At some time my caravan had suffered from floor delamination because when I bought it, the job had already been done with the carpet being replaced at the same time. Unfortunately, the carpet chosen was of fairly poor quality and was beginning to show signs of wear, mainly through repeated cleaning around the sink and fridge areas. After much deliberation, I decided to replace it with vinyl and started to look around at types and colours. I discovered that flooring came not only in various widths but also in 2mm and 4mm thicknesses. The thinner vinyl I thought would eventually show up joints and imperfections in the wood floor so I was looking at 4mm offcuts. But then it was time for me to go off to Spain for the winter so the job was put on the ‘back burner’.

At the beginning of March when I came home I found myself with several hours to spend in Calais whilst waiting for my tunnel crossing so I spent some time browsing in Leroy Merlin’s DIY store. Wandering around I came across their rack of offcuts. Most of them were rejected because of the wrong size, wrong colour, wrong quality and wrong pattern. But one 4mtr wide off-cut got me really excited. The colour appealed and it was the right thickness and quality, but would there be sufficient to do the job? Backwards and forwards I went between the shop and the caravan to take measurements. Finally, I decided, I would have it. Because of its length, it had to go into the caravan through the end bathroom window and travel on the floor

The previous owner’s fitter had removed the original carpet by cutting around the furniture and then fitting the new carpet on the exposed floor. It was only lightly glued around the edges so I carefully removed it and used it as a template to cut the vinyl. Many Avondales have their spare wheel in a well accessed through a lift-up panel in the floor. That was an added complication but I trimmed the edges around the well with 25x25mm angle. Fortunately, because there’s a sliding door to the end bathroom, the laying of the vinyl could be done in two sections. To complete the job, I bought a length of carpet runner to go down the centre of the caravan