safegate

This project was a copycat of other flooring projects documented here. So I'll post some pictures and describe lessons learned. I converted the snap in carpet to foam. The carpet collected good old southern red clay and proceeded to spread with every damp foot endlessly. I hope this stuff cleans well with a pressure washer. The carpet snap-ins just unscrew. 1: Buy good flooring material. Mine was $55/roll on eBay and it took 2 rolls (with 0 extra). The backing was NOT 3M film, and it was so wavy it was impossible to route the edges to give a nice finish like others have done. It stuck down strong and seems decent except for the backing on it. Too cheap of a product to pay shipping back or I would've returned it. 2: Templating took 8 hours to make 5 pieces and worth every minute. I can cut/finish/install new flooring in an afternoon now that I have solid templates. I used eucaboard 1/8" from HD ($6 per 4x8'). To template, I bought 4 mil clear sheeting, taped it down, used a sharpie to trace the outline I wanted, cut plastic sheeting out, taped to eucaboard, used sharpie to draw shape on eucaboard, used router to cut eucaboard, sanded with electric orbital sander, put in boat to check for fit and make adjustments. A big surprise was how easy it was to get the margins looking good and flooring lines aligned. I just eyeballed everything and did my best. 3: Eucaboard is TOUGH to sand. Get some good power tools and cut as precisely as possible. Dremel tool would be good for curves. Sharp curves are hard to cut with a razor. 4: Buy good flooring material. enough said I was going to use a 1/4" cove router bit to trim the edges. I did some practice pieces and it looks really nice. Because the material was so bad, the router would randomly eat up more that the template should allow. So I ditched the router effort and just used a razor blade to cut the foam and call it a day.