New flooring for Marquis Diamante

[Ron and Bette Ulshoffer]

We are considering putting a new floor in our 1998 Beaver Marquis Diamante.  We are considering stripping the whole floor and installing either a wood floor or tile floor.  Does anyone have any experience doing this?  Any recommendations?

[Steve Huber Co-Admin]

Ron,
You'll find a number of discussions re new flooring by searching for "flooring" in the redecorating section. I replaced the salon carpet w/wood a couple of years ago. RV Renovators figured about $2500 labor. I did it myself and found that it took about 3 days, so their quote was pretty close.
Steve

[Joel Weiss]

We removed both the LR carpet and kitchen tile and replaced them with luxury vinyl tile.  Much easier to keep clean.

[Steve Jewell]

We removed the livingroom and bedroom carpet. we added 1/4" plywood to floor (to make carpet even with tile)and then put in 3' square commercial carpet squares. They are not glued down and stay down and clean real nice.

Steve Jewell

[Bill Sprague]

Jim Sizemore, owner of RV Outfitters in Bend, is doing ours this week.  He is replacing the carpet in the entry with tile that will extend to a few inches behind the seats.  From there he is replacing the worn carpet with new high grade carpet.  We already had decent tile in the kitchen and bath.  

We considered tile, wood and other versions of hard flooring.  We decided against full length hard flooring because of the "warmth" of carpet, the sound dampening nature of carpet and the extra weight of tile.  

Additionally, we are having the window valences and chairs recovered.  Our Monterey came with a palm tree theme.  It was fun buying palm tree glasses and things for awhile.  The new theme is "western country lodge".  On the valences will be a colorful fabric from Pendleton Woolen Mills and various new accessories will complement the theme.  

We got nine years and 95,000 miles on the original decoration and plan to get that much on the re-decoration!

I forgot to take "before" pictures, but can post "after" pictures.

[Keith Oliver]

A new product was used in a similar application by a friend of mine who has a very old boat.  The galley floor now looks very much like a good quality wood floor, but is actually a thick vinyl tile.  These tiles are not fastened down at all, but fit together so tightly and stay put so well you would not know they are just sitting there.  You won't see any thermal or humidity related expansion or contraction with this product, and the surface appearance is as good as the best wood.  If I had known about this before I redid my own, I would have used it.  Don't know exactly what it is called, but you should be able to find it if you are interested.

[Joel Weiss]

Anyone considering replacing the ceramic tile in the kitchen with something other than ceramic should be aware that according to Chad Yackle of TruLine RV in Spokane the slide rollers are set to put far more pressure on the flooring than a vinyl tile will withstand.  Before Chad installed our floor he did quite bit of work with the bottom of the slide, cutting and resetting rollers so they didn't mar the new floor.  That was unanticipated work that added to the cost a bit, but it was better to know it in advance rather than to damage the new tile.