THE RV PROJECT

I am in need of a project.  Though I enjoy my job, I needed to set the computer down and focus on something else.  What better way than to throw myself into a new project.

My family & I love to camp.  Having owned a pop up camper for 8 years, we decided to upgrade for several reasons.  My husband doesn’t have as many opportunities to camp anymore and we were finding ourselves limited to his schedule.  I wasn’t comfortable driving the pop up and setting it up was getting increasingly tiring.

In the early spring of 2011, we sold the pop up camper.  It was bitter sweet because from that point it was a waiting game until we could even find a class c motorhome we could afford.  We knew it would have to be older to be in our price range.  We looked and discovered several rvs that just weren’t what we wanted. I was losing hope.  Then we found it: A 1992 Four Winds Class C Motorhome. Yes a  1992.  It was older than what we wanted, but it was in good condition (especially on the outside) and it was close enough to our price range that we could make it work.

Front view of 1992 Fourwinds class c.

Driver side view of 1992 Fourwinds Class C motorhome.

Passenger side view of 1992 Four winds class c.

Now it is time for the project part of this adventure.  The carpet was old and carried a bit of an oder with it and worst of all it was pink, as were the dinnette cushions, bedding cushions and the chairs.  No one in my family is a fan of pink.  The wall paper, wall contact paper, was dirty and worn. So began the project of 2011.  In my online research of how to remodel a motorhome, I found some information and a few picture, but they were mostly for class a motorhomes.  I have decided to post our photos and progress so that maybe I can be a help for others and maybe others can share their expertise with us.

We keep reminding ourselves that this is a “camper” not a home. Though if my husband ever loses his job it may become our home since housing is included in his job as a youth pastor. We want to have fun with this, but do a decent job in fixing it up as well.

April 8th, 2011 – We picked up the motorhome and drove it an hour and a half home with no incidents.  It ran well, better than we were expecting for for a 1992.  So now we will take it home and see what we got ourselves into.

Roof looks good.

Still checking the window seals and a look at the awning reveals a few small holes.

When we bought it there were no soft spots in the walls, but we could see some water damage from the past.  So we knew there were some repairs.  We are hoping they aren’t anything we can’t handle.

April 15th – 18th, 2011 It has rained for days from all directions, but everything appears dry.  We took a good look at the bathroom where water damage had warped a wall cabinet.  We pulled the cabinet out and waited.  It seemed to have rained from every direction.  It was still dry.  It appears to have been a leak around the vent stack, but it is sealed and dry.  We guess the previous owners fixed the leak but not the damage.

Bathroom needs a little repair from previous vent leak.

Bathroom

My husband was so grossed out by the window covering that he removed and threw them out before I could even get a photo of them.  He did keep the wooden valances that we hope to recover.

Back bedroom after removal of window valances and blinds.

Pink, Pink everywhere!

The pink and the musty smell was getting to us so we decided to remove the cushions, chairs and carpet. We discovered that the foam cushions on the above cab and the dinette coverings were removable.  We took them off and washed them in our washing machine. Still mauve/pink, but look much better and smell better too. We ended up cutting the bolts on the chairs to remove them.  They were very rusted.

Removing the wallpaper has been challenging.  It is more of a contact paper than a wallpaper. I read a few blog posts and discovered it is much easier to remove by heating up the paper with a hair dryer, it peels off.  It still requires a bit of muscle and patience.  In two areas, the luan is coming off with the paper.  We expected this in one location where there was some previous water damage, but the other surprised us in the above cab area.  Looks like we are not immune to the leaky above cabs of the class C motor home.  We thought we checked it so well before we bought it, but it appears worse than we thought, but we can’t say we are completely taken by surprise.  After all it is a 20 year old RV. (The remnants seen in the photo are from the wall paper border.)

The beginning of the removal of the wall paper.

A view of the dinnette with cushions removed for cleaning.

We had the family work for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.  We were able to get all the wall paper down except one wall in the bedroom and in the over cab area.  We were also able to pull all the staples out of the floor.  The floor is in really nice shape except the last step to the outside.  We plan on replacing the wood in that spot.

Chairs removed for cleaning allowing for the carpet to be completely removed.

Carpet has been taken out.

