Renos: The Living Room

Before the renos. We had the dealer remove the oddly-placed couch. Seriously, why the heck do the engineers put a couch kitty-corner to the TV? And that chandelier? Really? Madness I tell you! And that wallpaper is U-G-L-Y ugly!

The biggest problem with any RV: you walk in and you are extremely aware that you are in an RV. It doesn't look like a home. The couch is in the wrong spot, the eating area is built to sleep on, and everything is absurdly tight. Worse, all of the colours are terribly drab and unappealing, making it feel even more closed in. We wanted it to feel like a home for ourselves and Aurora; a sense of normalcy for everyone and a place we can be comfortable when stuck indoors.

For the love of God, someone please explain to me why the couch was beside the TV. Just swapping the location of the dinette and couch would have fixed the problem! Is it really that hard to design these things?

We started by removing those horrible window dressings and drapes. That alone brightened everything up. That was simple enough; just a few screws. To make more space and open the room up more, we took out part of the dinette seating as well. Next came the walls. We didn't have time to peel off all the wallpaper, so we bought oil-based paint as it sticks to wallpaper.

Look at that; child labour!

Ta daaaaaaaaaaaa!

Well that's a heck of a lot nicer, ain't it? Everything is so much brighter and now the wood grain of the cabinets stands out rather than blending in. It was starting to feel like a tiny home rather than an RV. Just add a table...

Ikea to the rescue!

That is an Ikea folding table that we've had for a few years. It worked nicely! The back is attached to the wall with screws. Six drawers for storing various items plus a flip top that we can put down for extra space inside! We've comfortably had eight grown adults in our RV/tinyhome without anyone feeling cramped. Lyndsay is just the right height to reach everything without hitting her head. I, on the other hand, may have tribial blain dablage.

A mat made from strips of cut up towel. Lyndsay is very talented!

Those hooks on the wall? That was the next problem. We have to save space any way we can, right? Well, nothing sticks to the walls. Painted or unpainted, no kind of tape will stick. How those ones are up, I have no clue. But we have had numerous issues trying to put up pictures or hang up garbage bags. I finally lost it and used a drill to screw the garbage bag hooks in after they'd fallen off a half dozen times. We have a Jewish marriage document called a Ketubah that we tried to hang in our bedroom, but it kept falling down. We still don't have it up.

Recognize the pattern? Mother nature's first attempt to murder us.

The yard we had the RV stored at while renovating borders are large empty field. Wood ticks are a major problem in Manitoba. I've had more than 100 on me in a single day. In the last few years, the deer tick has moved in. And deer ticks carry Lyme disease. A doctor took one look at that discolouration and handed me an antibiotics prescription for Lyme disease. Thankfully we caught it early. But seriously; Lyme disease!? What else could go wrong?

Oh yeah. Turd buckets...