03/17/2017
Because I like to tinker with stuff, I am a big fan of customizing my boat to make it my own. In the last two months, I learned that DECKadence flooring offers the ability to pick custom colors, and add your own custom flooring logo to a new or existing boat.
I am thrilled with our new custom DECKadence, so I thought I would share the details of my project here. In purchasing a 2016 Malibu, we spent quite a bit of time looking at flooring options. Malibu offers their standard snap-out carpet or logo carpet. They also offer DECKadence, Super Fusion and Soft Grip flooring. The soft grip is the “faux teak” stuff. The Superfusion is a woven mat with rubber backing. The DECKadence is a soft woven PVC product designed to allow water to flow through easily. Most of these are available in gray, although a few are also available in tan.
We came from a 2009 boat that had permanent carpeting, and while I prefer the wall-to-wall finished look, it was hard to maintain and keep dry. The DECKadence really got my interest because A) It offers the wall-to-wall finished look I like; B) It comes in custom colors from the manufacturer; C) You can make it snap in or not; D) Water, Sand Debris runs right through it; E) It is almost impossible to stain (I submerged a piece in our chocolate clay colored south-Georgia lake for two weeks before ordering); F) Most importantly to me, you can put whatever custom logos/borders/designs etc. that you want to on it relatively easily.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the project in pictures: Step 1) Order DECKadence. About $800 for a 23 lsv size piece 6’x11’. Choose a color. Our new boat is primarily metallic purple. We ordered White DECKadence with the intention of adding a purple logo. Step 2) Create a template, then cut DECKadence to size with a utility knife. Probably took 3 hours to make and then finalize the template. Cutting the DECKadence to size only took about an hour, but it was nerve-wracking.
There is a great video on their website which shows you how to make the template, and how to cut the material. If anyone is looking to do this for a 2016 23lsv, I can send you the template and save you some time. Here is a link to the template video http://performanceunderfoot.com/how-to-template-final/ Here is the 6’ x 11’ white DECKadence we ordered, with the template laid on it getting ready to cut to size Step 3) Fun part design a logo! There are tons of logos and tons of artwork available online. My wife is an artist, so we did our own.
You will need to get the artwork into a vector file (most images you can covert online) in order to allow a sign shop to print the stencil. We decided to do a small logo in the walkway, and a bigger one in the back living room area of the boat. Step 4) Take your design to a sign shop and have a stencil of the logo and/or border printed on Oracal adhesive backed vinyl. Depending upon how “final” your artwork is, this could cost 15 to $50. Step 5) Apply the stencil, and paint with Vinyl paint (we used SEM Vinyl Coat Marine Paint). Again, takes probably only an hour or so to do, depending on complexity of the artwork, but still somewhat nerve wracking.
If I hadn’t watched the do it yourself video here, I would not have been brave enough to do this: http://marineflooring.net/how-to-apply-stencil-and-borders/ Here are my painted stencils: Final Results: We wanted to get more purple into a 23LSV with a metallic purple exterior. We also wanted the interior to be brighter than the gray offered by Malibu. Finally, we wanted to make the boat our own, and celebrate our love of dogs. Here are the results. In boat ready for action! We loved the ability to customize the boat and add custom colors. Spoke several times with Joel (the owner) and he could not have been more helpful. Highly recommend their product and their customer service if you decide to go with DECKadence.
Happy Boating, Rob
