On the three-year trip, I modified our 5th wheel RV so that the rear bunkhouse had two separate rooms, which first involved adding a door from the living room into the rear bathroom.
We’ve been thinking about what to do with the floorplan in our post-children-travel era, so this summer we decided to put in a little work on the 5th wheel.
Here’s the “before” floorplan:
We first removed the wall between the bedrooms:
And we’re back to one big bunkhouse:
We want a more open floorplan, so the wall between the main room and the bunkhouse needs to go:
That’s better:
Next, we transformed the rear bathroom into a home office space:
Done:
Next, we removed the bunkhouse cabinetry:
Done:
Pulled out the carpet:
Removed the slide trim:
Blank slate:
Removed the main room’s slide carpet:
I had previously replaced this section of floor due to water damage from the slide not sealing correctly, but the new section was a little taller than the original floor. I pulled it out and cut down the joists to make the height correct.
I also removed more of the original flooring that was water damaged:
Building out the replacement floor:
Done:
I de-carpeted the forward half of the RV, but the stairs were not usable sans carpet, so I removed them too:
Carpet out of bedroom:
We added shiplap to the back wall:
We bought a sofa for one of the bunkhouse (which is now the living room) slides. We’re waiting for the cushions to “inflate” after unpacking them.
The other bunkhouse slide will become the garage. Testing the fit:
I drew up and 3D printed a fork mount for the mountain bike:
Works well:
Framing the garage door:
Done:
I removed the sink plumbing in the former second bathroom:
I don’t have plywood of the right thickness to plug the sink supply line hole, so I drew and printed a disc to plug the hole:
I capped the toilet plumbing and printed a plug for this hole as well:
I installed gas shocks to allow the garage door to be held open:
Building a new set of bedroom steps:
Just for fun, I modified my home standing desk and built a tabletop out of the kids’ old RV bunk tables to test the feel of the “home office”:
The main room slide seemed to leak, which I traced to the waterproofing tape that covers the screws that attach the slide wall to the slide roof. The screw heads had worn through the waterproofing tape, allowing in water. I re-taped all the slides:
Back in the garage, I added rubber flooring:
I built a locking mechanism for the garage door. Looking up at the underside of the open garage door:
Garage door closed and locked:
Bikes in the garage:
Road bike mounted with a fork mount I drew and printed:
That’s it for now!
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