You didn’t really think that I’d spoil the surprise by making the featured photo the current finished(ish) product, did you?! 😉 That just wouldn’t be any fun! It’s been a long two weeks involving painting in the same clothes and deconstructing the insides of our camper, but we’ve hit a corner. Finally. I can actually tell that we’re making progress and not just making a mess. Although don’t judge the actual mess in the photos.. I feel like this is a real look at what our life is looking like right now! Messy, dusty, and tripping over boxes and frisbees.
Living AreaÂ
After removing all of the furniture the first thing that we did in our camper was remove the huge, bulky window treatments. Then we prepped the walls for painting by removing the wallpaper trim. Oh what a huge difference that simple move made! The space instantly felt lighter and less crowded. Next up was removing the carpet. Ohhh the carpet. The previous owners were meticulous, but there’s only so much you can do to keep dirt and sand out of carpet in a camper. The amount of sand that came out from the carpet and from under the flooring was astonishing, and only solidified our decision to lay laminate flooring throughout the camper. Next, we painted the walls with White Pepper. The trim and upper cabinets on the slide out and the rear of the camper are also painted in White Pepper because I wanted them to feel like an extension of the wall and make the room feel bigger, instead of shortening the ceiling.
Entertainment Center
Ok guys, I’m really excited about this. Like REAL excited. It’s probably one of the things that I’m most proud of in this experience. I’ve wanted to get rid of this huge, ugly thing since the beginning. We had tentatively decided to just paint it because Kyle thought it would be too difficult to remove. I did some investigating, and Kyle and I got to talking (okay, I got to convincing!). The cubbies were tiny, only large enough to fit a DVD. What could we even store in there, other than DVD’s (which we rarely use considering the point of the camper is to get outside)? We decided it was wasted space, and in an instant my dear husband made my dreams come true. No risk, no reward, right?! The entertainment center came out relatively easy and it actually all came together better than we could have expected, and the space looks SO MUCH BIGGER without that huge entertainment center hogging up the wall. We accidentally found out that one of the pieces that we started to take out was connected to the bathroom (Oops!) but it’s worked out really well because we’re going to use that as an access point for the original outlets in the back of the entertainment center. We will mount a small TV on the wall and drill a hole to feed the cords from the TV to the outlets in the back. We have a piece of wood from an old barn that was torn down last summer that we’ve been trying to find a use for, and it’s finally found a home in our camper. Kyle will add faux shiplap around the electric fireplace insert that is going in on the bottom of the entertainment center, which will help keep heating costs down when we camp when it’s cool.
Kitchen
As much as I love having so much storage in our camper, I was really nervous starting this project. So many cabinets! I used General Finishes Seagull Grey milk paint for these cabinets and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. It only took two coats of grey on the cabinets to get a super good cover and one coat of topcoat. For the whole camper we used about 3 quarts of Seagull Grey (including the bathroom, bedroom, and closets) and less than one quart of topcoat. The refrigerator panels are painted in chalkboard paint that we had on hand, which I thought would be a fun place to write the menu or to just let nieces and nephews draw on. To keep costs down, all of the cabinet pulls were painted with spray paint and are the original fixtures. Kyle added a faux shiplap backsplash and I couldn’t be more in love with how the space turned out!
I’ve really only shown you bits and pieces of what we’re working on, and it looks really wonderful already! I can’t wait to share more with all of you!