We cleaned the chairs with an upholstery cleaner.  Sorry, I can’t remember which one.  But you spray it on, scrub it and then vaccuum.  What a difference!

We are hoping to remove the rest of the wall paper this week, check for leaks and replace some luan in the damaged areas.  We would love to prime the walls by Easter, but that is probably wishful thinking.

We have ordered the new floor.  We are going with flexitec.  We have it in the bathroom at home and love it.  To see more about it go to:

http://flexitecvinyl.com/home/aboutflexitec.php

The questions still looming:

Paint vs Wallpaper

Blinds vs Curtains

Window treatments have been discouragingly expensive.  I’m still looking at options.

What other mysteries are still hidden (an how expensive will they be?)

April 22nd

We finally had a few days off so that we could dig in and really get a good look at the RV.

Removing luan and insulation where there was water damage

Took out rotted wood and removed stuff down to fiberglass.

We began checking things out in the over cab,

The over cab section appeared dry, but there was warping on the side wall.We took the staples out of the vinyl and pulled it down.  Then we took the plywood and the 1 inch foam sheeting.

We took off the wood and removed the foam sheeting underneath.

There was a lot of wetness under the foam sheeting and wood sheet.

We were very surprised with how wet the area was.  We were very glad that we decided to check this area out for ourself.  Now it was time to see how long it would take to dry out.

We took the overcab section down to the fiberglass and steel frame.

While waiting for the sun to come out and dry things out, we filled holes and uneven areas left from removing the wall paper on the luan.

Filling holes in the luan with wood filler.

After the wood filler dried, we took some sandpaper over it.

April 23rd

After countless days of rain, we finally had some dry weather and were able to remove old caulk and recaulk the seams around the roof, the windows and the rv.  In the bathroom, we filled the vent hole with great foam and then sealed it.

April 25th, 2011

Guess what? More rain…  Over 5 inches this month already.  The good thing is that it showed us if there were still leaks.  There were 2 very small areas that we still a little wet. After we took a closer look, we could see exactly where we need to seal one small area in the over cab section and under the window.  The majority of the overcab was dry and the bathroom was perfectly dry.

So now we wait for another dry day.

April 26th, 2010

We decided to finish the bed in the over cab section today.  It was dry.  My husband had replaced a board in the front of the cab and one on the passenger side.  We place 1 inch foam with in the metal skeleton frame.  Then we placed 9/32 plywood on top.  He cut the piece 3 pieces a few days earlier by placing the plywood on the frame of the bed, tracing the cut out section with a pencil and cutting it out with a jig saw.  He also cut 2 additional pieces 26 x 8 1/2 to complete the bed. We screwed the plywood in place in 5 places to help keep it in place and to help pull the bow in the board out.  We then replaced the foam, pulled and stapled the vinyl in place around the edge.  We are really pleased with how it turned out.  We also made it fairly easy to replace if it gets wet again.

Replaced the over cab base.

Sealed and used great foam on leaking corner in the over cab section.

We have one repair left on the passenger side wall.  The rotted wood was removed from around a section of the window and replaced.  We still need to do some additional sealing under the window as we noticed a little dampness in the last bit of rain.  We also want to take a closer look at the awning since the leak is below where it is attached to the exterior side wall.  We think we may seal the top of the L bracket.

Though it isn’t leaking, we are also planning on widening the sealing caulk on the exterior sides of the over cab so that it has a bit move coverage and flexibility.  Since we plan on having the caulk out we thought we would go around the front top lights as well.  In a class C motorhome, can you ever caulk and seal too much?

May 11th

Time and weather finally has agreed with us on this project..  So much so that I found it hard to find the extra time to blog about it as it was happening.

After sealing every crack and crevice, we did our best to repair the water damaged walls.  We replaced the major damage behind the passenger seat with new luan.  We filled the cracks with wood filler.  In the over cab area, my husband decided not to replace the luan, so we did our best with wood filler.

Replaced luan behind passenger seat.

The it was time to prime and paint.  My husband hates wallpaper so we used Sherwin Williams Duration for the project.  I wasn’t certain if I was going to like it, but it turned out ok.  I have a perfectionist’s eye.  All in all we primed once and did 2 coats of color.  We didn’t even go through a gallon of each.

