Bigfoot floor installation question

[trainjunkie]

For anyone who has put new floor covering in a Bigfoot, my 1989 obviously had the vinyl floor material installed by the factory before the cabinets were installed as the material covers the entire floor even inside the cabinets. Sandwiched between the cabinet bases and the flooring material is vinyl cabinet welt (see pic).

I'm sure those who have installed new flooring have not removed their entire interiors so what did you do with the welt? Did you trim it away? Remove the old vinyl to a point under the welt and wedge the new flooring under it?

I've been wanting to do the floor in my 89 BF for awhile but the floor welt issue is what has stopped me. This weekend I had to put a new entry door in and discovered the vinyl flooring in the entry area to be beyond salvage so now I may have to do the floor by default. Looking for input on how others have done it and how it worked out in the long term.

Thanks!

Mike

[Carol H]

There are a number of threads on installing new flooring. If you use the search option at the top of this page and use the bottom box (google option) it will give you the best results. Bigfoot by the way is not the only trailer manufacture that puts the flooring covering down before the cabinets. Just cut the old stuff back to the cabinet edge.

To get you started here are a few old threads on the topic:

Installing Laminate plank flooring in a Bigfoot

New Flooring Laminate or Vinyl

[trainjunkie]

Carol,

I probably should have mentioned it but I read as many archived posts as I could find on installing flooring and never saw anything specifically addressing the welt. I was just wondering what others have done with it although I suspect, as you suggested, that they trimmed it back to the edge of the cabinets. I just wanted some confirmation of that before taking a knife to everything, particularly whether there were any negative effects of that long-term or not.

[FTTRV]

The welting you are talking about is called gimp. I have covered Bigfoot floors with laminate flooring and used wood look moulding from Home Depot.
Chuck

[trainjunkie]

Chuck,

So if I understand correctly, you trimmed the "welt" (gimp) back to be flush with the edge of the base cabinets, presumably cutting all the way through the vinyl flooring, installed new vilyl/laminate floor on the plywood sub floor, and edged it with some kind of regular wood/pvc/MDF molding from HD? Does that about sum it up?

TIA

Mike

[Tom Y]

Hi Mike,
I have a Bigfoot 5th wheel that I rebuilt. While replacing the carpeting and flooring with plank laminate flooring, I cut all the welting away, installed the flooring, (you need to leave a bit of a gap for expansion) and then used a Basswood patterned molding to cover up the edges. I think this is pretty standard order, and so far it has worked well. If you search the photos on this site you will find photos of the rebuild.
Tom Y.

[Badger]

Do you glue or nail in the new molding?

[Lora]

The PO of our Bigfoot put in a new floor. The tiles do not extend into the hidden spaces. Nail in shoe molding. It will make it easier to remove if you need to make any changes (i.e., replace subfloor).

[Tom Y]

I was able to nail the molding in. If you do use glue I suggest something like a hot glue gun. You may find minimal backing behind a few spots for the nails. Also on ours around the rear dining area there was removable panels that ran along the bottom of the floor at a angle, these were for wire runs. I suggest removing those before the floor installation, they were not nailed, but screwed into place. This allowed the flooring to continue to the walls instead of up against the wire run panels.
Fiberglass RV - Tom Y's Album: Restoring a 1986 Bigfoot 5th wheel
Here is a link to the album on this site, there should be a few photos showing the molding in place.

[Tom Y]

Mike,
I realized the photos in the album that the link above refers to does not have any really good views of the floor molding. I added another photo, so now when you click on the link the first photo is a good shot of the flooring and the wooden molding that I used. The patterned basswood molding came from home depot, was very inexpensive. I used it also for the mid wall band covering up the body seam.
Tom Y