I can see Gary crouching on the floor, banging his head against it. No, actually, he’s trying, valiantly, to take our old flooring up. Here’s a shortened version of the story. We had carpeting in the bedroom of our RV which was typical RV carpeting: a bit cheap, a bit worn and a bit dingy with an emphasis on the cheap. We also had what is called ‘peel and stick’ tile in the rest of the RV. No problem with that - easy to clean, showed no dirt since it was dark and still looked good. Since we wanted to replace the carpeting, in a brilliant stroke, I said, ‘ why not replace the entire flooring so it looks all the same?’ Then, in another brilliant stroke, I said, ‘why not put in a wood floor like we have in our last 2 homes?’
RV Renovators in Mesa, AZ assured us that they had the right product for us, that it would not interfere with the slides coming in and the only problem with what we chose, the cherry laminate was that it would show every little bit of dust, hair, lint and everything else that landed on the floor. No problem, I’ll just dust more often. The sales rep told us that it would be best to glue the floor down so that the rocking and rolling of an RV down the roads wouldn’t move it. He’s been in the business for years and we trusted his analysis.
And, we were off. We made a deposit, signed the contract and they ordered the flooring. We arranged for a place to stay while the flooring was being installed and, when it came in, we took the RV to their center and moved into our new ‘home.’
They took about a week and, when we picked it up, it was as beautiful as we had thought it would be. Look at this - neat huh? We loved the look. It matched our woodwork and shone in the sun.
2 months later, we had moved further north into central California, with a moister climate. Oops, what’s happening to our floor? Oh, oh, looks like its bulging up in certain spots. 2 spots were really noticeable - when we walked on them, the floor sunk about 3/4”. The bulges were that tall. We examined the floor and, over time this is what we realized:
a. firstly, since it was a wood floor, it was swelling with the moister climate. In Mesa, AZ, where it’s dry, the floor was fine but, now, as we move further north through northern CA, Oregon and Washington, the moisture climate made the wood swell.
b. the floor had been glued down but the manufacturer installation instructions said this: ‘floating floor, need not be glued down.’
c. the floor had absolutely NO expansion joints, no room for the wood to expand and it was expanding upwards. Look how tight it is against the wall here. There was no place else to go but up and the flooring was so tight that it is pushing the wall paper up with it. Here’s a spot in our hallway where you can see the plywood floor on the bottom, our laminated wood floor lifting up 3/4” and making a tent with the wall paper a bit wrinkled above it. And, check out all that glue on the floor where Gary has removed a board.
And, of course, the manufacturers instructions not only said to leave expansion joints of 3/8” but they also included a special little plastic spacer to use to measure the 3/8” exactly. What could be more explicit?
d. no underlayment. The manufacturer said to install the underlayment included in the boxes.
4 strikes and you’re out. Oh, no, Gary and I are out - a lot of time a lot of money and a lot of patience.
What to do now? Well, Gary cut some slits in the wood where the bulging was the highest to relieve the pressure. And, we lived with these in our beautiful wood floor since March. But, there were more bulges than slits we wanted to cut. I mean, how 1 slit makes the floor look awful, 2 make it look atrocious, what will 3 or 4 do? I stained the slits and that camouflaged them a bit but we’ve still got two slits in the floor in most obvious places.
That was then, this is now and we’re in Altoona, IA with some time to make some repairs. Our only solution is to take the floor up, toss it and replace it with something else:
something that floats, that will not be glued down
something that we can cut some expansion joints around
something that is not wood based.
There must be a lesson here for us to learn. But, really, the lesson we learned is not to trust the experts and to read the instructions ourselves. It’s our floor, it’s our RV and, in the end, it was our decision. But, we thought that we were dealing with experts who did this for a living and had dealt with these issues before.
3 days ago, Gary began removing the wood. Glue - well, they used industrial strength glue and covered the entire board with glue. Look at this board - that white stuff on the tan laminated board is the glue - not much of the laminated board can be seen. The yellow is the plywood floor and now we have to scrape that white stuff off the plywood.
(Later, when I was removing the glue from the plywood, I realized that this glue was nothing compared to some gel-like glue that Winnebago had put down to hold the carpet in place. I’m just sure this is hundred-year glue.)
He’s got crowbars, he’s got levers, he’s got a mallet but that glue is holding like it is supposed to. At one point, he worked with mallets, crowbars and levers for an hour and only removed one board. Ah, but that was the worst, the rest were a bit easier. However, it took him the better part of two days to remove all the wood planks.
And, what did we put in its place so we didn’t have to walk on the plywood? Why, this lovely 2-mil green plastic. And, here’s our beautiful floor now. Quite a change from the wood look, huh? You can see here that we still have some flooring to remove from under the table. Not done with the removal yet.
We put the plastic down so we’d have something other than plywood to walk on. Didn’t want slivers in our dainty little feet.
We had planned to put in a marbled look vinyl tile but decided that this marbled look would clash with the marbled look on our wallpaper. Shucks, that marbled tile sure would disguise the dirt. So, we chose a wood look again but with more graining than in the first flooring we chose.
And, soon, after we get the glue scraped off the plywood and pick up our new floor, we’ll have a beautiful floor again.
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