Franklin and I had looked at a handful of RVs before finding this one for sale on Facebook Marketplace. All of them were older because the budget is very small, but they all looked like … well, like RVs. Any Boomers or GenXers who ever had a motorhome back in the 1970s, ’80s, or ’90s – whatever you remember from that era, that’s what we saw.
We saw lots of brown wood paneling. We saw lots of brown carpeting. We saw lots of seafoam green upholstery. We saw lots of formica countertops. And all of that was fine, because I knew what our budget was and what was available. I had plans to paint and re-upholster and it would all be fine.
But then we saw this RV. Neither of us really knew what to make of it. The pictures the owner sent me really didn’t show us what to expect, and yet, it looked exactly like the pictures. The outside was simple enough – an older Class C motorhome with a cab-over loft that had been repainted by a previous owner (not a professional paint job) and had some black decals slapped on it. That’s fine.
But then we got to the inside.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at in this picture. Was that an upright piano? Was that 2 of them?! Was this a traveling dueling piano RV?! What on earth were these things?
OK, they had a vinyl-covered cushion that seemed to be the right size, so it looks like these are long, sideways bench seats, but why the thick backs? Is that storage? No, the lid doesn’t open the right way to be storage. What could these possibly be?
You can’t sit at these like a picnic table, this makes no sense! Eventually, after we got it home and really spent time opening and closing all the panels we could find with hinges, they appeared to be long bench seats whose seats could unfold and become a giant platform that, presumably, one could put a massive mattress on it and turn it into something like a king bed. I’m told that the previous owners had 9 children and the owners before that who built these strange pieces of furniture had 10 kids! So if you had to cram a dozen kids into an RV, I suppose building a set of long bench seats that converts into a puppy pile bed is one way to do it? But we never figured out what the top unfolding panels were for or how they were used.
This is where Franklin really started to refer to it as a fae chariot. We puzzled over these monstrosities for quite a while before moving on. Underneath one of the hinged panels that we tried folding and unfolding, we found a “gold coin”.
Since this was giving us massive otherworldly vibes, we chose to leave the “coin” where it was. Never accept gifts from the fae, it’s a rule. You never know what they will exact in payment later.
Moving on, the loft bed over the cab seemed quite roomy, as can be glimpsed in a couple of the above pictures. It was big enough and tall enough that I felt I could put a wall up where the roof started to slope down and turn that into a storage closet for the inhabitant of the loft (i.e. Franklin). One of the challenges he was having while staying in my existing RV is the lack of storage space for his personal items. After trying to live out of his suitcase for a week, he eventually got fed up and bought a couple of large baskets to serve as wardrobe drawers / clothes hampers, just to make it easier to sort and organize his stuff. So, a built-in closet or shelving unit in the loft would be an enormous improvement.
Next, we moved onto the kitchen galley:
David says this reminds him of a ship galley. I’m reminded of some very small urban apartments where someone took an old row house and turned it into a multi-family apartment building and tried to cram an entire livable apartment into what used to be one or two bedrooms upstairs, so a kitchen might find itself in what used to be, or currently is, a hallway between the living room and the bedroom / bathroom.
In an RV, that’s not a criticism. Space is always at a premium in a drive-able house so a well-designed, space-saving floorplan is a must.
There is no counter space, but there usually isn’t in a motorhome. The sink comes with a butcher-block slab that fits exactly over the sink to provide some counter space, but I removed it to take a picture of the sink. The pre-previous owners had removed the factory appliances and put in their own, along with a custom-cut butcher-block counter. The gas stove was a thing of beauty. I prefer electric only because that’s all I’ve ever used, but I’m told I’ll start loving gas once I get used to it.
The sink, however … if I was looking at a house or an apartment, I would love this sink. It’s a heavy-duty porcelain vessel sink with a wonderfully high goose-necked, matte black faucet. In a home whose gas mileage depends on the weight it’s hauling, I wasn’t sure this was a great idea. Plus, that super high faucet means that I can’t fit an over-the-sink dish drainer since, y’know, there are no counters on which to put a regular dish drainer. I wasn’t sure if I would keep this sink or not, but it sure is pretty.
The bathroom was spacious for an RV:
I really liked that it had an actual bathtub. Not that I ever take baths, but sometimes, you just need a large basin for things. I like having the option and it makes the shower bigger than the usual RV shower. There was plenty of storage for linens and bathroom supplies and the toilet was situated so that there is room for knees no matter how tall you are.
Again with the vessel sinks, though. And, again, in a house, I would have really loved this sink and faucet, which is shaped like a bird. But it didn’t match the color scheme or theme I had in my head. We’ll see what to do with it later, though.
On to the bedroom!
The bedroom came with a platform big enough for an RV-Queen, which is a queen sized mattress but about 5 inches shorter. In other words, it’s the width of a queen and the length of a twin. It also came with foam blocks and a mattress on top of the foam, but the mattress was pretty gross and not terribly comfortable so I got rid of it.
At the foot of the bed was a giant cubicle storage unit. Once again, in a house, this would have been a great find! Certainly more expensive than anything I could have put in! But in a moving house, cupboards without doors are just a flying debris hazard! Everything in those cubbies will slide out as soon as I take a sharp turn, or (crosses fingers) get into a wreck, it will all come flying out.
So the cubicle shelves will have to go but I’m definitely taking them with me when I move. They’ll go in my next stationary dwelling, for sure! I’ll build a set of closets that will hold the drawer units I currently use in my existing RV, and there should be a tiny little space left over on the end for a laptop desk.
There’s an awful lot of wall space over that window. I’m not used to having any visible wall space anywhere, so I’ll have to think if I want to do something with it. I could put another cabinet over the window, or I could hang some art. Some people put a wall-mounted air conditioning unit on the back wall of their RVs, which is a possibility. I’m not sure if I’ll want that, since I’m usually too cold, not too hot, and I’m planning on moving to the Pacific Northwest, which is not known for it’s heatwaves. I’ll have to think about what to do here.
The platform bed itself is part of the slideout, so that whole wall with the trimmed arch moves out about 4 feet, taking the bed with it and giving plenty of walking space between the foot of the bed and the storage wall. Plus, about a third of the bed platform, at the foot, raises up to reveal even more storage under the bed.
Even without the slide, that bed is way bigger than my existing bed and I’m much happier having walking space all the way around it, instead of the person against the wall having to crawl over the person at the edge to get in or out of the bed. The bed is bigger and there is more storage, so big plus for me!
The roof looked to be in pretty good shape:
As did the engine:
One of my favorite elements of the RV is the porch lights:
These are clearly an after-market add-on but they really add to the whole fae-ness of it all. These lights are set to turn on automatically when it gets dark, and then they glow with a flickering orange glow like candlelight. Until they detect movement near the door, that is, at which time they suddenly turn a bright white!
Even under their bright setting, they do not cast a lot of light away from the RV like a security light, or even a standard porch light. So these should not be too annoying for any neighboring campers on the trip. But it does tend to spook people when lights start turning on as they approach places they shouldn’t be, so I like that.
So we went home and thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it some more. This RV would take a LOT more work to get it comfortable than any of the others we looked at. Everything else had been pretty much ready to go, just outdated colors and furnishings. That’s livable. This would take considerably more work, but once we started doing the serious construction, it would be very little extra effort to do the aesthetic work at the same time.
The more we thought about it, the more we both felt drawn to this RV. It may not have been the smartest decision, because the others were ready to go as-is, but this one felt more like “us”. Plus, it was the only RV in our price range that had 2 slideouts. And that makes this motorhome just HUGE inside when the slides are all out. That feels a little more comfortable when living in it full-time. Although I hope to find a real place to live eventually when I get out west, I expect to be living in this RV for quite a while.
I’m excited about the size, and even though it will be a lot more work, meaning it will way longer before it’s ready for the trip, I do like the idea of doing a lot of this work myself. A ready-made RV might be pretty or convenient, but there’s just something about sitting down on furniture you built yourself and looking around a room you painted and decorated yourself that gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of my life in fixer-uppers and I never really got to experience brand-new, ready-to-use stuff. Either way, this is a project and I’m excited and trepidatious about it!
