Airstream Remodel Episode 9: I’m Floored
With our confidence in Pauline’s waterproofing restored (ok, “confidence” is a strong word. “Tenuous trust” might be more accurate…), we finally paddled our way out of the doldrums and back to the point where we thought we were at the end of December: building out the interior!
The first step of this process is laying the luxury vinyl floor planks. We found our flooring on clearance at Lowe’s. It’s Stainmaster (Style Selections) brand in Flaxen Oak. We had already installed roll vinyl flooring as a clean, flat surface for the vinyl planks to stick to, but the intervening two months of waterproofing had left that roll vinyl pretty grimy. I took a shop vac and went square by square across the entire floor, meticulously removing every speck of dirt and debris I could find. Then I repeated the process with a damp mop to make extra sure that there was nothing standing between our flooring and a good adhesion.
Once we felt confident that the floor was clean and dry, we mocked out the pattern on the floor so we could line up the point of the arrow in the pattern with the center of the hallway. For reference, our counter on the curbside will be about 23” wide.
Getting anything straight in an Airstream is a struggle because ALL THE WALLS ARE CURVED. But we measured anyway to check that the arrow was going in a straight line, not listing off to one side. We marked the corners of the first two planks on the subfloor, then cleared the area, wiped it down one more time, and lovingly, painstakingly placed the first plank.
Once the first plank is in laid, the pattern is set and as long as you lay everything else straight in reference to the first piece, you should be good to go!
Because of the prep work we had to do that morning, we only had about an hour to lay floor on the first day, but we were wowed by how much progress we could make in so little time.
The next day, Jared took on the challenge of beginning to fit the pieces against the walls. Using the vinyl plank cutting tool (that orange thing that looks like either a giant paper cutter or a very small guillotine), he was able to get a really nice finish!
End of the 1st full day of work
We found that while the guillotine is great for making a straight cut across the entire plank, cutting around curves or other obstructions (like the wheel wells) were challenging on such a large tool. Luckily, a good ole box cutter does the trick as well! As always, to watch deeply satisfying timelapses of Jared finishing the floor, check out the vlog!
And now, the finished product:
I don’t want to get overly sentimental or symbolic about some vinyl floor planks, but I also cannot overstate how revitalizing it was to see that patched-up roll vinyl get covered up with one continuous run of beautiful flooring. It was like the past two months of disappointment and struggle were being placed firmly in the past. With all the leaks, I had started to wonder if I would even like Pauline if we ever finished her. I was afraid that the challenges and mistakes would all be visible, even after all our hard work. But here she is, leak-free with a beautiful fresh coat of paint and brand new floors: a clean slate for us to build our home in.
