So I decided the carpet in the cab was pretty rough- and it came with the extra pleasant bonus smell of classic musty. Laura liked the idea of carpet- but I did talk her into the idea of taking the carpet out of truck cab area. I was hoping to also waterproof the floor of the cab a bit too. (I know… It’s just metal under that carpet- but I wanted to cut down the moisture collection and hence the possibility of any moldy factor building up there.)
I pulled the front seats, and then proceeded to start pulling up the carpet. As I did so 35 years of dust, accumulated mouse poop, and any other collected debris hopped up into the air- quite disgusting to say the least! It wasn’t long before Laura was telling me how were going to take all the carpet out of the RV. 😉 So we began pulling the carpet- all of the carpet. The cab seemed tough when we started- but it turned out that would be the cake walk portion of our set upon task, it was just glued carpet to metal. The rest of the carpet throughout the camper portion of the RV was a completely different story. First- when it was installed, it was put in by someone with a staple gun- which means it was installed with a thousand staples. This means pulling them as you go or pounding them into the plywood if they are a lost cause. So… that was hours of knee work with a pair of lineman pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and a hammer. Here’s the next fun part: They installed the carpet before they installed the cabinets, and even the walls! So you have to go and cut out all the edges and pull left over carpet strands with your pliers. Anyway- after a day of pulling- she was free of her musty shag.
So next we gave the whole floor the Dupont Bed Liner Treatment. (Also wanted to note here if you were curious- The Bed Liner is sooooo much easier to paint with than Gaco 😉 ) We also did the wall climbing up into the bed and the entry step, and the cabinet side at the entrance. I did not take an awesome amount of pictures after we did this part- so I am going to show you examples of how it came out from way after. I’ve cropped some down just to try and save as many future spoilers as I can. 🙂 We bought and trimmed down a runner from the local hardware store, and I put metal trim down into the cab and at the front step.
Another thing Laura wanted to do was to give the front of the refrigerator a stainless steel look. I totally agreed it would be a sweet look to compliment the space craft appearance we were going for. So I went and bought a sheet of stainless steel, pulled original wood panel face to use as a template and then the steel to size. We slid it and it fit great. I then cut a piece of aluminum flat bar to trim the top. Too Cool!
Geoff Murphy 01-11-2020