3/14
Oh Pinterest
How do I love thee?
Sooo many ideas to remodel, upgrade, personalize your Motorhome. Because let’s face it, the Beach House will need a heck of a facelift.
So for now I’m spending my “free” time swimming the unlimited sea of ideas and blog links and expanding the “Honey Do” list
3/12
It seems all I’ve been doing lately is reading and gobbling up as much information as I can find on full time RVing. Full timers, part timers, working couples, loners, retirees, telecommuters, families, roadschooling, workcampers, missionaries, different types of sites, RVs, and hook ups, satellite tv, wifi, solar panels, boondoking, snowbirding, moving with the weather, Poop management, mail forwarding, healthcare, which state to call home… stories upon stories.
Tales of caution, funny ones and not so funny ones, How to’s and must do’s…
There are so many bloggers out there. All different. I’m learning so much from all of them and I will be eternally grateful. So thank you all. I will definitely hit you up some time soon for more wisdom. And God willing, we’ll get to meet someday on the road.
Some of the many I’ve visited:
http://www.wheelingit.us/2011/09/22/10-things-i-wished-id-known-before-fulltime-rving/
http://www.newschoolnomads.com/2013/12/03/rv-remodel-redecorate-design/
http://www.gonewiththewynns.com/RV-faucet-install
http://www.littlehouseliving.com/fulltime-rv-living
http://www.marvac.org/rv-full-time.htm
http://thelightlifeblog.com/tag/sex-in-an-rv/
http://www.technomadia.com/young-full-time-rving-nomads/
http://www.rv.net/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/listings/forum/33.cfm
http://fulltimervingmadeeasy.com/
http://stephaniehenkel.hubpages.com/hub/RVing-Full-Time-While-Living-On-Less
http://www.familiesontheroad.com/
3/10
We’re keeping our excitement to ourselves.
Well I am at least.
My husband has been happily telling everyone that we’re moving into an RV.
And EVERYONE he talks to thinks it’s a great idea. That they wished they had thought of it before they bought their home. That they’re jealous and happy for us…
I can only imagine what my family will think…well my mom really. I know for sure it will not go well. And to avoid hassle and nonsense I’ll keep it to myself. I can’t afford the drama right now. I need the energy to keep warm. So for now we’ve agreed not to tell our family or close friends.
3/8
We picked up the Beach House!! Yea!
We were going to leave it at the dealership until April or until this frozen tundra thawed out. But the more my husband thought about all the changes we needed to make, travel dates, the end of our lease and impending move. My husband felt we needed to pick it up as soon as possible. There were only so many weekends from here until the end of June.
The entire time my husband was driving that thing with our children inside I was behind driving our car and crapping my pants.
I kept hoping he would slow down. There is no need to go 60 mph!!!
He finally backed the beach house into our driveway which is still covered in about 6 inches of ice/snow. The entire front lawn has a lasagna of ice/snow/ice/packed snow that goes up four and a half feet save for the just enough wide space we’ve left to drive the cars into the garage.
I had to get off the car and find a shovel to pick at the corners of the ice mounds the snow plows so generously created at the edge of the property, to allow just enough space for the RV to be brought in and not scratch the sides or ruin the muffler.
AND it turns out the RV has a Mic and my husband could not only see me through the camera in the back but he could hear me as well. Woohoo! Bonus!
It’s finally here. Thank you God! And my husband is ready to start gutting it. Even if it’s -15F. I guess we’ll find out if the heater works!
3/5
I’ve been spending many late hours hunting google, Pinterest, and eBay for Spanish tiles. I’ve found a place in Chicago that sells them. So we’ll check them out when we take a hike to Ikea next month and hopefully pick one out. I’m a little concerned about the weight that will add to the Beach House though.
3/4/14 reality checks
I’ve been calling reupholsters in the area. This stuff is not cheap! Between fabric and labor I’m looking at a cool grand just for the sleeper couch!
It’s back to the drawing board. Maybe I can find some kind of slip cover that will fit or perhaps my mom can sow a cover for me.
I did find a few gals on Etsy that can make the dinette cushions. I’m waiting for quotes from them. In the meantime I’ve ordered swatches of the fabric I’d like. I’m going for something that can take a beating in the “Sunbrella” arena.
The lamps I might be stuck with. It turns out there’s a certain amperage running through the beach house and my husband will NOT mess with electricity. We’ve seen enough photos of RVs up in flames and an electrician’s fee is not anything either of us will want to consider just to change these lamps.
Maybe a little spray paint and new shades will be enough.
Speaking of spray paint, Do you remember all those the cabinet pulls and hinges? Well it turns out those can run anywhere from a dollar to 6 dollars apiece or more. The Beach House has about 50 cabinet pulls alone! Plus hinges. RUSTOLEUM IT IS!!!
We also took a trip to Home Depot to look at backsplash tiles and faucets and cheap flooring for the bathroom. My husband is still fighting the carpet removal but he agrees bathroom + rug is a bad idea.
