RV plywood cleaning stains and repair

newownerneedadvice wrote:
First time owning a 1996 Coachman 300 QB RV. Long story short trying to save money I asked someone to help me with the floor inside the RV. What happened was they ripped half the carpet up and and The linoleum and left a bare plywood base. Since then there has been milk spilled soda spills and any other kind of liquid spills. I’m asking for any advice on how to clean the plywood without making it warp so that I can either seal it and put new carpet on I’m just at a loss right now any advice would be helpful there is water damage in one corner by the driver area no where else That I can see but what should I use to clean the plywood and not further damage. Thanks in advance. Not super crafty but if someone gives me directions I’m sure I can figure it out.

Reality is once the wood fibers absorb the liquid, it is in the fibers forever so you really can't fully remove the spills, there will always be leftover spills that have soaked in.

What you want to do is remove any sticky residue on the top of the wood, lightly scrub top with a cloth soaked with soapy water (dish detergent like Dawn should work well enough) to get rid of anything sticky.

Allow to dry, then sand the floor to even out the grain of the wood (water and liquids will "open" the wood grain).

Vacuum off the leftover dust.

Then prime the wood with a good primer (may need several coats), Kilz is a very effective stain blocking primer.

Then paint the wood.

Then put down your new flooring.

Priming and painting the wood will seal and lock in any and all leftover residues and odors that were soaked into the wood (this also can be effective for stubborn pet mess stains) and help to resist absorbsion of any additional spills.

On edit, if you encounter rotted (soft) wood from continual water soak damage you will need to cut out, remove and replace the affected area (sounds like you may need some local help for that). Nothing can be done with wood that has rotted and you will need to remove all rotted wood if you encounter it. This requires some skill and adaptation that you might not have.