Re-carpeting the doghouse

Not the actual dogs doghouse. The fiberglass cowling that goes over the engine in between the front seats.

"Sure, I see how it is."

The old carpeting was thoroughly glued down, but fortunately the glue had degraded over the years and peeling it off was pretty easy.

Just a bit of wire brush work and a wipe down to get a nice clean fiberglass surface ready for re-carpeting. Since the old blue carpet peeled off in one large piece it made a perfect template for cutting the new carpet, which saved a lot of time measuring, cutting and going to Lowes for more carpet when I get it wrong. I very nearly tossed it in the bin since it was pretty nasty, but my natural inclination is to save everything because you never know when it might come in handy (Thanks, Dad, for that!) With the template it was super easy - so if you ever do this never, ever throw anything away until you are completely done and absolutely certain it will not have a purpose. That will be brilliantly illustrated when I get to what happened to the old bathroom cabinet we took out in a later blog post!

So with a bit of fitting and cutting darts and gussets - this is very much like sewing a fitted bodice! - I got a perfect fit on the form and ready to start gluing it down. I picked up a can of Elmers Flooring Glue and just to be safe; a roll of double-sided heavy duty carpet tape. I decided to do this in the RV rather than lug the heavy fiberglass up three flights of stairs to the apartment. So it is sitting on the dinette table.

Never having done this before I figure a complete coating of glue is the way to go so I just grab a putty knife and start slathering it on, very much like frosting a cake, and once I have a layer of glue over the entire area I just lay my pre-cut carpet over it and start fitting and forming it down on the gluey fiberglass. I wasn't sure how to hold it in place until it occurred to me that giant bulldog clips would work brilliantly! Luckily I have lots and lots of these - they are dirt cheap and I use them to clip potato chip bags, bags of frozen veggies, piles of mail, hold things on hangers; if something needs holding I am a firm believer a bulldog clip will do it. In this instance they were the absolute perfect tool for the job.

After clamping and gluing I needed to weigh down the top to get a nice firm and flat adhesion up there. The box the interior paint came in worked quite nicely for this!

That is Rustoleums "Cabinet Transformations" kit, which is perfect for painting RV interiors!

Now that the doghouse is all carpeted and ready to go back in place all I need to do is get the man tinkering with the Chevy 454 out of my way and re-install it:

 The finished product back in place and looking great with the newly re-carpeted cab area:

 Now all it needs is a really cool center console to hold drinks and maps and stuff.....hmmm, where did that bathroom cabinet get to?.......

The Kitchen Window

For some reason I decided to tackle the kitchen window curtains. Never mind that this is way out of the logical sequence of interior projects - I never let logic stop me before.

Definitely in need of help

 My first thought was that I wanted some sort of coffee theme. I love coffee. Coffee-type colors are all through this project - rich browns, creams and golds. Yeah, a coffee theme tiny kitchen sounds about right.

Nice coffee theme fabric

 So I headed off to JoAnns with a vague idea of looking for coffee-print fabric.
I know I have seen this before, and I figured I could find something compatible.
I spent over an hour wandering the fabric stacks.

Nice and bright, but not what I had in mind

Nothing. Absolutely no coffee-print anything that is quite right for the look I want to achieve. I almost bought a really cool "atomic starburst" pattern in blues & pinks on a brown background but decided that, in spite of the fact it contained all my target colors (Well, OK, not the pink) it really did not go with what I had in mind.

This is actually a dish towel, but it could be curtains....nah

So my next stop was the Goodwill Store. Old curtains are easy to modify and surely they would have something. They didn't. I found nothing worthwhile here....except this:

Black metal coffee sculpture. Too cool.

Wow. Black metal coffee sculpture! I love it. 49 cents later it is in the truck with me on our way back to JoAnns for paint (you didn't seriously think I would not embellish it did you?) Found the perfect DecoArt metallic paint in "Rich Espresso" and I figure I will paint just the lettering and the mesh parts and leave the rest black. It will look amazing behind the stove over the glass tile.

Detail after painting

OK, got that diversion out of the way, on to find those coffee curtains.

After trying a few more fabric shops and second hand stores with no luck I decided to at least look at the ready-made curtains. This goes against my nature. This is too easy. There is no sport in just going and buying something. I would much rather make it or find it at a thrift shop and fix it to be the way I want it.

Sort of explains the whole reason for remodeling a vintage Winnebago.......

Anyway, I spent the next hour wandering through Walmart. They did in fact have cute coffee-theme curtains. A bit too cute for my taste. That and I really hate the idea of having cheap Made-in-China curtains in my mini-mansion. Because truthfully the whole "Oh! Those are cool" and "Thank you, I made them" conversation is totally shot at that point.
No one is impressed by Walmart cafe curtains, sorry.

Fred Meyer didn't have much to offer, but they diverted my whole idea-stream with this:

Attention successfully diverted!

