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today we are going to be talking about some mods and upgrades that we have made
to our RV now after you've been living in your RV with your family full-time
for any stretch of time you start to realize some things that are working and
some things that are not working so today we're going to talk about some of
the mods and upgrades that we have made to our rig to be able to make full-time
living a little bit easier and a little bit less stressful ermahgerd yeah we
have a slight mess with heater duct and I have to say I do not think that this I
don't think that this happened when we owned this I think this was from like
prior to us owning it because we've taken some really good measures to
prevent rodents so I know we haven't had any wow what a mess
this heater ducting is under this Jay couch so we've already cleaned up the AC
there was a bunch of stuff up in the AC shrouds and so we clean that all up so
now we were basically trying to one of these had a hole in it and we had to you
know pull it a little bit to try and get the clamp off it and basically when I
did pull it
you can see in there there's a mess this is an utter mess all right so I went to
Lowe's and got some new stuff here so we're gonna go ahead and route this
through here and they're brand new heater duct no heater duct here nice and
fresh heater duct so underneath of this particular Jay couch is some here dr.
work and you can see these vents here now we had some interesting things
happen this summer where the kids would stack stuff on the back and it would
fall behind and so we were having to pull this off of where it's clipped into
all of the time to retrieve lost items which made us realize there is a ton of
space that is underneath of this particular couch so because we also
needed to do some work and replace some of the heater ducting that was here me
realized there is a ton of space underneath here that is not being
utilized and was completely empty but could also not be utilized because of
how this front piece went on this whole piece was one solid piece so it to be
able to pull it off you had to pull the whole thing so my husband and I had a
great idea and he was able to execute on that idea so what we did is we installed
two hinges here and actually cut this board and then made it to where it can
swing open just as you see here now we've got a few more bins that we can
have underneath here for storage for things like clothing or books books last
summer where my nemesis where our kitchen counter was
overflowing with books and with stuffed animals and with all of the things that
our daughter likes to carry with us because this is her space here and it
overflowed into the kitchen so this year that won't happen because now we've been
able to add two more bins underneath of this couch with a simple mod of
ingenuity and maybe just slight little bit of skill so now one of the first
mods that we did was needing to create some privacy for both of our kids now we
have a class a Motorhome and we purposefully chose this particular
Motorhome because it had two opposing couch areas
unlike a lot of motor homes that have a bunk house near the back bedroom we did
not want that type of setup for our family we wanted to have the kids a
little bit closer to the front why we had the bedroom closer to the back so
when we were shopping for a different motorhome we purposely wanted one with
two couches and that's what we did now we have one of our kiddos that
sleeps on one couch on one side and then the other on the other side but it
became very quickly apparent that even with that setup and plenty of space for
them for sleeping they needed a little bit more privacy than just what that
couch provided so one of the very first mods that we did was to hang these
curtains on the couch areas now this was very cheap and this was very easy so all
that I did is I went to Walmart and I got command hooks a curtain rod and then
I actually used these repurposed curtains that we had on hand from one of
our kids bedrooms so the nice thing about this is it's got
three command hooks so that it's supported in the middle as well and then
these curtains just slide over this sleeping space and so this is our
daughter sleeping space on this side and then over on this side is where our sons
sleeping spaces so same thing just command hooks and curtain rod and then I
bought these curtains at Walmart as well so they each have curtains that they can
slide over their sleeping spaces for privacy changing clothes just if they
have had enough of one another and need some privacy now the great thing about
this is that even why we are driving down the road and these slides come in
they can still use these curtains as we're going down the road so they can
still have that private space even as we're traveling on travel days if they
feel like that they need that space it makes a great privacy area for their own
personal space which kind of leads me into mod number two now mod number two
is something that we took this idea from the previous owners that we bought this
rig from and just kind of went a little bit bigger scale but what that second
mod is is underneath of this particular couch which this couch is a jackknife so
it jack connects into a bed so underneath of here this comes off and
you have space that is underneath of here the previous owners actually
modified some of these totes so these totes if you just go to the store and
get them are too long to fit underneath there so they've cut them in half and
use some gorilla take in some duct tape with some screws to make them the exact
length that they need to be to fit underneath here now this is great for
downsizing and for kids because what we've told our kids is that they get to
bring whatever will fit in the tote if it doesn't fit in the tote it doesn't
need to come with us so they each have one that will be specifically for their
clothes so one tote will be for clothes for our daughter and one tote will be
for clothes for our son and then the third tote can be used for things like
books or toys or stuffed animals or what we have found always happens is we
