(This is part 1 of 2 - the 1st paragraph is the same in both remodel posts. This one is about the Living Room Remodel; while, the other blog post 2 of 2 is all about the bedroom remodel to include the bunk beds.)
So, we decided it’s time to remodel our RV
again! First, when we decided to add
bunk beds to our living room for the children, we didn’t take into
consideration GROWTH SPURTS and how fast these growth spurts were going to
occur! So, needless-to-say, the children are already becoming TOO long for
their beds! :-) Second, after having carpet in this RV and
dealing with it for the last 7 months and trying to keep it clean, we’ve
decided it will be much easier to have some sort of hardwood or laminate
flooring! We’re thinking it will be easier if we just leave the slide alone and
leave the carpet on it along with the carpet in the front “cab” area of the RV.
I’ll break this down into two blogs – one for the living room area and one for
the bedroom area!
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BEFORE - Living Room Remodel
(other than the small bunk should be
above the couch in this pic-but isn't). |
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DURING - Living Room Remodel (tearing out
carpet) |
For the living room, we decided to start by
replacing the carpet with some kind of manageable flooring! As we’re deciding
what to use, our thought process is that we wanted to use something that looks
decent, is durable, easy to clean, and relatively easy to install! We were a
little afraid that if we bought the regular laminate wood flooring that it
wouldn’t fit properly under the slide so the slide could go in and out. In an
effort to avoid those types of issues, we ruled it out. We also wanted to skip
doing the flooring on the slide because everything would have to come out; the
couch, dinette, drawers, the separator type walling that we love, EVERYTHING! We
wanted it to look awesome like laminate – but an alternative! So, we finally
found just that! We found some “laminate” looking strips. You know how some
types come by single small squares, etc.? Well, this kind appears to come in long
single wood pieces, piece by piece. When you apply it, you don’t have to worry about
tongue and groove or glue of any sort. All you have to do is to remove the
paper strips on the back and the adhesive is right there! What is really neat
about the wood pieces is that it has that “real” wood grain feel to it so it feels
like walking on real wood!
So, we started by pulling up and tearing
out the carpet. As we were doing so, we found that we weren’t getting all of
the carpet out from under the slide. We were worried that since we didn’t get
it all out (from underneath the slide) that it might “bunch up” and get stuck
while moving the slide in or out or that it would obstruct the flooring in some
other way. We tried to just pull up that last piece of wood above where the
carpet was getting stuck; but, that wasn’t working! So, we came to the
realization that we were going to have to do the slide. We started removing the
screws. You would not believe how many screws held different things in like the
drawers! Wow, I don’t remember the count; but, I think it was fifty-something
for ONE drawer! That’s just one sliding drawer under one of the dinette seats (not
even counting the seat, etc.)! As we were taking out these pieces tearing up
our house more and more, it seemed like we were getting further from our
goal! By the time we got all of the pieces out and were ready to put down the laminate
on the slide and get it put back together, we found that under the body of the
slide had black mold. Great! Just what we needed! I guess it was a good thing
that we weren’t going to be moving for a while. Each step seemed to add another
step instead of getting another step accomplished! We went from just laminating
the floor in the living room area, to adding and doing the slide, to having to
completely redo the slide before doing the flooring for the slide! As you can
see in the pictures, the black mold was mainly on the Styrofoam. So, we
completely got rid of the Styrofoam and worked from scratch there. We also did
a bit of research and cleaned the area thoroughly with bleach just to be safe.
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| Removing the dinette area. |
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This is the drawer with the
fifty-something screws to remove! |
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This is when we found the
black mold. |
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| This is the entire slide area. |
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Doing the living room area while
waiting for the slide areas to dry.
Doing it in a stair-step approach
to appear more like laminate! |
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My husband said to watch the
roller area! |
Since
we had to do the slide basically from scratch, we’ll start there. We took housing
wrap (for wrapping houses for insulating them) and sprayed adhesive gluing on it
to stick to the new plywood board (which goes under the flooring on the outside
underneath of the slide). Then, we bought the same thickness of Styrofoam for
the floor. We sprayed the adhesive glue on the plywood so that the Styrofoam
would stick to it (for the lower floor). Next, we used spray foam to fill in
the empty cracks. Once the foam dried, we trimmed off the excess, cut the
plywood board to fit the new top floor of the slide. We sprayed more adhesive
glue on top of the foam and put the plywood on top of it. We took sheet metal
screws and tightened down the slide floor. Finally, we started the regular
laminate process! This sounds more confusing than what it was during the
process. It wasn’t really so confusing, just VERY time consuming! My husband
was very good at looking at the way each level came off and how it should have
been. We are very glad we did it as it wasn’t in great shape anyway! I thought we had more pictures of this part of the process. If I can find them, then I'll add them in the future!
So
now the only thing we had left is the laminate process and putting all of the
stuff back together on the slide! As we were tearing the carpet out, we were
also cleaning down every bit of the living room floor as we were doing so
because we knew that if there was even a spec of small dirt or a nail head sticking
up, it could really make a difference (having a spot “stick up” and have a
“dent up” for a lack of better words) in the flooring. We applied the laminate strips, strip by strip, so that it had a laminate look without all the hard work! The laminating process
went VERY quickly once we had the slide done. The most time consuming part was probably
taking everything off and then back on the slide again; along with taking care
of all of the slide insulation, etc. After we completed the entire living room
area, it looked SO amazing! The only mistake that we found after the fact is
something that could have easily been done by almost anyone. My husband used
pretty long screws/nails along the outside edge of the slide (we think it was
when he put the edging decorative material around the outside of the slide). It
scratched a few pieces of the laminate on the living room floor. We made sure
we had a box extra of the laminate strips so that if anything happened, we
could easily take care of it. Well, we replaced the scratched pieces and he
took some of those pieces you put under furniture, either to move it or to not
scratch floors, and attached it under the slide. Wala! It was all taken care
of! I can definitely say that it is so much easier to take care of our floor
now! :-)
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AFTER - Isn't it beautiful?!!!
Notice the cat and dog had to be
right in the middle of the project! |
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