeling yesterday has taken its toll, and I'm pretty sore today. I suppose what I would have gotten for my $400+ in professional installation would have been the pleasure of not being sore.

This morning we'll head back in to Wal-Mart to return the extra roll of kraft paper that we didn't use, and pick up some more food items. Then it's down the hill to the Flying-J -- our tanks are full, and we need to dump before we head out of town.

4 comments:

  1. It looks great, congratulations! We are about to pull up carpet here in our house for the same reason. We'll be installing hardwood.

    I enjoy reading your blog and finding out where you are today. :)

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  2. Now that you are done just think about how MANLY
    and WOMANLY you both feel, aches and pains included.
    Now that $400 can be used for the ever increasing price of fuel. Good job!!!!!
    Mike K

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  3. Ooooh, very nice. Thanks for the details about how you did it. I dread the day when our carpet will need to come up, but now I know it's possible to have it look good if we do it on our own.

    Also, smart move about picking hardwood looking vinyl. It's nice looking.

    I'm seeing more RVs with real hardwood laminate flooring now, and hearing about all sorts of buckling issues people are having with it. Why hassle it, I think, that kind of flooring belongs in a stick house, not a moving one.

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  4. Thank you for the flooring post. We are looking to do this up front and will need to cover the edge of the stairs. We will be looking for how you cover the "hump" over the engine, that will be help with top of the stairs.

    Looks great.

    ReplyDelete

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