We found a few we liked and took a couple pictures and samples.
I think I’d rather have a nice Spanish tile as a back splash reminiscent of the ones I see all over Puerto Rico and Old San Juan. Time to get back to Google.
2/28 The FUGLY! ok it’s not that bad…yes it’s horrible
Let’s face it people. RV manufacturers can do great things with engineering but they’re not really interior designers. And perhaps dark cabinetry and gold EVERYTHING was all the rage in the 90s but not today.
MAKE OVER!! PROJECT!!.
The 90’s electronics ALL have to go. We need an upgrade PRONTO!
We have a VCR?! YES WE DOOOO
These rugs smell, BAD.
I’m sure there were pets here at some point. So, besides the carpet being ugly and smelly, I’m pulling the allergen card and getting rid of it.
My husband says he can get a good carpet cleaner and allergen solutions. We’ll see..
And who in their right mind puts carpet in a bathroom? Right outside the shower? Helloooo?
No. That has to go too.
The ugly vinyl in the toilet closet? Out!
Not sure why there’s a mirror between the top and bottom cabinetsnin the toilet closet…I guess you’re supposed to sit on the toilet while you apply make-up. I wonder if I can find cabinets to fill this space? I can use that a lot more than an awkwardly placed mirror. Maybe Ikea can help.
This fabric is terrible. Just…No. I will definitely need to re-cover these valances and reupholster the couch and dinette.
Not quite sure what to do with the captain chairs. Maybe we can upgrade down the line.
In the kitchen the blinds are sticky yucky and need to be replaced. The ugly faucet is uncomfortable and needs to go too. I’d like to add a nice back splash as well. It’s a very small area so I don’t think it will be too much money.
Painting the pulls on all the cabinets will be a pain so I’ll just buy new ones. The ones here are not bad at all but the color has to go. And the ugly brown cabinets? Bye bye!
It’s a good thing we still have white paint in the house. It’s going all over the cabinets and the walls too because this “wallpaper” situation is not working for me.
I want new, more modern lamps. These are just …well fugly.
And what am I supposed to do with this extra recliner? I have no real use for it. To me it seems more like a waste of space…
Besides the cosmetics we really need to figure out what to do about the bunk beds. We definitely want to build one over the captain/copilot chair for my daughter and one will just have to go over the dinette.
I’m not thrilled about losing the air space over the dining area. It will take away the nice open feeling there is in the RV right now.
But I do want each of the kids to have their own space a lot more. And folding the dinette into a bed EEEVERY SINGLE night will not do.
My husband is doing all the research for the build. I have no idea how he’s going to MacGyver this. I just keep sending him ideas of what I’ve seen on the web.
The GOOD!!
Besides the low milleage and all the other mechanical stuff I have no clue about?
The shades are great! Day and night shades! I wish I had these back in the old house!
I love that the tub is spacious compared to others I’ve seen in other RVs. Even the newer RVs I’ve seen do not have such a comfy shower unless you hit the higher end.
There is no curtain in the shower! Wipee! The Class C we rented last year had a plastic curtain that just didn’t work to keep the water in. The solid shower door is a lot better in my opinion.
Did I mention the Corian? Love this! The Class C we rented last year had some cardboard thing for a counter and it was lifting at the edges even though the vehicle was new. All that dishwashing must not sit well with cheaper counter top options.
The flooring in front of the kitchen has a real wood look. I actually thought it was hardwood for a bit (duh!). It’s very nice. I wish the entire galley area and bathroom had it.
There’s also A LOT of storage space in what I’m calling the basement. We definitely didn’t have this in the class C. I’m sure my kids will fill it with toys. And the outside shower in the back!! Love it! Although it’s next to the poop release ..hmmm
The automatic awning is also very nice to have as well as the automatic leveler thingies (yes thingies). Everything seems in good working order as far as I can tell without really having used it. It’s still completely winterized. I’m sure there is plenty more I’m not yet grateful for. I’m flying blind here.
Normally I would try to get all new stuff new for a new place. But since a big part of this move is to simplify and save money we’ll do as much with what we have. PROJECT!!
We’ll definitely reuse the new curtains I bought for the current house. I can use those to re-cover the Valances all over the RV. It’s a nice Moroccan tile pattern that I still love. We can probably reuse the Navy black-out curtains in my son’s room for the bunk beds privacy curtains we plan to install. I have plenty of blue/white throw pillows/cushions I can use and some yellow ones from the old sunroom that will add a pop of color to the place. And if the budget allows I’ll get one or two quirky ones I spotted on Etsy. 🙂 And we have plenty of kid art and photographs that will never make it in 😦
I have plenty of towels and bed sheets. I may need one or two Queen size though. All my stuff is king size. I could work with those for now I guess.
I have plenty of kitchen stuff that will definitely go into the RV. I could probably replace some things in the future with light weight/pastic/acrilyc items though. For now my stuff will more than make do.
