Lining out an old Freedom Microlite Caravan, by a complete novice!

After purchasing the caravan, on further inspection I wasnt very happy with the roof lining which was saggy in parts. Not as bad as some you see (Its a very common problem) but none the less it had to go

I couldnt remove the catches and handles from the roof as some were threaded and didnt want to risk breaking anything, so when i removed the original piece i had to cut around them. I used the poptop old piece as a template, which works well. When i laid the old piece on new square i'd cut out, I just cut slits where these holes where.

I used Mega stretch carpet from ebay with high temperature spray adhesive. You spray both the fibreglass and the back of the carpet and leave it a few minutes before

trying to work with it. The mega stretch carpet was great, as once stuck up you could run your hands into the grooves of the roof and it stretched to fit.

When it came to the rest of the caravan main body, at first I tried to do this in one piece. It was a nightmare tbh as there wasnt much room and it kept sticking to itself, so I quickly decided to cut the large piece up and do it in sections. This made the job a lot easier. I did the side above the cooker and up to the roof section to the poptop. Then I tackled the opposite side, and lastly the front and back section. I didnt remove any of the furniture. The reason for this is that I didnt want to mess with any of the electrics and these were wired to the units etc. I cut up to the cupboard at the back, but as the inside of the cupboard was not lined and the the roof has indentations you could see light coming through. When I did the other side, I over hung the carpet by a couple of cms and with a wallpaper stripper tool / chisel, and poked it through the gap between cupboard and ceiling. This worked a lot better tbh. I rectified the other side, by sticking some carpet inside the cupboards and this seems to have done the job ok.

Its definatley worth having a go. I bought a load of Stanley knife blades for cutting but to be honest I found it easier to use some very sharp scissors. You can pull back the carpet easily to cut and re-apply or to remove creases etc. Just be careful as its 4 way stretch carpet, not to pull to hard as it will stretch and can create a baggy area, not the end f the world, just something I learnt as I went along. I struggled butting the pieces straight up to each other perfectly, so in the end I decided to just overlap the sections a little. My lines arent perfectly straight, but theyre ok by me. Im really chuffed I did it, and tbh, the fibre glass once I pulled the old stuff off revealed a few black areas where there were chips, or cracks on the outside that I hadnt noticed. Over time this may have persished and begun to leak, so I fixed these up with some fibreglass putty from the inside to make it strong, and Im going to dab a little caravan sikalfex on the outside areas for belts n braces.