Van Build Series: Week 4 - Carpeting the Van

This week has been a wash out. The middle of June has felt like the middle of autumn, with howling winds and neverending rain. As we don’t have a cover to work under, it’s slowed down our work on the van a little bit. But it’s not all been lost! In between rain showers, we’ve managed to fit some carpet to parts of the van that won’t be cladded. We are only carpeting around the sliding door and the back doors. It ins’t much, but it’s exposed metal work that we’d like to keep hidden. Fitting the carpet was much more fiddly than we anticipated, but we managed to get it done and we’re so pleased with how much smarter it looks already.

An example of the area we’ll be carpeting

Pre-Carpet

Instead of putting carpet onto bare metal, we used a closed cell foam soft insulation (which is basically flexible foam) to provide a smoother surface for the carpet. It also has insulation and sound deadening properties, which is an added bonus. The adhesive backing makes it easy to apply and it can be easily cut to size too. It was pretty difficult to get it neat and tidy as the material doesn’t have any give in it. Ours looked a little like a jigsaw puzzle by the end, but we managed to get all the metal covered ready for carpeting.

Soft foam insulation going on before the carpet

Sticking on the pre-carpet insulation

Cutting the soft foam down to size once stuck on

Applying the Carpet

Neither Ben or I have ever carpeted before, so we cut huge swathes of the stuff to make sure we didn’t mess it up. Using an adhesive spray that came with the carpet, we worked in sections and cut it down to size as we went. We were able to tuck excess carpet into the door seal without having to remove the trim. We did have to remove the door magnets and hinges, but these went back on no problem. We also tried to make the joins in areas that weren’t visible. It’s tricky to explain how we did it, as we were winging it most of the way! But overall we found working with the carpet very forgiving. It was a 4-way stretch carpet, making it flexible enough to work around any awkward parts ( of which there were plenty!) By the end, all those white metal bits were looking much smarter and we’re really happy with how it turned out.

As you can see, our first attempt was a little OTT!

Offering up the carpet for size

Applying the carpet

Tucking it into the door seals

We already love how much better a little carpeting looks

Carpet around the door magnets and hinges

Carpeting finished around the back doors

A neat and tidy finish

That’s about it for this week! Even though the rain isn’t ideal, it was good for us to step back and take stock of everything we’ve achieved so far. It was a great time for us to plan ahead, so we ordered our lithium batteries and roof vent, which all arrived this week. The next step is battening out and insulating the floor – one of the parts I’m most excited about! Hope you had a great week and hopefully when I catch up with you next, we’ll have a shiny new van floor to show you.

Products We Used:
Soft Cell Foam (for carpeting) - https://amzn.to/2Acuzyc*
4 Way Stretch Carpet - https://amzn.to/3dxTKty*