Carver 3607 - Carpet

First of all....welcome to the forum from another relatively new boater....we purchased our 3807 (almost the same boat as yours....just a little bigger) back in November 2013 and are enjoying our first season after spending all winter refurbishing the boat mechanically and cosmetically. Thus I may be able to answer some of your questions, which I'll insert in red into your post quoted below.

We bound the edges on the exterior edges of every piece, but not, of course, where the interior edges butt up against each other. By doing it that way, (the plushier the carpet the better, you can make it so you hardly see, if at all, where the interior edges meet each other. We did NOT staple anything down anywhere. No need. The edges are tight up against the walls and the carpet doesn't move at all. But then, we also have a small area rug rolled out on top of the salon carpet in front of the sofa and a little coffee table on top of that. And the original barrel chair on the port side facing the sofa.


Speaking of the boat's furniture, which you didn't mention but you may need:

We discovered after buying the boat you can't get furniture of any "normal" size into the salon through the narrow entrance doors. And the old furniture couldn't be removed without taking off the upholstery and disassembling it. No way could we recover this stuff ourselves! So we hired a professional. She came in and stripped off all the original fabric, which was all worn and faded, and the foam, which was crumbling from age and very thin, and installed all new marine "pleather" in a very nautical looking blue and white theme, over much denser and thicker than new foam. The furniture is, for all intents and purposes, brand new except for the metal/wood frame its built on and the whole job with labor for the sofa and chair cost about 2K, which, I think, is a lot less than buying new Flexsteel boat furniture (which is what this is) would cost to replace what we had. You may want to do the same thing if you need furniture. (We saw no other option once we threw out my 16 year old son's idea of bean bags! )


Back to the carpet....I failed to address your question about how the carpet is held down other than the salon.

In the staterooms, and the dinette area where there is fiberglass instead of wood below (except for the few access hatches), the carpet was glued down, but because of age the glue gave way instantly and the carpet came up with a gentle tug. Again, we did NOT glue down the new carpet, totally unnecessary and by not gluing it you can easily lift it to get to the couple access panels in the staterooms.

In the dinette area, where I never liked carpeting anyway (who wants to spill food or drinks onto carpet? (Apparently the original owner of MY boat from the look of the carpet we removed! LOL!)

We installed hardwood floor look-a-like vinyl in that whole area from the galley to the companionway past the dinette and under the dinette table. THAT job wasn't so easy but then I had never done it before, so cutting it and working with the adhesive and all that was a lot harder for me than someone with actual skills! LOL! (In truth I had a buddy help me who did have a lot more skill than me and helped make it happen or I'd STILL be working on it!)

Anyway, THAT part of the job required making a lot of cuts and making each panel able to be covered with the new look but still be able to be lifted separately. A LOT more work but IMHO really worth the effort.

I am also a new owner of these larger boats and still learning. But I do know a couple of things about floors. In my 450 Voyager the carpet is going just as soon as I finish up some other more pressing updates. They way we use the boat, with kids, wet dogs, fishing gear, scuba gear, even the best of carpet will be thrashed in no time. As mentioned above, the Luxury vinyl planks that look like wood give a beautiful finish and are very durable and can take lots of water. They are easy to cut and install, and if you mis-cut a board, you haven't ruined the entire piece of material. Area rugs can be placed all over to soften the walk and decorate as you see fit, but are cheap and easy to replace if something happens. Again I am learning about Carver and it sounds like you have access hatches in the salon. You can buy decorative trims for these hatches, just like in older homes with crawl space access in bedrooms, that are easy to install and get you away from using ugly metal transitions. Check with some local flooring stores. You can get some good ideas there that are not crazy expensive.

Jerry Nicholas
Glendora Floor Store (sorry, not a plug, just my background)

Others have answered your question about how to get the carpet up.
What we are going to do when it comes time to replace the carpet (if not sooner) is replace the salon carpet with one of the new wood grain look lenolium floor coverings. It sounds overly tacky and we wouldn't even consider it had we not seen it done in a different boat and been VERY impressed with the look and the ease of maintaining it. We seriously thought for over a year that they guy had spent a fortune putting a finished wood floor in his boat.
The way we use our 3607, the salon is high traffic and we simply can't keep the carpet clean.

Linoleum

RJCress,
Do u have more info on brand,manufacturer,etc?
I, too, am looking to replace carpet with either wood, laminate or?..
Thanks,
Gene

Sorry, Gene. I don't have any info.
It was a neighbor at the marina, but both of us have left that marina and I don't have contact info to ask.
However, from what I recall, it wasn't any sort of super special, marine-grade product, laced with unobtanium and gold-dust. Just standard floor covering from the local home improvement store.

My wife has done this on our last two boats. She takes large sheets of paper, tapes it together and makes a template. A trip to home depot for a $50 remnant, she cuts the carpet to the template (just remember,it's upside down) and installs it over the existing. Looks great and is removeable for cleaning.

Word of warning, she's really **** and has a great attention to detail......I couldn't do it but for 50 bucks and about 2 hours of labor, it's pretty cool.

Consider this

You may want to re-think the linoleum or laminent flooring. Consider the carpet as a sound deading agent while running or while anchored out running the generator.

You may be right. The testing data does show carpet and pad, even cheap c&p to be a very efficient insulator of sound. The testing I saw was for sound transmission from the room down , not for sound in say an engine room coming up but it makes sense that it would work just as well. So maybe the answer is a thin subfloor of cork. It is light weight and affordable. Doesn't add a significant height issue and is required by many condo associations before hard surface flooring can be installed. I would hate to install vinyl only to raise the noise level. Engine room does seem to have good insulation below. More checking is in order. Thanks for bringing it up.

Boat furniture

Lazy boy furniture has sofas chairs etc that break apart to go into boats. We have a lazy boy recliner and pull out sofa that the back comes off of to allow it to go into the salon or remove it.

This is what I found, and love the quality and style!

Avenue Six Wall Street Arm Chair | eBay