As part of our floor refurbishing in the rig we decided to replace the old carpeting in the dining area and our upstairs lounge, which functions as our office. The rig is 7 years old this year, and the original carpet is cut-pile beige, or at least it USED to be beige. We lifted up an edge that had been doubled over and it isn’t even CLOSE to its original color. We had originally thought to replace the lounge area carpet with vinyl, but the removal and reinstallation started to look way too complex, and so we compromised on some nice tight loop “office” quality carpeting.

The “Before” in the dining area was pretty ugly. Of course there were plenty of food stains, from us and the previous owners. But it was just poor looking and it never looked very clean.

The Dining Area (or Sewing Room!) Before

The “Before” for the lounge area wasn’t quite as bad, but it still was dated and never looked clean regardless of the effort we took to vacuum and spot clean.

The Upstairs Lounge (Office) Before

The carpeting in the dining area has one exposed and finished edge since it is in the slide that moves in when retracted. So we wanted to have a nice finished edge there on the new carpet as well. We elected to buy a large area rug (Walmart, $79) that was the texture and color we wanted, and we cut pieces out of it to do our carpeting job. In this way we were able to preserve the finished edge. Wendy made some adjustments after we cut it to fit on the small “wings” at the sides that lap around the wall of the slide. She cut the binding loose from the rug before we cut it to fit, and then sewed that same binding back around the exposed edges.

Wendy had to bring the Sewing Room outdoors

The original binding was re-used for the new cut edges

Carpeting the dining area was a snap. It’s pretty much a rectangle, and the table removes with just 2 screws (Note: there are round wooden plugs concealing the screws, use a small screw tapped into the plug to pull them out).

The Dining Area after clean up (staples, staples, staples!)

The upstairs lounge area was a bigger challenge. We have two opposing slides in that area, and the old carpeting was installed before them at the factory. So we elected to remove the foot panel on each slide to expose the underneath, and cut the carpet back as far as we could. After that it was just a matter of pulling out the old carpet and cleaning up any staples left in the sub-floor. We left the existing padding since it was in pretty good shape.

Under one of the slides upstairs

Once cut loose, the big piece pulled right out

We cut the single piece out of the rug and fit it to the area, making cutouts for heater vents and other structures. Then it was just a matter of folding it over and stapling it under the exposed edge with an electric stapler (Arrow ET501 with 5/8” staples). A few tacks in the dining area and done! We were very pleased with the result. It looks clean, is a darker color to not show stains so much, is a tight loop pile that won’t “grab” the pet hair so easy, and is MUCH easier to vacuum. We can even sweep it to get up loose bits. We had enough of the rug left over to redo the steps as well. Thank God for electric staple guns!

The finished Dining Area

The finished upstairs Lounge/Office

As always, here’s Tippy!