SALON MAKEOVER (That's fancy talk for Living Room)

[rfoster]

I can help on Friday afternoons. After eating of course.

[Gary Carmichael]

Jon is there anything you won't tackle on that Liberty? You should write a book, My hat is off to you! By the way I'll pick up those stands in the next 2-3 weeks I will call first, don't let any of those bus parts roll down the hill, good luck.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The progress so far has been slow and painful

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This is a view of the sofas. The fabric is being replaced with leather. The tan berber carpeting is being replaced with a laminate. (at least that is today's plan).

Step one is to get the sofas out and get the floor ready for stripping.

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[Jon Wehrenberg]

Stripping the interior is involved, but not particularly complex. Removal of the passenger and driver's seats was a job involving heavy lifting and loosening the cabinet involved searching for all the hidden screws.

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With everything loose or out the process of pulling the old carpeting was started. I have shed a lot of blood because in addition to the normal carpet strips with pins around the perimeter the carpet and foam underlayment was held in place with staples. The staples have managed to penetrate my hands numerous times. the hardest part however is pulling all the staples because the floor must be smooth and clean before I can install the flooring.

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The easy part is the center of the room. The carpeting around the Webasto heaters and around the stairwell and in the drivers area is stapled and glued and I have resorted to pry bars and scrapers.

[bonhall41]

When you're done with yours, I'd like you to replace the carpet in ours with the granite that's in the mid-section of the coach. Just let us know when you're ready to start. Thanks.

Bonnie

[HarborBus]

Ambitious project Jon, but it looks like you have it under control. Sounds like you have enough offers from helpers, lucky guy. Keep those pictures coming.

[garyde]

Hi Jon. I have been thinking about removing my carpet as well and replacing with wood flooring. I wanted to lay down some kind of sound dampner material prior to laying a wood floor . Have you considered this? Also, is it necessary to remove the carpet under the Couch or leave it.
My Coach already has tile in the front drivers seat, landing and stairs floor area, so that would remain.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Gary,

I have yet to select the specific brand and type of laminate but have ruled out a true hardwood floor. As much as it would solve some issues such as the height difference between the tile and the living room sub floor, it creates others. From Harry Hoppe we learned the best sound deadener is thick and dense so 3/4" oak hardwood seems to me to offer the best sound deadening.

All of the laminates I am studying come with a resiliant foam backing, or require one. None recommend adding additional foam material beneath the planks. I don't know if I am doing anything with this change in flooring to increase or decrease sound levels. I can only guess that if you seek sound deadening, but wish to go with laminates that adding a 3/8" additional layer of high quality plywood or equivalent would serve to deaden sound.

As to removing the carpet beneath the sofas I think it is a must. My sofas have a curved base and fitting flooring up to and matching the curves would be not only difficult, but the width of the planks and the joints could be compromised. As it is, the cutting and fitting of the new flooring under or around various items such as the Webasto heat exchangers is going to be an issue even though they are under the sofa and out of sight. My biggest concerns now relate to installed heights. The sofas had carpet beneath them and the new floor has to have an installed thickness equal to the height of the compressed carpet and padding so the sofa structure clears the Webastos.

But the cabinetry behind and around the driver's seat was secured to the sub floor, but now it will sit upon the new flooring. That is going to require some reworking along the area where the parking brake surface joins the cabinetry due to the increase in installed height. My point is you have to see what your specific situation is and if or how it will be affected by changing the flooring from carpet to wood or laminates.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The next step while the sofas are being reupholstered is to lay the floor. The prep work is done, the floor has been stripped to the plywood sub floor and now I need to start gathering the materials.

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The top photo shows my greatest challenge, but I think I have this resolved. All transition and trim pieces for laminate flooring are straight and I need to have the transition at the ceramic tile curve to match the free form curve in the tile while transitioning from the thinner laminate flooring to the thicker tile.

A few hours on Google may have provided the solution. I have several options including flexible plastic transition pieces and bendable metal pieces. I am leaning to the more substantial metal shapes, but until I know the exact thickness of the laminate I will not know which will be more suitable.

Not shown is my step slide cover. I removed that this morning and find it is the ideal way to access the slide cylinder. When I start installing the flooring I am going to try to set that area up so I can lift the planks to expose the cover for possible future maintenance. If that doesn't work out I will see if I can service the cylinder from below.

I am not going to put laminate under the pedals. I am painting the area around and behind the pedals flat black and will only run the laminate up to the pedals and around the side of the pedals. The carpeting did not go beneath the pedals.

Because the carpeting did not go under the cabinet around the driver's seat the lower edges of the Vitricor were hidden with the carpet. Now that the lower edges are exposed it is not very pretty. I am going to see if I can trim the lower edges of the cabinet, such as using welting, or a band of trim around the bottom or some other solution to dress it up. The devil is in the details.

In case anyone gets into a project like this, recognize that road dust and dirt is found everywhere. As well as things are sealed I am finding the dust from the roads everywhere. I am sure some of it comes from the fresh air intake on the ventilation system up front, but there must also be other sources I am unaware of. Carpeting that was never walked on and never exposed has a darker color than carpeting that was captured between two hard surfaces such as beneath the driver's seat baseplate and the area beneath the sofa frames. Ironically the carpet padding had the same darker color except where it was also compressed between two surfaces. I have been doing a lot of vacuuming to try to reach into places and get that accumulated dust.

[Pete]

Jon, been there, done that! As a matter of fact 4 times, and you are right, the devil is in the details. I have used the same material used for sound deadening in restoring automobiles under carpeting, and depending on the method you are using to attach the wood flooring to the sub-flooring, (with nails), it can be used on wood. The material is the two wafers of aluminum foil with the bubble wafer in the center. Available at most home improvement stores, is inexpensive and very easy to use. And it provides very good sound deadening.

As far as your transition is concerned, I used an accent lighting strip to match the rest of the accent lighting in the coach around the windows, ect.

It is a lot of work, but when finished I'm sure it will be very enjoyable, it will be "Just like you wanted it to be"