Interior Boat Carpet

[cwarren]

Hey, I want to lay new carpet in our boat. I have seen carpeting that is intended for a marine environment (interior and exterior). Is this the recommended approach or is household carpeting sufficient. I will need to glue this down and bend it around 90 degree angles.

[heymagic]

Any carpet will work fine. We've done several boats in Berber, edges like to unravel though. Use a t-50 staple gun and stainless staples. Gene

[tolly28]

We just pulled all of the carpet out of our boat and replaced with bamboo and have a few rugs. It's amazing the crud you find under carpet when you remove it. It's nice to be able to shake out a rug and be done with it!

[Salmon Troller]

We are thinking about going the other direction, pulling the wall to wall carpet and installing a hard flooring. I have seen various postings about using holly or teak, but is this a pre-finished flooring or what. Where are you finding the flooring, and is there any particular downside to the hard floor?

[SomeSailor]

You can buy some really nice looking teak & holly sole plywood. I always though it "felt" cleaner than carpet.

Chef Harry did his in Pergo laminate, but I'm not sure how that would hold up over time and since it has to "float" the edges can't be secure. Those teak and holly panels are pretty inexpensive as well. ($145 for 4'x8')

For a slightly curved floor, gluing down teak or okoume strips would be pretty. Sand and oil the whole thing when done... might be nice.

[bradvo]

It can be bought at a place called Homebuilders supply off Nickerson in Seattle. They have a huge assortment of teak trim pieces but the flooring laminates will have to be special order- i think it took a few weeks before we got ours.
Brad

[SomeSailor]

You can also buy it at www.harborsales.net (or at least get an idea of cost and selection)

Neat stuff. Really beautiful installed in a boat.

[Salmon Troller]

SS, you are right on. It's nearly impossible to get carpet really clean and something is aways getting spilled or dropped on it. Right now we have a very dark grey commercial carpet, so it hides the problem, but does not solve it. About the flooring, we are really talking about a real wood product, either a plywood or strips. I looked at the pergo type stuff, but have a real problem with a sawdust product assembled with water soluable glue. Brad, I will check out Homebuilders Saturday on the way to the boat. Thanks all!

[tolly28]

Having hardwood on the boat has worked out great.

We put in a floating bamboo flooring. I know of several people who have used floating floors with no problems on boats. Makes installation a lot easier.

I'd rip carpet out of a boat in a minute and replace with a hard floor.

[bradvo]

I installed the teak and holly in the bathrooms and the galley is a oak hardwood . It really needs refinished. Was going to try and have it done before this boating season but if anyone read my boat story you could see I had been busy with other items. Now it is just to warm to do the work anyway-But I am anxious to get after it this fall, I did learn the winter is a tuff time to get the finish sealers to set up and last winter was mild. So I would like to have it done by end of October. Glad I bought some new knee pads.