Our Travel Trailer Redo is Officially On

 

Work on our travel trailer has begun, and it feels so good. Last weekend, we headed down to Maple Valley, where our travel trailer is stored in a secure storage facility, and we started on the prep work. This is the part that I find most annoying, but it has to be done before we can get to the fun stuff. 

First, remember those dated hunks of wood and floral fabric that hung over every window? GONE. They were just screwed into the walls, so it only took a little time with a screwdriver to get all those puppies down. The blinds were attached to those things, so now the windows are bare. We're saving the blinds just in case our new window treatment idea doesn't go as planned, but hopefully we'll be able to pitch those as well, eventually. 

It got so bright in there once we uncovered the windows!

I'm hoping to hang black-out pull-down window shades over each window later, since I need total darkness when I sleep. We'll see if I can find what I'm looking for at the price I'm looking for. We may end up needing those old blinds after all.

While Rand unscrewed all the rubbish from the walls, I got to work on those blue panels on the cabinets. Turns out they were fabric stapled over thin plywood panels, that were stapled into the inside of the cabinets. They were a huge pain in the butt to remove, let me tell you.

I used a flathead screwdriver to pry them out, but I quickly realized I didn't want to take the time to pull out every single staple so I could reuse them. Instead, I'm going to Home Depot and get replacements cut. I think it will be cheap and a huge time saver. Then I'll just staple the replacements in and caulk the edges before we prime and paint the cabinets.

This took forever. And I definitely poked myself a few times on those staples. Maybe I should get current on my Tetanus shots.

Here's the uncomfortable position I had to be in for a long time:

We also removed the caulk strips from around the kitchen counter. Since we're planning to repaint the walls and replace (or repaint, if Rand gets his way) the countertop, we knew it had to go. Yes, we have a disagreement on the fate of our countertops. More on that later. (I'll win, don't worry.)

We also removed all the cabinet doors, which we will paint, and we removed all the cabinet hardware. The current hardware is gold, and not my style, so that will be replaced also.

And finally, the part I was most excited about...removing the carpet! We ripped up the blue carpet and the padding underneath. Thankfully, just as we predicted, the same linoleum ran underneath the carpet, so we'll have a nice level surface to lay down our new vinyl flooring.

There is a special, satisfying feeling that comes from ripping up old carpet. It came up easily and we didn't find any scary surprises underneath. That always the risk you take when you rip up carpet, as we learned before in our Springfield house. 

So much done, but so much left to do! We still need to pull out the staples that were holding the carpet and padding in place, and take the sofa and booth cushions to the upholsterer's, but we're very close to being ready to prime and paint! That's the step when we'll actually start to see some transformation happening here, but yeah, the prep work is important too, whatever.

So here's where we are on that big ol' list:

• Remove bunk beds. (We decided not to do this. After thinking it over, we decided they will work nicely as shelves for storage.)
• Remove current window treatments. 
• Remove that blue fabric on the cabinets, the paper towel holder, and that oddly placed toilet paper roll holder. 
• Remove the blue carpet. 
• Take down cabinet doors and remove hardware.
• Take out all upholstered furniture and send it to be reupholstered.
• Prime and paint walls white in a matte finish. 
• Prime and paint cabinets and all wood surfaces in a semi-gloss finish. 
• Remove current countertops and replace with wood butcher-block countertops, shown above. Or maybe paint the current countertops. We'll see. 
• Add a backsplash.
• Put down new flooring. 
• Add new window treatments. 
• Change that mirror on the door to a full-length mirror.
• Get sofa and booth cushions reupholstered.
• Replace that fugly faucet. 
• Replace door and cabinet hardware. 
• Add some wall-mounted plant containers. 
• Hang some art on the walls. I hear heavy-duty velcro is helpful in campers. 
• Add little details, like a rug, pillows, bedding, etc. 
• Replace uncomfortable mattress. 

Next weekend we plan to finish the prep work, sand the cabinets, and *hopefully* get through the priming. Stay tuned!