Hey I'm Ashley Cutrone and this is our renovated RV. I live here with my family of five.
We decided to buy land and in that process we needed somewhere to live
while we were building a house so we thought let's do an RV and renovate it
and I don't know just go on an adventure like when else do get to do something
like that? We saw this RV and it had three bunk beds in the back and we
were like "sold". This is us. This is for our family. This is it. Well we
actually renovated the whole thing in three weeks and we did it on a budget
too. We renovated the entire thing including all the furniture in it for
less than $3,000. We decided to design the interior of this because I wanted it to
feel like home. It was just kind of a place I guess for me to try new things
and be a little bit old like doing a really fun back slash in the kitchen. I
mean sounds like a little thing, but it was like oh this is kind of like I can
do whatever I want because it's a trailer. So my husband and I did a lot of
the work ourselves. We just got creative with where we found things
and because of that we are now renovating an Airstream that we're
working on and we're hoping to have it done in the next month or so and we plan
on selling it.
Welcome to the Patron RV. Come on in.
We renovated this entire thing in three weeks. One of the things that we loved
the most inside of our RV is this area over here.
It's our coffee station. We love coffee. There was a piece of furniture right here
that we actually ripped out and I got super lucky with this.
I didn't even measure it when I bought it and I put it together and just happened
to fit perfectly into this spot right here. Over here we have our kitchen and
in the kitchen I really wanted to do real tile inside of it. I knew we were
staying stationary and I could have a little more fun with the design so I put
cement tiles inside of the kitchen and then also did a little fun subway tile
over here just to mix it up. I took a few risks in here. We also re faced all the
cabinets inside just to really update it to a more modern look so they, all the
cabinets have shader cabinets on them. This counter top we ripped off and we put
it was actually a desktop that we bought and we ended up cutting it and
configuring it. Like this piece over here was actually inside of the sink area so
we made it fit into this spot so it was affordable and it works perfectly. This
is our pantry and in our kitchen we have four drawers and we really don't need
any more than that. I feel like we don't waste as much food really. We have a
smaller fridge and we have a smaller pantry. We've realized that we how much
money we used to spend on groceries and then we would waste so much food because
we would just buy to fill our fridge up and then we would never eat everything. So
now we really just buy what we need which has been awesome to kind of
realize that. This was like our game changer. When we saw the RV we hadn't
really looked at a lot and so we saw the triple bunk beds and we were like this
is the only RV that has three bunk beds like this is ours. We have to get it. It's
meant to be. Now we know that like RVs do have bunk beds in them. So each of our
kids has a bunk and then they all have a bin at the end of their bed for clothes
and that is all they have. A few stuffed animals. My older son has like a shoebox
of Legos and that's pretty much it on toys
and extras. That's all their clothes. That's everything. In this tiny spot over
here we have another little closet space to kind of hold some storage like all of
our coloring books and like little arts and crafts. Inside is our huge bathroom.
It's so big. It's so tiny. We did like a slight renovation in here. We updated the
tile, painted to make it feel brighter, and updated the cabinet faces and that's
pretty much it. We left the shower as is. Maybe one day we'll update it, but it
just wasn't really a huge priority for us. This entire area we actually ripped
everything out. There were cabinets like storage cabinets that came down to here.
They went across the whole pop out. I felt like we didn't really need the
storage space and I wanted it to feel bigger and more open so we ripped all of
it out, updated all the lighting throughout, and then this was a built-in
table here and we ripped out that as well. And again, since we stay stationary,
I was able to find a really affordable table,
brought one of our chairs from our old house. This is where the kids color. We
homeschooled here for a few months and this is where we eat and have all of our
meals. This was a very old nasty couch and this whole area was carpeted on the
ground so ripping all that out and ripping out these upper cabinets here
made it feel so much more open. I love pillows and they're like my number one
thing I love to change is are my pillows so I usually buy pillow covers so I'm
not buying the actual pillow and every couple months I'll just swap one out.
Kind of keep things fresh in this tiny little space. I love playing with things
like this in here for the kids. This sort of thing is like a little letter board.
I think stuff like that is important to have when you're living tiny like little
things that make your family yours. This is a bench and also our coffee table.
It's easily moved over there and it's also the cover for our trash can.
Here is our master suite. This was like a dark dungeon before. It was so dark and
brown and kind of scary and on the back of our bed here on the outside there was
a huge cougar and even though I had a curtain hanging there it actually shown
through the the curtain and it was terrifying. So we ended up painting
outside the RV. Covering up the headboard back there. It was the window I just hung
a shower curtain just to kind of make a faux headboard. We each have our own side
for storage. This is mine. This is my husband's. Down there we have our pants
and then like a little dusky kind of bin. Yeah this is a great space and then we
also have doors that can close, which is awesome so we have our own
little space in here. One of the spots we actually did not renovate is underneath
the bed. The old blue carpet is still underneath there and it's on hydraulics
and it comes up and so we store a lot of stuff under here. There's gifts or extra
bedding things like that so we keep that under here. So this is a great spot and
everything inside of the trailer, every cupboard has space. I don't jam things
packed with things. We have space to grow so when we open a cupboard it doesn't
feel like things are rolling out of it so it makes you feel less cluttered and
more comfortable in your house when everything's not just like rolling out.
So I try to just keep everything organized and just try to use every
space for something.
So this is the outside of the RV. This is where the Cougar used to be that looked
into our bedroom. This whole thing was like kind of creamy and blue stripes had
Cougars all over it because it's a 2003 Cougar Keystone. We just decided to paint
this recently to kind of elevate it to the way we did in the inside and we're
so happy we did because now it feels clean all over. So over in this area here
everything's kind of set aside right now because it is winter time and because we
stay stationary we are hooked up to electrical and also hooked up to a
septic tank. So here we have our hookups for the septic and it goes over to the
septic tank and the gray water and we actually have a macerator which my
husband installed so it allows everything to flow up into the septic
tank area. Back here we have some storage, keeps like all of our tools and
everything and beach towels. I usually put the kids backpacks back there so
it's a great spot for storage. Our outdoor space we use a lot during the
summertime or when it's not windy and cold like right now but we have a fire
pit out here and little lights and the need to make it feel more like home is
always a good thing. So this bin here has all the kids shoes
in it and a lot of times like balls and stuff get put in there. Just an outside
storage space. We can have the door open and come and sit out here and have the
fire going it's such an awesome like hangout space and we really actually
love to entertain here. Even though it's tiny inside we still have people over
and families over and the kids run around outside and we can use the
outdoors also. It really helps for that extra space.
My best advice for downsizing or making a big change like this or going tiny so
I would say, less is more. You don't need everything like you don't need salad
tongs, you can use two forks you know. Little
things like that seem so tiny but when you add all those little things up it
just creates more clutter. And then the biggest thing is just you have to have
grace for yourself and one another because you're gonna step on each
other's toes, you're gonna get in each other's way, like you're gonna lose your
mind here and there. At the end of the day you just have to be like okay you
know what tomorrow's a new day. You just have to have grace and you can 't be so
hard on yourself.
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. If you did be sure to LIKE comment and
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Have a great week!