Why Rip Out My Fifth Wheels RV Carpet?
I was doing the spring cleaning of our RV after another great snowbird season down south and got to work tackling the carpets. For carpet cleaning, I use a Bissell portable steam cleaner, great little unit and small enough to travel with us. It does a great job and I use it on everything. Besides the carpets, it cleans our fabric furniture, window valances, and the trucks interior. This time, though I noticed the main living area carpeting was showing some serious wear and tear. They use pretty cheap carpeting in most RVs. Add on dogs and lots of time spent in the dusty desert and its life span can be short.
Rather than spend hours trying to get it clean, this time, I decided to just rip it out! I really don’t like carpets anyway. From an earlier modification I had done (Installing a Remote Headphone Jack) I knew that under the carpeting they had first laid linoleum flooring the same pattern as the kitchen area. I peeked at the rest of the areas by gently lifting sections around the heat vents and sure enough, it looked like it was all covered. Next hurdle was to sell the idea to my wife, haha. At first, she looked a bit sideways at me and was skeptical. I explained the benefits of tossing the dirt and dog hair attracting carpet and my confidence that the flooring underneath was good. She decided let’s go for it.
The Old Grungy Carpet Gets Tossed
We decided to just remove the main living area carpet and leave the slide out and bedroom carpets for the time being. It was the worse area by far; being that is was the most trafficked by us and especially by the dogs. The slide carpet is mostly covered by the sofa and dining table so never walked on and the bedroom is a no go zone for doggies and shoes. The carpet came up pretty easily as it was only attached with tiny staples and most just pulled straight out with the carpet. For the rest of them, I used a pair of large needle nose pliers and worked them free. With the design and color of our lino, you can’t even see where the staple holes were. Next was the toughest part, getting the carpet out of the edges of the room. Seems they had jammed much of it between the walls and floor so I had to use an utility knife to cut away the carpet pieces and sometimes thread by thread pull out the carpet fibers. It’s a bit of a picky job but needed to allow the baseboard trim to sit flush against the wall.
For baseboard trim, we just picked up some cheap pine corner molding from Home Depot and painted it a nice dark brown to match. To install the molding rather than nails I used clear silicone. Worked great, is flexible and makes it easy to remove it needed in the future. As far as the slide goes I left a few inches of carpet where it enters the main area and added metal trim piece so the slide bottom won’t snag. So far in testing the slide works fine and rides above the floor.
Ripping Out the Fifth Wheels RV Carpet Video
Conclusion
I’m extremely satisfied with the result of this mod. The flooring looks nice and the new baseboard trim looks pretty sharp I think. Going forward this is going to be much easier to clean and maintain. A sweep and a little wash with floor cleaner and we are good to go. Next, I may tackle the bedroom area. I think that some type of vinyl flooring would look nice in there.
See more of our RV renovations
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