MOD Moar (Vinyl) Floor - Removing the carpet in a 2020 Newmar Ventana

[MapNerd]

A while back, I'd posted on someone else's thread about my plan to remove the carpet from our slide rooms and in order to get a perfect match, scan my spare floor tiles, organize them into a staggered layout in photoshop and then send that design off to be printed onto a sheet of vinyl flooring.

Well, that plan didn't turn out so well. I took the floor tiles to a print shop that said they could scan them over the phone. I got a call the next day saying they couldn't scan them because their process was to hang the tile and scan them with some contraption that requires the item to be hung. I assume it was just a really high resolution camera and then they would crop it in photoshop. Anyway, they called and said they didn't want to do it because the flooring tiles were so heavy and they didn't want to break one.

From there, I called some other businesses that had high resolution, large format flatbed scanners. None of them wanted to touch the project because of concerns over reproducing another company's intellectual property - eg. the flooring design. Next, I actually called Newmar, asked them where they got the tile, then called the dealer who contacted the manufacturer, asking if they would share the design files with me for a fee. Still came up empty handed.

Up until now, every time I saw a flooring center or home center, I'd pop in and see if they had anything that came even close to our main flooring that would work for replacing the carpet in the FWS. Last weekend, I happened across Floor & Decor while driving out to Cap World of Orlando to order my truck bed cap. Today I decided I'd pop in there and see what they had. It's a large store so I figured they'd probably have something close-ish but I have some major OCD when it comes to these things so I grabbed one of the spare flooring tiles for comparison purposes, put it in the truck and drove over. I walked in, headed over to the vinyl section and boom, on the very first aisle (of 6 aisles just of vinyl mind you)...

Well, that's pretty darn close but its a little brown, I thought. If I buy a few boxes and cherry pick, using the more grayish over the more brownish that could work. Decided to check the next aisles and voila...

Well that's pretty much perfect. Now the cool thing about Floor & Decor aside from it being a huge tile, stone and flooring store is that if you need to compare, you can take a whole piece home for just $5. Bring it back within 90 days and they'll give you your money back. So I took two pieces of each product home so we could lay them out and see what actually looked better against the rest of the tiles as I only had one with me and what do you know, the first one came out as a pretty much identical match.

All of this will go in the FWS and most will be covered by the theater seats, dinette booth and bunks so even if its not an absolute identical match, it's sure going to be really hard to tell the difference. So I'm all measured up, need about 5 boxes and we'll be ripping out the carpet really soon.

The challenge as always is going to be the transition. It won't be a perfectly flat transition and we're okay with that. I wondered if anyone knows if the transition strip Newmar uses for DSDP+ lines will work for here too, or is the gap between the slide and the floor significantly less with the HWH slides?

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

Wow! Great match. Don’t know about the transition strip fit, but I’m sure there’s something out there that will work.

TJ

 

[Jim]

Hey @MapNerd, you did OK on that! It looks great. People see what they expect to see, so even if it's not "perfect", nobody's going to notice. But to be honest, it looks pretty darn good to me.

 

[MapNerd]

Got all the carpet out earlier this week. Wasnt too bad of a job. The worst of it was up at the front slide where Newmar had jammed the carpet beneath the floor and the side table attached to the front slide. Took some really difficult pulling to get it out, even with the slide lifted off of it. Had to yank on it with pliers and then the carpet started coming apart in pieces, but we got it all out eventually.

Next challenge was leveling the floor. Since Newmar just uses OSB for the slide floor and OSB is prone to delaminating at its edges, they apparently cover the front edge with some sort of heavy stock wax paper edge to form an angled forward edge. The result however is a 1/8” lip where that edge cover ends and transitions to the OSB subfloor. Thankfully, Newmar revealed how to level that out in the build.

In the picture above, you can see the lip created from that wax paper edge cover transitioning to the OSB subfloor. You can also see that Newmar had dropped down a sheet of 1/8’ vinyl flooring to level that out. Why they did that only under my kitchen pantry cabinet, I have no idea but that basically told me how to level it out.

So, off to Lowe’s to grab some sheets of 1/8” cheap vinyl floor. We cut it to size and then used a 3M spray adhesive to hold it to the floor. We figured we’d have laminate on top weighing it down and we didn’t want a huge fight on our hands if we ever needed to get to the subfloor again to perform a repair. Hopefully never comes up but it’s always a card in the deck.

With the vinyl sheet down and the subfloor all leveled, next was laying the flooring. That was easy enough. Score with razor knife, snap board and slide into place. Rinse and repeat. We started at the forward edge of the slide in the front and worked our way toward the back wall and rear of the slide, so that we’d have a full width board at the part of the slide most seen.

At this point it’s come along nicely. The FWS is 90% done with only the transition and the ends of the main floor to fill in. Will grab some photos from my wife’s phone later this evening.

 

[Jim]

Let's get to tearing out stuff on an (almost) brand new Ventana! lol, love your style @MapNerd.

 

[MapNerd]

Let's get to tearing out stuff on an (almost) brand new Ventana! lol, love your style @MapNerd.

What? I waited for the 1-year warranty to expire. I think electric valves are in my near future as well.

 

[sheridany]

This might be the only Ventana without carpet in the entire world. If there was something I absolutely hated In my Ventana, this would be at the top of my list. Congrats @MapNerd for taking this on.

 

[MapNerd]

Here are a few pictures of the FWS in the master and down the hallway. The transition is actually just a quarter round that we found at Lowe’s but we ordered Newmar’s DSDP transition strip in black just to see if we like that better. If not, I’ll figure out a way to use the quarter round shown.

