Before carpeting your boat,read this(if doing yourself)

[burnsy42hydra]

Make your carpet job less stressful by creating a template first of the area you need to do.A GREAT template material is the weed block you buy off the roll at home depot.They have a couple different kinds.Its the one that is felt-like.The others are more 'plastic-y'.It is 6 ft wide which is great.It only looks 3 ft wide on the roll but its folded.The material is heavy enuf to lay still so you can get your reads/lines,etc...,but is light enuf that it is very easily cut-able with sharp scissors.You can also draw any lines needed on it with a marker or Sharpie and they will be visible to follow to make your cuts,if needed.-Cant say nuf about it.--And,its only $1.27 ft (by 6ft wide)(whole boat $15.00). --Instead of stressin out with wet glue down on the floor as you figure out you need more tweaks to your carpet piece-get the piece of mind from knowin you have a perfectly cut piece ready to go.--To get my template perfect(for floor)I did it in 3 stages.First i cut a piece that i knew was big enuf to cover the area,by laying it into the area,steppin it down a little,fixin it with hands,etc...After i had THAT piece,I laid it into place again,and trimmed it even closer to what would be the final shape-ALL the way around-leaving maybe an inch outside of what will be your final lines---When you get your template piece down to this size,it is now easy to work with and you can hold down material with one hand while moving along with your Sharpie in the other hand,tracing the area/lines you need by following the form of the boat thru the material.When done simply cut out with sharp scissors.You DO have to be careful to keep template in place while tracing if youre in the boat on the floor with it.The reason I do in stages is that you want to make sure you dont cut it too small,so you start big--but its cumbersome to try to cut a big enuf piece ONE time,so a gradual thing seems to work really well.When you get those piece(s) cut out,and theyre perfect,and you know now that your carpet piece will be a breeze,and you dont have to fret over drying glue-it will be worth it.

[foxman623]

Great Idea burnsy. Thanx for sharing.

[SlumpGumpy]

my boat is an 18'6" how long of roll of carpet should I buy?
looks like it's about 6'1" at the widest spot back behind the seats.

[burnsy42hydra]

Do you mean CARPET(as you SAY),OR ,TEMPLATE?? A template is most effective for doing the main floor and front deck.If you want to use the floor piece afterwards to do lid templates you CAN but you can pretty much eyeball pieces for the lids,and its a little bit different type thing doing the lids anyway.Buy at least enuf template to cover length of floor and deck combined.If your width is 6'1'' in a small area I'd use the 6ft wide material anyway and get creative and try to figure out that final little bit when you lay the cut template on top of the carpet to trace and do final carpet cut out.When youre doin this special area be sure to error on the side of having the final carpet piece being too BIG in that area,to start.You can always take some OFF, but once its gone you cant get it back.Keep that in mind actually,while doing the whole job.----As for how much CARPET to buy-pretty much the same thing as template unless youre doin the lids.For lids and compartments,if your lid is 12in x 16 in , cut your carpet to say 18 x 22 inches(3 extra inches on all sides before fold up and glue).If you dont have lips on your lids you dont need as much excess carpet and can go to like 16 x 20(2 extra inches on all sides before fold up and glue)for that size.Keep things to around those proportions and youll be fine.A template can come in handy for the first one or two lids.After that you get the hang of it and it gets pretty easy to figure it out.

[burnsy42hydra]

Your CARPET will have to be bought at at least 7 ft if youve got 6ft 1 in to cover.On most rolls i think its 12 ft going the other way,so you would buy a 7 x 12 piece-or-you could go wider if you need much more...