Before & After – Covering Marriage Line in Double Wide
The marriage line in your double wide is likely one of your least favorite features of your mobile home. But with a little decorative innovation, you can find a way to make this area of your home a more appealing feature.
We’re still working on our mobile home remodel, but we’ve made a lot of progress. We’re just chipping away at it, bit by bit, as budget allows.
In this post, I’m going to be sharing how we personally covered the marriage lines in our used double wide mobile home, along with a lot of before and after photos of the process.
But first, if you haven’t yet, you can check out these posts that detail more of the renovation process of the 20-year-old double wide we purchased. It was dated and had storm damage, but over time, we’ve brought it back to life. This will allow you to see several of the before and after pictures of the mobile home renovation process.
- Why We Bought a Used Mobile Home with Before Pictures
- Mobile Home Updates Part One
- Full Kitchen Remodel in Our Double Wide Home
Let’s get started!
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What is a Marriage Line
Real quick, let’s talk about the purpose of marriage line in a double wide just to make sure we’re on the same page. As you likely know, a double wide is made up of two sections that are joined together. Each half of the home sits on separate framing.
When the two halves are joined together, the line that goes down the center is called the “marriage line”. Depending on the year, make and model of the mobile home, this line is covered in different ways. The line is on the floor and the ceiling and runs the entire length of the home. Depending on the layout of your home, some of this joining line may be covered by walls.
In open spaces, you’ll typically see the line covered with a small semi flush cap, a faux beam, or sheetrock. Again, this is dependent on the specific home design, as some finishes are of a higher quality.
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How We Covered the Marriage Line in Our Double Wide
When we purchased our used mobile home, I knew that I was going to want to come up with a way to cover the marriage line. Since we had to move the mobile home to our land, the two halves had to be separated, which meant the sheetrock and the floor covering was cut.
This didn’t really matter to me, because we had plans to renovate the entire house anyways. But it did matter to me how we were going to repair the marriage line. We could have just had the sheetrock repaired and added a seam cover on the flooring. But I really wanted to do something that was going to add more character to the space.
Marriage Line on the Floor
We opted to completely replace the flooring in our double wide. The marriage line in our home runs though the living areas, through some door frames, and our master bedroom.
For the living areas, we put down luxury vinyl plank flooring. A lot of times, mobile homes have a little cap that goes over the marriage line on the floor. We opted to lay the flooring as one cohesive piece, without the cap. This means that if the home is every moved again (which we have no plans of), the flooring would be cut. However, it was really important to me not to have the cap piece on the floor.
Prepping the Floor
When it came time to prep the floors, we opted to lay all new subflooring. Before doing this, we had to remove all of the staples and scrape up glue that was left over from the carpet that had previously been in these rooms. We also filled in any gaps in the flooring with spray foam. Other than that, we just ensure that we were following the installation instructions for our particular flooring product.
The subflooring went over the marriage line over the floor, and then the vinyl plank flooring was installed over that. Here is what it looks like afterwards. Our new flooring has been installed for almost two years now, and I absolutely love it. It gives the house a “homey” feel.
Marriage Line on the Ceiling
Now for the marriage line on the ceiling. This was an area that I really wanted to turn into a nice feature in our home. Afterall, it extends across the entire main living room area for 21 feet, so it’s pretty noticeable.
Initially the marriage lines were just covered with sheetrock. Like I mentioned earlier though, the sheetrock had to be cut in order to move the home, so something had to be done regardless. We removed all of the old sheetrock down to the framing and pulled the staples out of the doorway. This just ensured a smooth work surface and removed the extra added weight of the sheetrock.
We also filled in any gaps or holes with spray foam to seal the area off.
The Details on the Faux Beam
For the main living room and our master bedroom, we had faux wood beams built. These beams are made of 9 inch wide, inch thick pine boards, built into a cover. The “beam” was then placed over the marriage line and screwed into place. As you can see from the photos, we also enclosed the pieces that run down the walls.
Marriage Line in Entryways
We also used pine boards to frame out the doorways where the marriage line runs through. This created an encased doorway, which gives the home a higher quality feel. We opted to stain the beams to add warmth to the space.
After looking at many of the new mobile homes on the market, I can say that having this real wood doorway encasings adds a level of character that isn’t common in a lot of mobile homes.
Overall, I am so happy that we chose to go with faux beams and wood framed openings in our mobile home. I love the texture and warmth that it adds to the space.
Thing to Consider
When it comes to choosing a way to cover the seams in your mobile home, you need to consider a few things.
Sealing Your Marriage Line
First, you need to make sure that your marriage line is properly sealed. Since this is an area where the two halves of your home are meeting, it is susceptible to moisture. This should be taken care of when the home is bolted together, but it’s always best to double check. Here is an article that talks about marriage lines in more technical terms.
Do You Need to Move
Next, are you planning to move this mobile home again? If so, you may need to consider options that can be easily removed before moving. For example, putting down floating luxury vinyl plank flooring without a seam isn’t really practical if you want to move the home in the future.
Size Considerations
Last, how big is the marriage line space you’re covering? As I mentioned, our marriage line in the main living room is quite large. This meant that we actually had to have our boards custom cut, and we had to have a long trailer to haul the boards back home. Things like this can affect design, availability and cost.
We also had to make sure that our flooring selection allowed for us to run pieces for the entire length of living areas without putting in a transition piece. Those details can be found in the installation instructions for each flooring product.
