Replacing carpeting with wood flooring

Thanks Kulas,

Great info and story.
Yes, I understand the old growth Teak is much preferred, although I do not work with enough of it to notice much. Seems the new stuff is wider and softer grain, but looks pretty similar to me.

Every ones experiences are different. I found the older stuff to be much redder in color and richer looking. The new stuff is more of a brown-yellow.

I have the exact issue. I am thinking of putting an offer on a Mainship 34. Great looking boat, but I absolutely hate carpet. The Mainship 40 usually has teak & holly, the 34 is carpet in the settee and teak and holly in the galley and pilot house area. I sent away for a sample of some fake teak & holly. It looks like linoleum. I would go with real wood, 1/4" thick or 1/4 thick plywood. Probably the plywood because of the installation. The main thing is where do you put the seams? Each seam has to be framed out in solid teak 1/4" thick wood or you will see the seam. Hatches usually control where the seams go. Good luck and I want pictures!

Cant get the pics up. I can email to someone if they will post them.

We really like the teak parquet flooring that was used in a lot of if not most Grand Banks boats. Boats like ours were made when old growth teak was inexpensive and labor was cheap. Making this kind of cabin sole today would be a very expensive undertaking.

If we were replacing carpet that's over fairly plain wood the strip floor-- teak and holly for example-- would be a simpler and probably less expensive choice.

I suppose one could do an oak floor like a house. It would depend on the other wood, if any, in the interior. The oak color and grain might not go well with other woods like teak.

Manufactured flooring-- artificial teak and holly panels for instance-- never seems to overcome the "fake" look, but it would be better than carpet. If one did not want to spring for a real teak floor I suppose the panel or veneer flooring would be the way to go.

Photo is one of a series I took to show the fellow making our new cushions what the old ones look like installed. It's the only one I have that illustrates Grand Banks' teak parquet.

kulas44 said:

Cant get the pics up. I can email to someone if they will post them.

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Perhaps they are too large. I reduce the size of raw photos to a width of 1000 or 1200 pixels in Photoshop. This gives a decent sized picture thats under the forum's file size limit.

Www.island-teak.com sells a really nice product for anyone looking for old teak for decks. He spends the winter in SE Asia buying old butts of logs and reclaimed teak, and ships it back in containers Spends the spring, summer, and fall sawing, milling and planing it into shapes.

His actual price seems to be variable on how much he likes you (or not).

Spy-- Thank you for that link. We may stop in there on our annual trek to or from Telegraph Cove in a few weeks (trailer boat, not the GB),

chester613 said:

.....It looks like linoleum. I would go with real wood, 1/4" thick or 1/4 thick plywood. .....!

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I bought a 1986 36DC Mainship about 2 years ago. It had carpet which was old and ratty. the salon on the 36 has 8 boards to lift up for engine access. These boards comprise 80 - 90% of the floor space. When I pulled up the boards, the carpeting was glued down to the plywood and it was a terrible job just trying to clean up one of them. Some of the old surface of the plywood stuck to the carpeting. This would not allow for a good glue job to the 1/4" T& H plywood so I decided to remove the boards and throw them away, but I kept the frames. I bought new cabinet grade 3/4" plywood and put them on the frames and glued the 1/4" T & H to them. Then I put a solid strip of Teak around the edges of the 3/4" + the 1/4" plywood. These strips were about 1/4" X 1 1/8". then I trimmed the edges with a hand held router. This edging will prevent the plywood from splitting out at the edges.
I have photos of pretty much the whole project. I will dig them out in the next couple of days.

Marin said:

Spy-- Thank you for that link. We may stop in there on our annual trek to or from Telegraph Cove in a few weeks (trailer boat, not the GB),

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Call ahead, as he has very flexible hours. Don't be in a rush as he is not. Don't run over a peacock (really). Bring cash.

Ask about his teak oil, he squeezes out of his sawdust with a grape press. His theory makes sense, why replace lost teak oil with a different type of oil? I bought some and like it a lot.

Like his RIB kits too.

Interesting guy to chat with. I go once a year.

To cool, never thought of teak squeazins. I've got a big hydraulic press, 20 ton, that would probably mash it hard enough. I've just been burning the stuff, or putting it on the gravel driveway. It does keep the grass and weeds from growing there.

All of the Westcoast 46's were built using Jatoba for the floors. it is also called Brazilian Cherry. It is beautiful, tough and relatively inexpensive. It's used a lot in houses now, so you can find it easily.

We have teak trim and it blends well with the teak. It is one of our favorite features on the boat. It always looks good and requires little maintenance. I was told by the boat builder that the one drawback to using it was it was hard on tools. I highly recommend it, but I didn't have to cut, drill and install it.

Lyle