Ooooh. Wow. A shiny brass napkin ring with little sparkly enamel bits that will look so great with my glass tiles! And they are in the clearance piles! Clearance piles are almost as good as thrift shops. I bought two for 1.99 with no clear idea of what I was going to do with them yet. Also grabbed a chocolate brown tassle thing with no idea for it, but hey! It is the right color. Now I need to find other stuff that goes with them and my wire sculpture. A new idea is vaguely taking shape as we go.

Next stop, World Market! This will take a bit longer than my other stops simply because I cannot enter the place without looking at everything in the store. I loooove World Market.

And they delivered up exactly what I need to make my RV kitchen curtains - Napkins:

Lovely mocha stripe napkins and chocolate brown tassle

 Yes, Napkins. And a matching place mat. They are exactly the right size, in a luxurious ribbed texture fabric, rich browns, creams and golds and already hemmed on all four sides - important since my sewing machine is in storage, Yay for fusible webbing tape! - and they are so lovely and exactly right AND in the clearance piles! Oh, they also look absolutely fabulous with my glass tile sample I hauled along.

Today is getting better by the minute. Back to JoAnns to pick up a few notions and then home to figure this all out. Not sure where the place mat or napkin rings will come in yet, but I'll think of something I'm sure.

Sitting at a stoplight halfway home I thought of it and it is genius if I do say so myself. I know exactly what to do with those place mats. Quick stop for self-stick velcro strips and upholstery tacks.

OK, so now I have a pile of stuff to work with and need to figure out what it will be. First I head out to the RV to grab one of the oak trim strips I salvaged off of those nasty window cornices when I tore them all out. It just happens to be the one off the kitchen window so it makes a perfect gauge for the necessary width of my napkin curtains:

But my place mat idea is way more intriguing  to me so I go for that instead. Kinda like "Eat dessert first."

First thing I did was cut that place mat in half down the middle. Now it is more than long enough to span the width of the window. I need to shorten it up, but I want to keep the neatly sewn edges so cutting is out. A couple of box pleats oughtta do the trick:

Pleats with the help of my trusty stapler

With a couple staples to hold it until I can sew them down my pleats line up perfectly. But how to attach it to the wall? Hey! Where is that oak trim strip? Hallelujia, this is gonna work!

This will be a valance above the napkin curtains. Once I hang the curtains I will trim the valance down to about 4 to 6 inches and tack the fabric to the back of my salvaged oak strip, then I figure to hang the whole thing from the underside of the cabinets with an L-bracket I kept from the bathroom cornice. This seems like it will work.

Pleated Valance ready to trim for length

Now back to the curtains. Since my two napkins are already exactly the perfect size all I need to do is figure out how to hang them. I thought about cafe clips but I saw them at JoAnns for $10.00 for a packet of six! Holy cow.

 My solution was to get little white plastic rings and sew them on, then paint the things with my metallic paint from the wire sculpture project.  This worked very well.

So I got the curtains hung on the second day and they do look pretty spiffy to me:

Not bad for a couple napkins. Cannot wait to paint those specky walls!

Now to get that valance up there......

Ta Da - salvaged oak trim, metal bracket off old cornices and 2 place mats = Custom Valances!

Trying to decide on those countertops....

Having decided to go completely over the top and have fun with our tiny Winnie my next flash of inspiration was to put in granite conter tops. Love the look. Not so much a fan of the cost, or the weight!

Plain old bone white countertops. Definitely need an update in this area.

What to do? I scoured the internet looking for ideas and found quite a few. Rustoleum makes a countertop refinishing kit - that costs almost $200.00! There are a few others, like one with little color chips - like a garage floor coating - but they look kinda funny to me.

Doing the table to match the counters would look amazing, wouldn't it?

Another company I came across, GianiGranite, makes a kit for under $100.00 that looks pretty good.I need to ask them a few questions about their product, like how it stands up to temperature variations and such but it just might be an option. Of course there are tons of websites detailing how to paint faux granite, but not very many address the specific needs of an RV remodel project.

And the vanity and that skinny shelf will tie the whole thing together!

So now I am into the research and read phase. What will work, what will not and how much is this all going to cost. Stayed tuned for updates on this one because those counters have got to get something done to them!

Making glass flexible

So a big part of my plan to fix up the Winnie is putting glass tile in the kitchen and bath.

I found this stuff at Lowes:

The two colors go really well together. I cut them and meshed them in a grid pattern:

With the greens, blues and golds all together it looks amazing in person. The next step is figuring out how to get glass tile to adhere on the motor homes walls.  Traditional tile setting techniques won't work. Mortar and grout are rigid. Motorhomes flex and move. They go through temperature extremes. I have read many blog and forum entries that say the ceramic tiles pop off if you try to go the traditional route. Makes sense and I figure these tiny glass ones would, too.

I can figure this out. After spending another couple hours wandering around in Lowes (They don't even pay attention to me anymore) I looked at many, many products. Flexible grout seems like the ticket, maybe with some Liquid Nails to glue it to the walls? Sanded grout scratches the glass. Hmm, perhaps glue the whole sheet together with a backing of flexible vinyl white caulk - then glue that to the wall?

