Well I finally did it. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick but I think it ended up pretty good. I sent an e-mail to Gulf Stream trying to find out if the tile in the kitchen and bathroom is still available. The answer I got was that they didn’t recommend installing tile in all parts of the coach due to flexing of the frame. I guess this means that the coach’s with tile from the front of the coach to the bathroom have better frames. This wasn’t that much of a surprise since I have trouble closing the front door if the coach isn’t really level, but with that said I decided to go with the laminated wood flooring. Since we are less than a mile from a Lowes it seemed to be the place to go. I ended up choosing Pergo in Berkshire Cherry to match the wood work and cabinets in the motor home. These are a few pictures of the carpet before starting the job.
Of course I first had to get the carpet out and this was no easy task. Especially with all the furniture still in the MH. These are pictures of starting to remove the carpet and the bare floor with the flooring laid out to “acclimate” to the temperature and moisture of the MH.
You may have noticed that the first pictures are dated the 28th of January and it is now the 13th of February. As I said it wasn’t quick. I decided to start in the corner behind the driver seat. I took a couple of days just to get the correct layout for the first board. The reason being I wanted the spacing just right for a whole board to go under the couch and it needed to be straight so the boards would be parallel with the slides. This is where I made my first mistake. This is a picture of the finished area and I think it looks OK but I wish I had run the boards under the plastic housing screwed to the side of the MH instead of just bringing them up to the housing which caused the elaborate trim job with all the miter joints. I had decided to cut the carpet off square with the back of the drivers seat and at the time thought it would be easier not to remove the housing. I changed my mind when I got to the other side and ran the wood under the housing and didn’t have to do the trim.
The trim is another subject. Lowe’s trim package used a metal channel that is screwed to the floor and the trim is snapped into the channel. Neat, no nails or screws in the finish of the trim. The trouble with the system is how do you align the channel perfectly so the mitered joints fit. My answer is - I have no idea. As you can see above I ended up screwing it after I aligned the joints. I still used the channels since it was needed to make good contact with the floor.
The final results are a combination of carpet, tile, and wood flooring. We like it and we believe it will be much easier to take care of it.
