My nemisis, the floor.

Someone said to me recently, I could never do what you are doing. I wouldn't know the first thing about renovating a trailer. My answer, I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I'm making it up as I go.

The truth is I have never done anything like this before. It's a lot of work and a lot of learning but it's also very rewarding. I've always been able to look at something and envision what it would look like with some TLC and hard work. Luckily there is a large Boler community out there and they are more than happy to help. Two sites I've joined that are proving to be unbelievable resources are the Fiberglass RV Forum and the Facebook group, I Own a Boler. I can ask any silly old question and people are there to help.

While waiting for mother nature to help find the leaks (by raining for 3 days) I tackled the floor. The two linoleum floors didn't match so I wanted to redo them. I was originally going to leave the black and white checkers down, laid by the previous owner,  but once I got the first old floor up I decided to rip that out too. (Sorry Amber). I figured it's easier to replace both at the same time rather than trying to find the exact match. Wow, was I in for a lot of work!

I used a heat gun and scraper to lift off the linoleum. The upper, older floor came up pretty easily even though at the time I thought it was a disaster. The newer checkered floor however proved to be the real pain as it left all the paper backing behind. I boiled water and soaked the paper, repeatedly, scraping it off with a putty knife. It took a lot of water, a couple of days,  and intense scraping to get it all off.

Then I was left with two layers of glue; the old, hard yellow stuff and the newer, gooey glue. It was off to the hardware store to find out what to use to remove it. I bought some water-soluble floor glue remover which I applied liberally over and over again. Although it doesn't say it in the directions I used water and a scrubbing brush, the same one I used to clean the interior walls and ceiling, to work the gooey glue into a lather. The foaming glue remover basically liquefied the top glue but the older yellow glue wouldn't budge. It didn't even soften up.

I would guess you're wondering why I would bother trying t get the old glue off when I'm just going to lay down more vinyl flooring? The answer is I'm a bit of a perfectionist. The yellow glue seemed to stain its way through the white squares of the lino leaving a yellow marbled effect. I'm hoping to put down more black and white checkers but I don't want the yellow to come through again. After all the work put into laying the floor I would be really annoyed if I saw the yellow seeping through again.

As of right now I still have no solution to getting the old glue up. I have to sand and repaint the whole interior so I may see if painting the floor would seal in that glue while being suitable to apply new glue over. My concern is that the paint in between the fiberglass floor and the glue for the lino would prevent the floor from adhering properly. Again, I have a lot to research and learn but I know this is going to be one sweet little camper when I'm done!