Laying the floor

Yesterday I laid the new laminate flooring. It was easier than I thought it was going to be once I figured out the proper way to make the cuts for short pieces. With regular flooring you just measure and cut a board to length. With laminate you have to make sure to cut the proper side of the board because each board edge has a tongue or a groove that needs to connect to the piece next to it. I messed the first cut up but was ok after that.

Since the first 3 feet up front will be covered with the couch I decided to use plywood for that area. It's hard to start thinking like a renovator and not a restorer, this is something I would never do in restoring an old house. I would have laid the flooring from one end to the other, my thinking being that someone years down the road might want to change the layout of the room, I dont ever want someone coming behind me and saying "what were they thinking!" But in the camper this is fine, the layout of the room will never change because this is the only place for the couch.

I was able to get the shape of the plywood to fit so perfectly by cutting a piece of underlayment to fit in the area then tracing it onto the plywood.


Here are a few pictures of the progress:



And here are a few shots of the finished area:




I still need to stain and install the 1/4 round molding.

I also repaired and installed the smaller shade on the curb side of the camper:


Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the repair itself. It was broken about a foot from the back end. the metal pipe had rusted away. I cut it back to good clean metal then cut a piece of schedule 40 PVC to the proper length, then I trimmed down a pressure treated 2x4 to fit inside both pieces of pipe and used deck screws to hold it all together. It came out very strong, I cant flex the area at all. I put a PVC cap on the end, drilled a hole in it and used a threaded rod for the pin that holds the shade in place. I made sure to screw the rod about a foot into the 2x4 inside the shade. then I drilled a hole in the end of the threaded rod for the cotter pin. the shade itself covers the PVC so it looks perfectly normal.

Attaching the shade fabric to the camper was tough, there is a small groove that the edge of the fabric has to go into then you use rubber window screen trim to hold it into place.

The shade mechanism still works fairly well but the threaded rod in the repaired end makes it tough to roll up the shade. I may revisit this fix sometime down the road for something a little better.

Next up is sanding and staining the cabinetry.