Thanks everyone for the helpful advice- we received the estimate from the first carpet place, $1200.00 labor (that's not including materials) to do the entire boat including some sort of laminate or vinyl in both heads and galley. It wasn't as bad as I expected, and we will next look into materials such as the one previously mentioned-- the 3GT. And probably do some comparison shopping as well.

With regard to the hatch issue -- I think we are leaning toward carpeting over the salon ER hatches and rolling it back as needed, because we 90% of the time we enter the ER through the galley door. Mainly the reason we need to lift those hatches is to add coolant to the mains when we change it out.

Thanks again and send along any additional thoughts and experiences this is super helpful.