I have plastic Adirondack chairs and a couple hammocks so no need for “patio furniture”. Really what’s with all the outdoor furniture RVers carry? I always wonder where they put it all when they go on the road. 😕
But I will need an outdoor rug. I never did get one of those for the house.
My husband wants to replace the sleeper sofa with our recliner couch. I don’t’ think it will fit. Plus it’s got a high back and it will cover at least a third of the windows behind it. We can’t do that. Plus we’ll lose the extra bed. We’ll need that for guests coming over.
He says we won’t have many guests or at least none that often. He says he’ll definitely use his recliner and very often!!
Frankly I don’t think it will fit anyway. The color would work but I really don’t want to lose the light coming from the window or the extra bed. It’s a perfectly fine sleeper couch!! But my husband is a good husband and he does work hard…and he does have a point…
we’ll see
I really think it all started with the Mini.
My husband bought a Mini Cooper last year. Our Minivan (not a Mini) was going kaput and at 6’ – 270 lbs., my Dear Husband thought a mini cooper was the right choice for our family.
I fought and lost that battle.
I quickly fell in love with the mini. Believe it or not all 4 of us fit even with a weeks’ worth of groceries tucked in. Don’t get me started on the gas mileage and ease of finding parking.
For a long time now we have been downsizing and not even noticing it. We’ve stopped going to Sam’s Club/Costco’s of the world. We even stopped going to Walmart. We’ve been buying a lot less packaged foods so that means we hit the grocery store/farms/farmers market at least once a week for our whole foods. We buy what we need at the time and the meat is always fresh and tastes so much better.
For many, MANY years my husband and I had been planning an RV trip. At first we thought of taking three weeks off to travel the “Sun Belt”. Then my father mentioned he wanted to visit the Grand Canyon. We went as far as checking prices for RV rentals and budgeting for gas. Then the gas prices started to go up and we started a family. Between one thing and another, those trips never happened.
We finally took a trip to the UP (that’s the Upper Peninsula for those of you Michigan impaired). We’d heard so much about its beauty and how different life was there, that we just had to go. I also wanted to SUP all 5 great lakes. I only have one more to go :-).
We rented a Class C Four Winds and we were hooked!!! We loved it! We went where we wanted to go whenever we felt like it. We did not have to bother with reservations for the most part. If we felt like staying longer at a spot, there was not a big hassle. The kids took all their toys. No airport stress. No NSA.
We cooked our foods when we felt we needed to and even doing laundry didn’t feel like a chore.
We knew this is the way we would vacation from now on and that we’d end up buying an RV. It was only a question of when.
So how the hell did that turn into a “lifestyle”?
As I write this I’m scratching my head. How in the world….???
My husband started researching and looking for used RVs in his phone during his “down time” (that’s when the kids force us to watch bubble guppies for the 80th time)
There was an RV show coming up in January and of course we had to go check what was out there.
We knew we definitely wanted to stick with the Class C.
We didn’t want a 5th wheel (funny how quickly you learn the lingo) nor did we have or want another vehicle to pull the thing. Also we did not want a huge Class A motorhome. A class C was more than enough space for us to travel and easy enough to drive and fit most places and roads.
Our kids wanted bunk beds. They haaaad to have the bunk beds. From the very beginning they neeeeeeded the bunk beds.
My husband had a bug that just wouldn’t quit so for the “heck of it” he decided to apply online for a RV loan with our local credit union.
And of course he got approved for what we thought would be a decent vehicle. So with that in mind, he intensified his search. Things were getting real, which was great because we already had a trip planned for August to visit a friend in Colorado. But at this point all we wanted was a Recreational Vehicle. Not a “Live In” Vehicle.
We went to the RV dealer we rented the Four Winds from. My husband wanted to check out a 1999 Winnebago that he had seen on the internet that was part of their used RV inventory. Instead of looking at the used RVs we looked at new ones (OF COURSE BRAND SPANKIN NEW ONES!), based on what we wanted. BUNK BEDS. We ended up trying to get financed for a brand new Class C Four Winds 31A that was more than twice what we had been preapproved for and possibly a much higher monthly payment than I gave them as my absolute cap.
While we waited for a decision (It had been late on a Saturday) we were getting excited about taking trips and the new “toy”. During that wait time my husband mentioned to me that he’d read an article recently about a couple who camped out for a year and saved money to buy a home [(that’s a “stick and brick for you fulltimers”) see what I mean about the lingo?]. I must have been in a really good mood because I said….”I could do that” “I could live in an RV for a bit. Save some money, pay off some of these student loans”
The call came from the dealer and the deal did not work out at all. But hey they tried. Good! I was happy. One less bill to worry about! We can scrap all these BS dreams and get back to the grind of our normal grid life….
Yea right…Soooo we went back and looked at the 1999 Winnebago. It smelled a little, the corian was cracked, there was no Oven (more on this later) and NO BUNK BEDS. I did not want it. No thank you.
But, Thank God for Pinterest and the incredibly gifted folks all over the world, we figured we could maybe possibly MacGyver it.
at the beach hou5e 