Carver Owners Forum

I am toying with the idea of removing and possibly replacing the inside carpet on my 1989 Carver 27' Montego. I was told by the guy I bought it from that under the carpet the floor is the textured fiberglass, so we may just tear up the carpet and leave the floor and use throw rugs. I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice as to how I should go about this.
Is the carpeting glued to the floor? Any special tools?
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jack

Hey Montego,
I did this three years ago on my 1994 Carver 390. It wasn't all that hard, but took a couple weekends.

Use Sentinel Formula 747 Plus Floor Adhesive Remover to remove the glued down carpet. You mix it according to the directions and then really soak the carpet with it. The wetter, think mop, it is the better it will be. Wait 20-30 monutes or more if you want ad it should pull right up. The only exception to that is any engine or access hatches you have. (I'm not familiar with hatches on a Montego.) Hatches will have carpet rolled over the edge and stapled.

With the hatches it may not be the best way, but saved me a ton of time pulling thousands of staples Cut around the top perimeter and pull that part of the carpet off. The adhesive remover should have made it easy to pull that carpet off. I screwed my hatch down to a solid work surface and then ran a belt sander with 60 grit paper over the edge. That peeled off the stapled on carpet and wore off any protruding staples. (I know it sounds crazy, but I think I spent better than an hour on just one hatch pulling staples by hand and figured out an easier way. Pull by hand if you want.)

If you have glue residue left, just use wet it down with the adhesive remover and wipe it off. Once all the carpet and larger glue residue is off I wiped everything down a couple times to get any remaining adhesive remover off. That stuff is really slippery so careful when you walk on it.

Most of my carpet came out pretty well and I cut the new carpet pieces in my driveway, leaving an extra 3" around all perimeter edges just to make sure they'd be big enough. Do the hatches off the boat obviously, but that extra perimeter edge of 3" really helps there as well.

Dry fit all the non-hatch pieces and trim them to size. At this point I also looked at what really needed to be glued down and what would stay in place just due to surrounding furniture, walls, etc. I also mapped out where I'd be gluing down sections and leaving other parts of a carpet section not glued so it could be rolled back for a service hatch or the like.

I used Henry 356 Multi-Purpose Sheet Vinyl and Carpet Adhesive to glue the new carpet in place. Pretty easy to trowel it on, then put the carpet down. For any hatches I glued them down and let them dry for a day or two before I rolled the carpet over the edge and stapled it down with stainless staples.

I don't know if I'd leave a floor bare fiberglass in my boat, but you can gauge that once your carpet is up. Between kids and dogs plenty of sand comes on the boat regularly.

Here's what mine looked like after. It was really nice to get rid of the powder blue carpet that always looked dirty except the first 30 seconds right after you cleaned it.

Just changed all my carpets & vinyl got big blister in my hand from scraping the carpet off the floor & staples around hatches were ummm but it looks great & well worth the effort