Once the paint was done it was time for the floor.  We had purchased flex flooring.  We have used this before in the house and loved it.  It is similar to linolium but has more thickness and is really easy to work with.  First we created a template of the floor by cutting and taping butcher paper on the floor of the RV wall to wall – cutting out each nook and cranny.  Then we removed the paper (we did it in 2 parts) and placed it directly on the flooring.  It was windy so we taped the paper to the flex flooring in areas so that it was easy to cut.  My husband cut around and beyond the template by about a 1/2 inch with his razor blade. Then we carried the flooring in the Rv, placed in on the floor and wiggled it place a bit before trimming the flooring around the base with a razor blade.  It looks awesome.  Flex flooring is a great light weight product with a great look.  Best part is it is easily removable.  We have some in our basement.  When our basement flooded last summer, I was able to roll it up and take it outside to dry. Not that we expect our Rv to flood, but thought it would be a great flexible choice for flooring.  Sorry there are no pictures, but doesn’t it figure that my batteries in my camera died when we get to the most interesting part of the remodel.

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We pulled up the carpet and replaced it with flex flooring. We choose a a darker random print to hide the dirt a bit. After all we are camping.

Sorry for the delay in posting the finished photos.  Well, Not exactly finished.  The floor and the curtains were the final project before our first outing in June 2011.  We went a short distance from home and were amazed that we were all set up ready to camp in 5 minutes – literally.  The family just stood around looking at one another knowing we missed something, but we didn’t.  It was just that simple.

In August, we thought we would venture a bit farther to Kings Island about a 4 hour drive. Three hours in the Rv filled with smoke.  Long story short.  We ended up renting a car for a week while the transmission was replaced about $4,000, if I remember correctly.  Needless to say our one vacation for the summer was a bust.  When we got it back it ran fine though we were nervous.  Again we took it on a short trip to the county fair where my daughter participates in 4-H for a week.  It was wonderful to cool off in during the 90 degree temperatures, nice to get out of the rain and cost effective not to have to buy fair food all week.

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Our next round of renovations came in the spring of 2012.

The RV held up well over the winter covered with a tarp in our drive way.  My husband put the front end on block though I don’t know if it was neccessary.  But we had noticed some leaking from the driver side over cab window in the fall and never had a chance to seal it before winter with all the rain we had.

We purchased a new radio from Best Buy to replace the cassette player.  The wiring was interesting, we figured it had been replaced once before.  We were able to hook in all the speakers except the passenger door – we think the actual speaker maybe broken.  It is good enough for now.

We removed the old cassette player and replaced it with a cd player with a auxiliary jack for our ipods.

We purchased new driver and passenger seats from a surplus camping store, along with new bench cushions and a jackknife couch. The cushions and the couch don’t match, but we were given a deal we couldn’t refuse and … it’s camping … in a 20 year old camper. After visiting an RV show in January, we loved the cut out sections of the seating to allow for more room for the driver and passenger seats.  So we made a modification to our bench seat allowing a little more room for my husbands long legs.  We cut and place a board in the back of the bench cushion that sits in that space for added support.

We replaced the pink driver and passenger chairs and cut out for more leg room.

The biggest project was removing the captains chairs and small table and replacing it with the the jack knife couch.  There is a lot of debate about which is better.  We liked the idea of the chairs, but they were worn and PINK!  The table was almost to small to be useful.  The biggest factor is that my son is 6’2″ at 15 years old and needed the extra space to sleep.

Pink, Pink everywhere!

Replacing the chairs and the table with a jack knife couch. First step is building the frame.

We removed the chairs and table and caulked the holes.  We built an open frame box to bolt the couch too, but added a top for the section behind the couch.  We bolted the frame to the floor and the couch to the frame, making sure to leave enough room to open and close the couch.

Finishing the frame, before adding the couch.

The frame and the jack knife couch after bolting everything together.

We purchased 3 seat belts 96 inches, I believe.  The first set we bought were too small.  We bolted those to the frame of the RV.  In purchasing the couch we received the matching kick plate also. We attached that to the front of the box using long hinges on the bottom and clips on the top.  We know use that to store all the linens, pillows and windshield cover.

We replaced the pink driver and passenger chairs and cut out for more leg room.