Vintage travel trailer restoration and linoleum flooring just go together

Here at Marmoleum Clique I love to help folks who have all kinds of flooring needs but the travel trailer restoration and camper market brings out some of the quirkiest and coolest folks I have met. Committed to a slice of nostalgic history they are people who seem to value the simplicity of 50’s and 60’s America at its finest.

Before central air conditioning and cable tv people used to actually go outside and stay outside all summer long. Traveling the country and collecting state stamps which they pasted on their windows, they were folks who spent little and accomplished a lot. We would like to salute this era of the 20th century nomadic summer traveler.

If you need advice or want to find out what will work best for your project, feel free to post a question or email me. In the meantime, hopefully these points of information will help you select the right product that fits your needs and you will be happy with the selection.

1. Is Marmoleum the right product for a travel trailer restoration?Linoleum has been used extensivey in all kinds of demanding environments from hospitals to battleships. That is right the navies of the world used linoleum as battleship flooring very extensively. Bear in mind that both of these application locations have plenty of people to take care of their flooring. The product is resilient which means soft and comfortable underfoot so you have to keep it clean to keep it in good shape.

2. What is the easiest way to keep this flooring clean? A good suggestion is to establish zones just like commercial buildings do to get the shoes clean before they enter the interior spaces. A rough mat outside the door is critical to help knock off coarse soil from your shoes. Ideally for a trailer entrance you might establish two zones outside the trailer with the first one being a material like Forbo Grip and the second being Coral or Duo matting that is used as a walk off area. In a LEED building these zones would be 6 to 10 feet in length in order to abrade bottom of your shoes before you get to zone 1.

3. What if I dont have room for two flooring zones? You might consider committing a small area just inside the door for either a built-in or loose laid mat that can function as your zone 2 matting. This concept of establishing zones is worth the planning and fuss. After all, soil brings in all kinds of nasties and contaminants on our shoes from viruses, spores, tetanus, germs and organisms of all kinds.

4. Is Marmoleum linoleum my only choice for a camper or travel trailer restoration? While we think the original linseed oil based sheet goods or tile flooring is one of the most popular choices, we would love to see more folks in the vintage trailer restoration community find out about Flotex flocked flooring. While Flotex is a “carpet-like” product, it is actually manufactured of tiny standing colored fibers with a density of about 70,000,000 fibers in a square yard. Able to be scrubbed and sanitized this product will really hold up very well and while a little pricey, it comes in squares and sheet and it doesn’t seem like you can wear it out.

I also found some great links about the trailer restoration community for those intrepids out there who are thinking about restoring and preserving this little slice of Americana … LittleVIntageTrailer.com

Marmo