I'm not sure when this flooring began to go south, but I can definitely say it looked horrible from the first day we got it. It was covered in stains and scratches and was bubbling up in a few spots. It's almost as if choosing a white floor for a camper was a bad choice to begin with. Who knew?
Floor tile? More like floor vile.
Anyway, scrubbing the hell out of it only offered a mild improvement, so I knew one day it would have to go. Luckily, my fellow members of the Apache Canvas Trailers Facebook Group paved the way again. Tearing up vintage tile, held down with industrial strength glue and possibly harboring asbestos, is never a good idea. A much simpler solution is to cover it up, and what seems to work great are cheap stick-on vinyl tiles.
What, did you expect me to go all fancy-pants all-natural marmoleum on this thing? It's a camper, it's going to get scuffed and dirty, and I need the floor to be light, thin, flexible, and easy to apply. Vinyl it is.
We chose a dark walnut color in long planks as opposed to square tiles. The process was pretty simple. First, clean the floor. Like, really clean it. A de-greasing solution and a scrub brush is the way to go here. Any foreign substance between the adhesive on the new tile and the existing floor is a no-no. Along the way, I tried to cut out and bubbles or raised spots. Clean and level is what we're going for.
Next you establish a center line in both directions, forming a cross. After that, it's a simple matter of sticking the tiles down as straight and flat as possible, using the lines as a guide and staggering the layout. Seeing the floor space wasn't exactly expansive, this part went rather quickly.
The most fiddly part was cutting around any irregular shapes along the borders, but even that wasn't a big deal. Within a few hours of laying the first plank I was done.
All that's left is to install some molding along the edges and we can call this done. I have to say, I couldn't be happier with the way it came out. Let's just hope it stands the test of time.
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