Recently, My Husband, Lance, and I bought purchased our first camper/toy hauler.  It is a 50′ 2007 Vintage Enclosed Trailer with living quarters.  28′ of garage space and a 22′ living area.  Pretty Nice!

So as it sits, we could do everything that we could ever want with this trailer.  But, because we also wanted this trailer to truly feel like “ours”  we decided that we should do some updating.    So we sat down one night and (after a few drinks 😉 ) decided that it would be best to completely remodel the living area of this RV.

Now, let me make one thing clear.  Lance and I are not carpenters and don’t have any professional experience in remodeling homes or RVs for this matter.  So some of the steps we take might not be correct, but we both have Youtube and the Internet.  And when we put our mind to something, we can usually figure it out so that we are both happy with the end result.

So what do we have to work with?

Well like I said earlier, we have a 22′ living area.  14′ of it is “flat” space that consisted of the dinette, kitchen, and bathroom.  And the remaining 8′ is the master bedroom area.

So with it just being Lance and me, we didn’t feel like we needed the extra sleeping areas that the dinette and couch offered.  We do have two larger dogs, that would be coming with us on shorter trips, but beds for them would be easy to figure out down the road.  With that being said, we elected to completely remove the dinette and couch and replace them with a “bar” area and recliner love seat.  This would open up that area considerably to make room for the dog’s beds.

Deconstruction – Where to start?

Well, of course, when we got the trailer home, we were excited to start planning our remodel.  First thing, first, we tore out the dinette.  This was a pretty simple task.  The biggest deal was just finding all the fasteners that held the booths down.

We really didn’t need to do this right away, but it opened up the floor space, making it easier to move around.  However, once we got the booths out, we realized that the flooring had been replaced before.  Only they didn’t do the entire space and just trimmed out around the furniture.  So new flooring got added to the list of projects we plan on doing.

We decided that the best approach to this project was going to be to split tasks up between the two of us so that we weren’t in each other’s way as we were working.   With that being said, Lance took over the bathroom area, while I decided to attack the bedroom and living area.  For the time being, We are both happy with how the kitchen area is set-up, we just want to refinish the cabinets so that it flows with the rest of our remodel.

Removing the carpet in the bedroom

So the master bedroom is located in the raised portion of the trailer.  It originally came with carpet that covered the floor and came down the wall in the living space.  Seeing as how this trailer is 12 years old, you can probably imagine how this “white” carpet looked.  So obviously, it had to go. 

If you have ever removed carpet before, then you know it’s not a fun task.  However, since this is a small area, it wasn’t that terrible.  The biggest issue I had was getting it started.  But once I did, it was just a matter of pulling it up so that the staples would let loose from the plywood underneath.  I would recommend wearing a good pair of work gloves when you do this.  Getting stuck with a flooring staple isn’t fun, trust me!

Once I got the carpet and padding out, I soon realized we had another problem.  We were told that there had been a water leak that had been repaired.  However, it apparently extended farther than just the ceiling.  The plywood sheeting underneath the carpet had some water damage on it.  Nothing terrible, but seeing as how we were already this far, we decided it would be best to replace it now.

In the meantime, Lance occupied himself by removing the bathroom cabinets, toilet, and shower.

Removing the Wall Sheets and Flooring

A week after we got the trailer, and we have successfully removed the carpet and bathroom fixtures.  Now it was time to start on the interior wall sheeting.  We started in the bathroom, seeing as how it was the only section that didn’t have cabinets or windows that needed to be removed.  To do this, all of the trim needed to be removed.  We aren’t planning on reusing any of it so to make it easy, we used a small prybar and pulled in off of the wall sheeting.

Once the trim was removed, it was the door and door frame was removed.  Pretty simple, just a few screws and some caulk, and off it came!  Now it was time to starting prying off the sheeting.

This proved to be slightly more difficult.  Some of the smaller sheeting We were able to pry up and just pull off, they were only stapled on by the way.  However, with the larger sheeting, you could only pull away so far before you ran into another wall.  So we resorted to cutting some of these sheets off in smaller pieces.  Good thing we didn’t plan on reusing any!

With the walls out, we started pulling up the floor planks that had been installed over the original flooring.  The planks were the floating snap flooring, so they came out pretty easily.   Unfortunately, once we got the flooring out, we found more water damaged plywood.  ARGH!!

What’s to come?

We have lots of ideas that we would love to incorporate into our RV Remodel.  Now that we know more about what we are working with, it will be easier (hopefully) to get them all done.

When Lance first mentioned changing some of the living space in the trailer, I will admit, I was a little nervous about it.  Being able to pick out flooring, wall sheets, paint/stain and get it all to flow together, not to mention installed properly, was going to be a challenge.  But the more we discussed and researched our plans, the more confident we became.

From installing pocket door frames to relocating our freshwater tank, there are going to be lots of projects ahead of us.  Check back soon to see what we tackle next!