Carpet out - LVP in!

[KyleR]

Finally finished up our carpet removal and LVP install and wanted to share a few pics.

I decided to remake all the engineroom hatches from scratch since the old ones were all too small once the carpet was removed. Three of my hatches were really big (the ones over each main engine and the one over the generator). As such, I decided to make them into multiple smaller hatches that were much easier to remove/store which has turned out to be really useful! I split each main engine hatch into three pieces and the generator hatch into two pieces.

The V-berth and aft staterooms are also both done, but they're a little messy right now and I don't think my wife would appreciate me posting those pics! . We have some flexible molding on order to trim out the edges but it won't be here for a week or two.

I didn't take many pics during the process but here's the final outcome.

[KyleR]

There's a weird effect happening in the pics I posted that make the edges look dotted/jagged when you zoom in - and I'm not sure why. Here's a close-up though of the effect, as well as a close-up of what the seams actually look like.

[Midnightsun]

Looks great and I am sure a great choice of material. Will hold up better than wood, easy to clean and could not care less if it gets wet. May consider something similar sometime down the road. biggest issue is all those access panels which seem to be everywhere.

Our condo was eaten up by hurricane Ian in Ft Myers Beach. The flooring we chose is LVP because of it's superior properties over time. I believe they are putting it in this week.

[KyleR]

Sorry to hear about your condo! We passed through Ft. Myers back in January when we crossed FL via Lake Okeechobee. It looked like they had really started making a comeback and had a lot of cleanup done. But there were still boats strewn along the shoreline and many docks still being rebuilt.

The LVP we chose is from Lowe's and is 100% waterproof - so hopefully it will stand the test of time. We'll see!!

[tonyp444]

Looks amazing! This is something I’d eventually like to do with our boat. I’ve put down LVP in our kitchen and basement at home and it’s great. I’m assuming these are glue-down or self stick planks that interlock somehow to be waterproof? Did you need to do any subfloor prep other than just pulling out the old carpet?

[KyleR]

I’m assuming these are glue-down or self stick planks that interlock somehow to be waterproof? Did you need to do any subfloor prep other than just pulling out the old carpet?

They can be glued down or left floating, and yes they interlock together. I left the flooring in the V-berth, galley and master stateroom floating and did not glue the flooring down, except for the panels that cover the small hatches in those areas.

The flooring in the salon was a completely different story. Since the floor in there is basically nothing but a series of large hatches, ALL of it was glued down.

As far as floor prep, I chose to recreate ALL of the hatches (and even split the larger hatches into smaller ones). The reason being was that once the carpet was removed, there were large gaps between all the original hatches which obviously wouldn't provide support under the LVP planks. I saw online where some people just tacked/nailed on strips to fill in those gaps, but that didn't seem very strong/durable to me, so I just made new hatches.

Other than that, the only other floor prep I did was scrape up any thick globs of carpet glue that were left on the "non-hatch" areas so that the floor would be as smooth as possible. I didn't go crazy scraping as the LVP covers small imperfections great and wasn't necessary.

Hope that helps!

[tonyp444]

Very helpful, thanks! Great work.