I hate you carpet replacement process

[Slade House]

God replacing the carpet sucks so much. that is all 

[no39]

I've been there, but it gets worse.

 

[Slade House]

Dude, coffee is banned on my boat cause of my girlfiriend spilling it

 

[Way2slow]

Replacing carpet is as easy or as hard as you won't to make it. 

If you want to follow most of those how to guides that use a carpet glue, of any kind, then yes, it can be very hard and a royal pain.  

If you want to throw all that crap out and use contact cement, pay attention to what you are doing, and with a roll of wax paper, it's no problem.  It's a little work, but it's not difficult to do. 

I've done several boats over the years.  I usually strip the old out and get it ready for the new one day.  Layout, cut and install everything the next day, and if you want to make it a long day, you can do it in one. 

Now, I don't know who's directions you are trying to follow, but I hope they warned you about making sure all pieces are cut on the same bias because if they are not, it's going to make the carpet look two toned, depending on how the light hits it..

[Josh Smith]

Could be worse. You could get stuck replacing the whole floor/deck with not enough time to devote to the project.

Are bananas banned, too? ?

Josh

[Goldstar225]

I replaced the carpet in my 28 year old bass tracker (along with some rotted wood decking) last year.  That was a pain.  Perhaps the worst part was taking the old glue off of the metal surfaces to insure clean contact.  Oh, and don't underestimate how much carpet you need.  I thought that 21' would be plenty for a 17.5 boat.  Not quite, my cut plan didn't work out.  Fortunately the boat shop still had some left from the same roll. Hopefully I'll never have to do that again.

[Logan S]

Did mine last winter...Hardest part is the prep work IMO.  Removing all the compartments, hardware, old carpet, glue, etc...Once I got to actually putting the new carpet on it was easy.  I'd heard horror stories about how it was such a pain, but I laid out a plan and went step by step and it really wasn't that bad.  Labor-intensive, but not very difficult.  

It took 4 full days to do my 20' boat, but I used a methodical approach and didn't try to power though it.  I made the mistake Way2Slow talked about with the carpet grain, thankfully it was both livewell lids so the pattern was at least symmetrical.  After a full season of fishing you can barely tell now.  

[Further North]

When my carpet gets shot, I'm going to vinyl.

If I had wood decks, I'd replace them with King StarBoard AS in a heartbeat.  Expensive and a little bit of a weight penalty...but I'd never have to do it again.

http://www.kingplastic.com/products/king-starboard-as/

There are other similar products out there as well.