Time to catch up....First off, pictures of my *new* van. Well, it's not really new, but...it has an entire new floor. I don't know why auto makers insist on making mini-vans with carpeting on the floor. Who drives mini-vans? That's right...mostly moms who are busy carting around kids. Kids are messy. In MN that means that all winter long, my children drag in ice, snow, mud, dirt, sand (on the streets to control ice), salt (to control ice)...etc. In the summer, they bring in sand from the beaches and spill drinks and food if they eat in the van while we're traveling. And yes, I admit it, I do let my kids have the occasional meal in our van when I'm busy....and every single time I have regretted it!

In the past, I've tried all kinds of remedies, including buying boxes of vinyl tiles and gluing them down over the carpet. The problem? The seams on these tiles are lousy and so they lift up and any spills also still leak through.

When Darrin and Fionnuala were here, Darrin took one look at my sad little floor (this was my 3rd attempt at a vinyl floor and it was...bad) and announced that he could easily fix it. He's a car expert who worked as a VW expert for years... He went out to Menards with dh and they bought a piece of vinyl flooring for $30...some of the special adhesive and some tools and off we went....He removed nuts and bolts and bars and...all kinds of parts to get the back seats out and I just hoped that he really did know how to put it all back together.

It took us 4 hours + to scrape the old carpeting up because it was glued completely to the wooden floor. We got it off, cleaned up the wooden paneled floor and then adhered the new floor in under an hour....then we put it all back together.

Here it is:

Thomas and Darrin working on scraping up the carpet. This was the max of Thomas' contribution. He ended up bring Darrin and I diet cokes while we finished it.



Finally, the carpet is gone:



TaDa:



It is one solid piece...it goes under the back seats and through to the back of the van:



Final Pic: