For new readers to the site, or old readers who haven’t been paying attention, I live in my small RV. I bought my first RV in 2007, and except for short term travel rentals, I haven’t lived in a house or apartment or any other non-wheeled dwelling since then. This sounds rather extreme, but I honestly don’t feel like I live in a car.
When I’m parked my RV feels like a small house, complete with all of the comforts of a stationary home. Of course, these niceties haven’t come easily– I’ve spent hundreds of hours working on my RV, coming up with new ideas and implementing them in the home depot parking lot. Because I actually live in this thing and the improvement process is ongoing, it’s never possible to say that I’m done. That said– I can’t really imagine too much more that I can do to this thing. I only have one or two big ideas left, and no immediate plans to implement them.
Here’s what’s new this round:
1. Painted everything. For a long time I’ve been hesitant to paint the RV, because I worried that the paint wouldn’t stick to the disgusting fake-wood walls. Luckily an all purpose primer did the job. My RV is only 20′ long, but it took me fifteen hours to mask the whole interior, prime everything, and then layer on two coats of paint. It was the first time I’d ever painted anything, and most of the time was spent dealing with all of the weird little angles and protrusions. As I mention in the video, I was hoping to get a grey color, but somehow ended up with blue. I’m not entirely sure how that happened, but I do remember saying, “I’m sick of picking colors… let’s do this one.”
2. Tin ceiling. I’ve wanted a golden ceiling in the RV for years. I love the contrast of the outside of the RV being cold and boring and the inside being warm and ornate, and a golden ceiling seemed like a perfect extension of that idea. More practically, all of the repositioning of lights and removal of the air conditioner had left the carpet ceiling ugly and scarred. I bought the panels (for Rialta owners, it can be done with 13 panels if you’re super efficient, 14 if you’re reasonably efficient) from American Tin Ceilings from a guy named Ken. He was very helpful and I really can’t say enough good things about their company. There was a miscommunication through email that resulted in me getting the wrong color panels, and they sent me a new batch immediately. Unfortunately I didn’t notice that the color was wrong until I spent fifteen hours installing the first ceiling.
3. Zebrawood desk/table. My friend Brian Sharp is really good at woodworking and has the exact same RV, so I headed up North to Seattle to visit and do RV projects. Thanks to his expertise, we built really nice desks for ourselves. I spend a lot of time at my desk, and my old one was really shoddy. It wobbled and flexed and had a seam in the middle that was a haven for crumbs. The lumber for my new desk cost less than $100, and it’s really beautiful. Mercedes used to use the same wood for their interiors.
4. New curtains. Again thanks to Brian (and my mom for the one in the last video), I have better curtains in the RV. In the back I have a blackout curtain as well as a translucent curtain, and in the front I have the same. The Rialta came with a front curtain, but it was so tight that you couldn’t recline the front seats. It also didn’t go down to the floor, so you could see car interior. All of the side windows use day/night shades. You can buy these for hundreds of dollars from custom RV places, OR go to JC Penny and just buy premade ones there. I love that they can be translucent or black-out, but I don’t love the look or the fact that they rattle when driving. One potential future project would be nice silk curtains in their place.
5. Projector setup. This is another one of those projects where I think, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and next thing you know I’ve ordered a projector and some fabric for the screen. The projector is permanently mounted in the lower front-cab area of the RV. Wires are routed through the ceiling and the walls to put a power switch near the desk and HDMI cables going to a switch under the desk. With two flicks of a switch, the projector is on and my computer has shifted from the wall-mounted LCD to the projector. Long ago I installed a 12″ JL subwoofer, new speakers, and an amplifier, so the experience of watching a movie on the projector is pretty great. The screen lets approximately 40% of the light through, so it’s also possible to reverse the image and watch it from bed.
6. Vertical garden. I’ve gone through a lot of iterations of trying to have plants in the RV, and may have come up with a good solution (I’ve only had it for a week, so I’m not sure yet). Neva Starr makes these on Etsy and I bought one for the RV. What I love about it is that it doesn’t take up any space on my counter and instead uses otherwise unused wall space.
7. Water Filter. I drink a lot of tea, and because tea is mostly water, the quality of the water you brew in makes a huge difference. I put in a giant residential-sized triple-stage water filter to purify water from a separate faucet on my counter. Before I had the filter I found myself not wanting to drink the RV water since it had been sitting in a plastic tank, but now it tastes great.
8. Cedar closet. Damn! I just realized that I forgot to put this in the video! I lined my closet with cedar because I had moths in here and everything I wear is wool. I wasn’t sure if it would actually repel moths, but I did it anyway because it was easy and smells great. To my surprise, the moths disappeared instantly. I also used some extra cedar to line one of my drawers, so my socks and underwear smell cedary and are moth-free.
That’s the bulk of the upgrades. You’ll see a couple more little things in the video, and I’ve probably forgotten a few as well. The RV has been comfortable and fun to live in since day one, but at this point I prefer it to anywhere else I could possibly live. Even when I park in front of the nice houses of friends and family, I always stay in the RV.
For the curious, here are the few RV upgrades that I’d still like to do:
1. Wallpaper. This is low priority because the existing walls aren’t bad (mottled white/pink/blue), but I think it would be cool to have some nice wallpaper or maybe really thin wood veneer up.
2. Better projector screen. See this post… I still haven’t tried any of the suggestions, but I intend to, soon.
3. Better curtains on the sides. Right now I’m renting an amazing parking space, but that’s about to end, so I’ll be back on the street. I may use that as an opportunity to make some curtains that block 100% of the light from the inside and look nicer than my pull-down blinds.
4. Motorcycle Trailer-in-a-Bag. I actually bought one of these and we’ve tried it on my friend’s Rialta (he has the same RV and motorcycle as me), but the trailer is in Texas and I’m in San Francisco (if you’re driving this way… let me know). The TIB is a full motorcycle trailer that can carry my motorcycle across the US, but can also be folded up and stored under the bed. Really amazing.
5. New legs for the table. The ones I have now are crappy adjustable ones, but I’d like to get some nice wood ones and cut them to the perfect length.
6. Crown molding instead of the weird fabric thing on the side. I haven’t quite figured out how I’ll do this one, but I do have some ideas.
7. I have a weird plan to build a monitor into my wall instead of having it swing out on an arm. I haven’t seriously done the work to see if it’s possible, but I’ll probably do it at some point. I may also get a Raspberry Pi (super low voltage computer) and build another screen for it into another wall panel, and use it to show the weather, maybe some security cameras, etc. Excessive, but fun just to do the project.
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By the way– for those of you going to RSD’s superconference next month, I’ll be there, too. Come say hi.
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