I’ll do a before/after when we’re all done.

 

[MapNerd]

This might be the only Ventana without carpet in the entire world. If there was something in absolutely hated In my Ventana, this be at the top of my list. Congrats @MapNerd for taking this on.

We absolutely despise carpet (rugs are okay!). Just considering the level of revolt and loathing we have for carpet, it’s honestly completely irrational and way out of proportion. Nevertheless, we like what we like and hate what we hate. Fun fact: We almost bought an Entegra Reatta purely because it had the least carpet we could find at a similar price point.

the only reason it wasn’t done on day zero was because of my OCD and inability to find a decent match to the tile for so long.

 

[Jim]

That came out superb!

 

[NWIP]

Lots of progress and looks great.

 

[J&JD]

I always thought carpet was used because of the relationship between the slope of the slide and the main floor. If this isn’t true why does Newmar use carpet? I know on my DS the HWH slide drops straight down after extending thus solving the problem. Please enlighten me as to what this foggy mind is missing. (BTW the floor job looks super @MapNerd )

 

[MapNerd]

I always thought carpet was used because of the relationship between the slope of the slide and the main floor. If this isn’t true why does Newmar use carpet? I know on my DS the HWH slide drops straight down after extending thus solving the problem. Please enlighten me as to what this foggy mind is missing. (BTW the floor job looks super @MapNerd )

Time & Money. Probably also not easy to source a laminate or vinyl that matches the tile of the main floor. I doubt Newmar buys enough product to be able to require access to the design files in order to reproduce the same pattterns on another substrate.

the slide on the Ventana is electric and does sit about a half inch higher than the main floor, but as you can see it’s not an unworkable situation.

 

[J&JD]

Looks to me like that quarter round might be a better solution than the vinyl strip Newmar uses in the DS. How would you attach the quarter round? Glue & pin nail?

 

[MapNerd]

Looks to me like that quarter round might be a better solution than the vinyl strip Newmar uses in the DS. How would you attach the quarter round? Glue & pin nail?

maybe. I’ve honestly not given it much thought. The quarter round would likely be so tricky to make work that the Newmar strip would have to look pretty out of place. They also had matching T-transitions at Lowe’s so I thought maybe I’d grab some of those, cut the top of the quarter round off, glue it to the bottom of the T, then glue the T to the first row of planks

 

[VTPete]

I’m floored. Really well done @MapNerd. I hope to replace my crappy linoleum type tile in my VTLE soon with engineered wood, but had it even considered doing the slide was possible.

 

[MapNerd]

I’m floored. Really well done @MapNerd. I hope to replace my crappy linoleum type tile in my VTLE soon with engineered wood, but had it even considered doing the slide was possible.

 

[MapNerd]

Over the weekend, I filled in the portions of the main floor that wrap around the ends of the FWS. To some, it might look scary but its very simple. I cut a scrap of 1/2" birch that I had from building MapWife's larger dinette booth drawers to fit the area, being sure to leave plenty of room for the slide to come in and out as well as adjust left and right as it kind of shimmies slightly when it goes in and out. That left me 1/8" short so again, I glued some scrap vinyl flooring to the top of the wood. Next, I screwed that all down into the subfloor with some 1 1/4" kreg screws and then cut a strip of vinyl to fit the area, and glued it to the now raised subfloor with liquid nails.

Raising the subfloor in this way was done for two reasons:
1. To give me a perfectly flush floor
2. More importantly, to provide support for the vinyl flooring attached to the slide that overlaps and slides over that area, so that if/when someone steps there, the flooring on the slide won't collapse or give in any way.

Did the same in the front, which was a bit more challenging only because the working space was far more limiting and required bringing in the FWS 1/4 of the way, then contorting myself into a pretzel behind the driver's seat while it was turned 90-degrees. Many choice words were uttered as I struggled to shapeshift my already small 5'10" 150lb frame into a workspace the size of the kitchen pantry. We also decided to lay down a bead of colored caulk to keep the grout line seamless in the front. In the rear, this is hidden by the slide vinyl flooring that moves with the slide but in the front, it was not.

Today, Newmar's vinyl transition strip showed up. So we unrolled it. In the Newmar store, it appeared to come with a 3M strip attached which would have made for super simple installation. Of course, mine did not. After dry fitting the strip and cutting it to size (it comes in 38' rolls, the slide is only 34' long), I then put a bead of liquid nails down under each of the floorboards on the leading edge of the slide. That thin bead will probably not do much but for whatever reason, it made me feel better.

Next, I grabbed a roll of black 3M double-sided tape and after wiping down the back of the transition strip with isopropyl alcohol, as well as the first 1/2" of each floorboard on the leading edge of the slide, I painstakingly applied the 3M tape to the back of transition strip on the narrow side. Then I had to trim the overlapping tape to width with a razor knife. More choice words...

With this done, it was just a matter of sticking the transition strip to the first row of vinyl planks. Initially, we wondered if we'd done the right thing as the quarter round we were considering earlier gives a matching finish and looks really nice. After giving it some thought thought, we realized slides move and adjust. The flexible transition strip allows for play in the elevation as it will form up or down as needed. A hard piece of quarter round would not do this so if the slide were ever out of alignment and needed adjustment, you'd be fighting the alignment precision to get everything lined up properly again. So in the end, we think the flexible vinyl transition was the right move and it also gives it a stock look, which is something I personally like.

 

[J&JD]

That looks easily as good as my factory DS. Great job!!

 

[NWIP]

Nicely done?