On the right is one right side up and 'grouted' with caulk. The left one is face-down and caulk is coated over the back, once dry I will turn it over and fill in the cracks between tiles. In theory this will make a flexible 'mat' of glass tiles I can then glue to the wall. The white caulk is so it doesn't muddy the colors of the tile. Experimentation showed that this makes a huge difference with the translucent tiles being nice and bright. Too bad since the flexi-caulk comes in a multitude of nice colors. Wonder if I could put the white behind and then use the sand color in the grout lines? Maybe that would not muddy the colors?

Back to Lowes.....

The bathroom

The bathroom is fairly small, but entirely functional and the shower area is actually larger than one would expect in an RV of this size. That specky-looking flower wallpaper will be redone in a gold on gold rag-rolled finish. I gathered handfuls of sample chips from Home Depot and Lowes and that one just caught our attention every time. We both really liked it and it will go well in the dinette area, too.

 I think I will put my little glass mosaic tiles on that skinny shelf.

I spent a couple hours in Lowes and found all sorts of ideas. The counter tops I think I'll redo in a chocolate brown granite - there is a kit that will do the whole RV's countertops and the dinette table and will look good with the wall finish. That window is an escape hatch so it gets no curtains at all - I for one do not want to get tangled up in mini-blinds while fleeing in the night! I am putting a vinyl window film over it that is opaque, lets in light but affords privacy:

The fixtures will be re-painted with Krylon Fusion paint in a pearl white tone. Replace the faucets and towel holders with brass. All creams, browns and golds - should look pretty good.

The floor will be Allure Resilient Flooring in either bamboo plank or a sandstone tile. Doug likes the bamboo and I am leaning strongly that way, although that would mean I have to paint all of the oak cabinetry. That really doesn't break my heart, although it is in really great shape. Hmm.

I will also replace the vent cover in the shower with a clear one for better light and upgrade the fan.

Hello Winnie!

I decided to do a blog about my RV remodel project since in searching the internet I came to the conclusion that one can never have too many sources of ideas for how to do a project like this! It also will make it easier for my own family and friends to play along and offer up suggestions - I'm looking at you girls...you know who you are!

In early December 2011 we became the proud owners of a 1998 Winnebago Warrior motor home. I promptly dubbed her Winnie. OK, so Winnie is probably the most un-original name ever for a Winnebago, but I like it and it's easy to remember so Winnie it is.

We actually started out looking for a 5th wheel. Seemed like the logical choice for full-time RVing, which was the plan. But like any half-way decent plan it did not survive the execution phase. Doug decided he wanted his truck cargo area, and despite the fact our truck came with a perfectly good Hide-A-Goose hitch system already installed, which meant we were already set up for fifth wheel towing with an adapter. Apparently this did not leave enough truck bed. Just in case we saw a nice 5th wheel he went out and bought a fiberglass topper just to seal the deal and make a 5th wheel impossible.

OK, so now we are looking for a conventional pull-type trailer. I was down with that idea and promptly started scouring Craigslist for classic Airstream trailers. I love them and figured "Now's my chance!"

Except that those are pretty rare in decent shape and a price we could afford. Most of them I found here in the Pacific North-Wet also had some serious mold issues. Not cool. Neither one of us really wanted to head for the desert to look for one just yet. So we looked at a few newer trailers for sale. All had various drawbacks - like that mold - or were leaking or just a bit too well-used for our tastes.

We are not buying new, but we do not want "rode hard and put up wet" either. Just a nice, well taken care of trailer for around 6 or 7 thousand. Shouldn't be too hard to find. Turns out it is hard enough that we gave up on the finding it soon part and rented an apartment on a short lease so we could be comfy while we searched.

Then, barely a week after we moved into the apartment Doug decides we need a cargo trailer behind the truck to haul our stuff that we left in storage up to Alaska and maybe we should be looking at motor homes.  Um, OK. We had ditched that idea long before we bought the truck - all the reasons: powerplant and house in one, it breaks down we have to live in motel, etc, etc. We had agreed this was not the way to go. So when he suggested it of course my response was "Yeah, that's a good idea! Lets look at a few!"

Our criteria were strict: Not too big; 21 - 25 feet is about right. Not too old; nothing over 10 years, certainly. Not in need of too much work; we have no shop or big back yard anymore to tear it down and fix it up so it needs to be pretty much turn-key. Easy enough requirements, should be able to get all that in one rig, right?

Right. Yeah right.

We set out with a long list of possibilities, intent on spending an entire weekend carefully inspecting and eliminating potential candidates until we found The One.It was a good plan. But like any half-way decent plan it did not survive.....you get the idea. Our first stop was in Everett to look at a Winnebago. It was also our last stop. We looked, we liked, we started peeling off hundred dollar bills. We actually managed to nail criteria number one: She is 23' long. She is way over 10 years old. She needs a lot of work. Hey, 1 outta 3 ain't bad!

So much for careful, considered shopping. She is now ours and we love her, or we will anyway just as soon as she comes out of that mechanics shop we had her towed to up in Everett....

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