Camper Renovation - Sneak Peek Edition!

It's mission camper renovation these days! If you follow me on Facebook and Instagram, you can visit my stories to see the ongoing progress. This past week, two of the three kiddos joined me in heading to camp to get started transforming our 39 foot park model trailer on lake Erie.  We packed the mini van to the gills with paint supplies and tools and anything I could think I might need. The goal is to make it a brighter, cheerier "lake home." I'll be honest... if wifi wasn't so poor at camp, I would take work up much more often and work from there. This week, I'm sharing some sneek peaks what I've accomplished in the past four days...but stay tuned as I get further along. I will share links as well as before and after photos of the entire space! For now, here are your sneak peeks!

I Reupolstered Our Dining Cushions

I grabbed some fabric from JoAnn Fabrics that screemed "lake home" to me. I figured I would use the stripe fabric on the cushions themselves and the blue solid for the surrounding pieces that are attached to the dinette with screws. That part is still to come. For now, this is how the new cushions look. The brown fabric you see along the edges is what I have now removed and plan to cover in the blue and take back up for our next trip. To recover these cushions, I simply cut a thin piece of wood the size of the cushion and wrapped the fabric around and stapled it on. I could actually remove the fabric and go right back to the original fabric. This was a huge time saver - and the no sew method.

I painted the cabinetry...

To start of mission camper renovation, I took all of the hinges and handles off of the cabinetry. Before priming, I scuffed all of the wood with sand paper. The upper doors were going to be painted Marshmallow by Sherwin Williams and the lowers a Valspar color called Bird Song Blue. Being that this required multiple steps - between the primer and multiple coats of the finish color, I moved along to other steps in between.


I added my beloved shiplap wallpaper...
I definitely did not order enough wallpaper but I definitely love the look that my favorite Threshhold peel and stick wallpaper from Target is giving the camper! It's bright and crisp and clean looking. By simply painting over the sticky wallpaper border that was already on the walls, I was able to hide the pattern from showing through the thin wallpaper. Thankfully, I did not have to paint over the entire original wallcovering as it was light enough not to show through. But that border did need camoflaged a bit before applying the paper. As much as I love this wallpaper and am now pretty used to working with it, it was a real challenge. Working around all of the windows and nooks and crannies of a trailer mean you really have to be up for the challenge. And I was. There are some spots where the original wall covering sticks up a bit which caused the new wallpaper to bubble in spots, but overall I'm so happy with the transformation this is providing for this camper renovation!

I painted the walls...

I also painted the undersides of the cabinets as well as the ceiling of the slide out. This reno is not for the faint of heart. I stretched and twisted and reached in so many directions and am achy and sore. But when I get an idea in my head and can see the finished result, I don't care what the consequences are to my body! I even have a nice mark on my shin from climbing up and down on top of the counter where the televeision sits. That one time I missed the stool on my way back down was brutal. My shin slid down the front of the countertop and that didn't feel so good!

We swapped out a light fixture...

Amazon was a life saver for this camper renovation project. The time I saved by ordering cafe curtain rods, curtains, sheets, blankets, a futon cover, and more meant that I could load everything in the van and haul it up from my front door. Even a new light fixture to replace the broken one between windows in this space! This is not my area of comfort so I did wait for my husband to install this once he and my other son arrived after I had a full two and a half days of work in. But doesn't it make a huge difference? Check out the before and after...

Furniture and Accessories

My staging room has A TON of signs and accessories so I raided that room and brought up anything I thought might work on the walls. Our latest Boxed Up project even was chosen (our monthly DIY subscription box - stay tuned to see that once hung). I could see it being used behind the television beside the sliding door. I had a clock in my stash and some greenery.  The main difference in terms of layout was that we removed the chair from the living space and replaced it with the console table that lived behind our sofa at home. I was in desperate need of some type of desk since I do bring my laptop (I'm always hopeful there will be some service at some point). The old chair was comfortable but no one ever sat in it because it served as a drop zone and never a chair! So, this console table worked out perfectly so that the slide out can still be brought in when we leave because it's narrow enough for that.


 

And, the chair? Well, I raided my son's room for that one! He was happy to give it up. Now it serves as a desk chair but it can be turned around and used as a regular chair for extra seating if needed. And we can move it in to the center of the trailer or lay it on top of the sofa for when we do need to bring in the slide out.

Function Meets Asthetics

Things like a tiered tray allow me to corral napkins, bananas, salt and pepper and other fruit in one spot. I brought up a staging vase that now serves as our utensils holder (spatulas, etc.). And my few Rae Dunn mugs how hang on a special piece over the stove. It's all of these things that make the space feel less like a camper and more like a home.

And I forgot to mention one of the most major transformative things I did in this space! I removed the bulky window coverings and curtains! They are boxy and stick out into the space and removing them made an instant change to the level of brightness. We definitely needed to keep the blinds, so I simply added cafe rods and sheer curtains. They may not be the exact size for the windows, but I did not want to spend time making curtains that were custom. I used sheer curtains to keep the light flowing and just add some softness. They make it feel breezy and airy and bright.

The most major covering of all was the one over the sliding door which also had the vertical blinds attached to it. Removing that gained us about six inches of space! This was replaced by a regular curtain rod that was on clearance at JoAnn when I purchased the fabric. Some white Walmart black out curtains now hang here and provide us way more light coming in. Our lake neighbor happened to have brought up her sewing maching for a project she was working on and lent it to me to hem the curtains!

It's been a whirlwind of a few days... 

Even Lucky has gotten quite used to my constant home projects. However, with little room to move around and with all of the stuff I was using, he wasn't very happy.
However, he was just as happy as me to get out of the camper and take a walk down to see the sunset over Lake Erie.
That's a wrap our camper renovation sneak peeks! I'll be back with more updates as I get to them as well as full before and after photos! In the meantime, I'd love for you to pin this blog post!