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

[truk4u]

Jon,

This rubber floor for the driver area that Brian put in my Liberty was fantastic. Just something else to consider.

Drivers floor de&#1.jpg

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

Jon, you "cuttin" WOOD yet, how's that floor project coming along?

JIM

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I'm cutting and fitting. Pictures of the progress soon.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Real progress has been made

Living Room re-d&#111.jpg

The pictures are in no special order but show how it is evolving. I haven't taken the latest pictures which show the driver's area done except for some trim around the pedals.

Tomorrow I expect to have that done as well as the trim between the marble and the living room floor.

The hardest part was figuring how I wanted to trim out the floor such as around the step well because that determined how I placed the flooring. I opted to use no glue or adhesives so if I had to remove the cover over the step well I would remove the screws from the bullnose and lift flooring sections.

I made my errors beneath the curb side sofa area learning the tricks to putting down the flooring. They will not show with the sofa in place. Once I got it figured out the project has gone quite well.

I should note that I made it a point to not disturb the pedals. In addition to some trim I will paint the area in a semi gloss black rendering the pedal bases somewhat invisible. There will be flooring behind the pedals.

[rfoster]

Jon: That looks great! I thought you were a metal man, but now I see you can work with wood. Good job.

[Pete]

Jon, looks great! Can't wait to see the finished product!

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I intend to finish trimming it out today, or at least having a solid plan on how I am going to do it.

For anyone contemplating doing this I can say that the cost of materials is less than $300. But the time spent is a lot. I probably have 4 or 5 hours of head scratching and layout work trying to figure out how I wanted to trim it out. The area around the floor slide was the determining factor and everything else keyed off that. One thing that has proven to be forgiving is that I have two sofas so almost all of the floor is covered and therefore detail trim work at the sides is not required. If we had chairs along one wall it would have made the job less forgiving.

In terms of the hardest physical part, removing and handling the seats is tough. They are very heavy and I am not going to try to replace them myself. The cabinet that wraps around the driver's seat has been a handling issue because of the bundle of wires going into it I have spent a lot of time lifting it and swinging it around to be able to get the flooring beneath it. But that is done now so my final move before resecuring that cabinet in place will be to put the driver's seat back. I can slide that on a piece of carpet, but accessing the bolts is going to be a challenge because I can only move the cabinet a limited distance.

The acid test will be how well it does over time and during temperature changes. The flooring is designed to float and there is no way that will happen. The nature of installing laminate in a bus is that it is going to be captured beneath the front seats, the sofas and the cabinet. The only area not captured is the exposed portion between the sofas so if it buckles or cracks it will be a repeat of the process with another type of flooring. Now that I have done this I can say it will be very easy the second time around because I will know what to do.

More pictures later.

[dale farley]

Jon, As usual, you're doing an excellent job. Looks great! I'll wax your bus, if you'll do my floors. I know you don't use wax, but that sound like a good deal to me!

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

Nice job, looks A-1 to me!


JIM

[JIM KELLER]

Dale, This would be a Great Deal. Based on Jon's 300 est and my 450 to 550 pre determined cost you could get a new floor and he would owe you money ! See if he will go for it.