always end up picking up a ton of souvenirs on the way in the form of
things like seashells or just little things that we find here and there that
the kids want to bring back with them as a memento so we actually try to leave
this third toe a little bit empty to be able to have that extra space for extra
things to come with us so the next mod that we made to the RV with some
organizational things from Ikea now I love going to Ikea is to be able to
chuck for things for small living because they always have great things to
help make that easier one of the things that I found is this trash can that
actually mounts to the wall and then you just put like a grocery sack on the
inside of this now I had one of these that I put in our back bedroom but I
quickly realized these also work great for storage and organization as well so
I added a second one in our bathroom area to be able to put like our cleaning
bottles and our disinfectant wipes in all of that in a second bin then to be
able to get those things up off of the floor where they were before and against
the walls the next thing that I got from Ikea was this organizational rack now
this is amazing and a life saver for travel days because where we used to
have things like toothbrushes and toothpaste in just cups sitting on the
counter this means they can be up off of the counter and we don't have to do
anything different on travel days every travel day you always clear the counters
off when you have a rig whether it's a travel trailer or a motor home like we
have but now we don't have to worry about clearing this counter space off
anymore other than just a thing of hand soap that will transfer to up here but
this works great for toothbrushes and toothpaste and combs and brushes in
anything that you would normally put on your bathroom counter so it's up it's a
way it's tidy and you don't have to wear about then changing that location of
those items during their travel days so another one of the mods that we made was
in our back bedroom we got rid of those old window box with the day/night shades
so what I did is I installed a curtain rod at the top but also at the bottom so
that these curtains easily slide back and forth on these two rods and I did it
then on both sides on this window and then we have another window now the nice
thing about this is that it's nice and it's secure so it's very easy to go back
and forth and it's gonna block out the majority of the light and then this was
very easy to modify I bought an existing curtain and then I cut it at the bottom
and then I just used a sewing machine to put another channel at the bottom
basically to slide along this lower curtain rod now here's the deal I'm not
Suzy homemaker I am NOT like an amazing seamstress you want something super
crafty don't call me but I can at least sew a straight line on a sewing machine
so this type of mod is not difficult at all even if you don't have super amazing
sewing skills to be able to do when it comes to curtains
now the next mod that we have done and I swear this is a our viewers inside
secret is command hooks you can never have too many command hooks so as you
can see on this wall I have command hooks and if you do a tour of our RV
you're going to see command hooks on nearly every door and every wall and
this is why because there's so much wall space that can be utilized so we use
command hooks for things like hanging up towels after a shower to dry for things
like hanging up a ballcap for things like hanging up your jacket at the end
of the day I also hang my pajamas at the end of the day so that I have them just
easily accessible to change back into at night but you can never have too many
command hooks around in your RV because they come in useful for so many
different things now let's talk RV upgrades one of the things that a ton of
our viewers do is immediately they upgrade their mattress well the mattress
that came with our rig wasn't horribly uncomfortable but it was not the most
comfortable thing we've slept on either however we didn't want to invest a ton
of money into it at the time so what we did is we installed a memory foam
mattress topper and we'll put a link in the description below to the one we got
on Amazon but this has made a world of difference so this provides lots of the
comfort that you would find in a traditional memory foam mattress without
the price tag of a whole new mattress so this is one of the upgrades that we did
immediately that helps us have a way better night's sleep and made things
much more comfortable for full-time living so another upgrade that we made
was in this TV area now when we purchased this RV what was in this area
was one of the old really CRT type of TVs that had the tube in the back and
they're super heavy in fact it was so heavy that this was actually starting to
separate from where it's mounted to the ceiling because of the weight that was
in this so one of the upgrades that we made was of course a flat-screen TV but
we also added this Bose sound bar now the nice thing about this Bose sound bar
is that it's actually plugged in to a plug that has power when the inverter is
on so we can use this for sound if we want as we're driving down the road in
addition to when we're just hooked up to power normally so it was a nice upgrade
and it fits very nice within this whole space so it doesn't take up any
additional room so another one of the upgrades that we made was to change out
the stock stereo for this particular stereo that has apple carplay now this
is nice because not only can you attach it with bluetooth through one of your
phones you can attach with the cable as well and you'll be
able to then use the navigation that's built in another one of the things that
we then added with some extra speakers now this is kind of a funny upgrade if
you think about it because while we're calling them - speakers you'll see
they're really just some smaller speakers that we've set onto the dash
board with some adhesive underneath to keep them from moving on travel days but
it creates a very nice stereo setup for when you are driving down the road to be
able to enjoy those driving tunes thank you so much for watching this video on
RV mods and upgrades we hope that you enjoyed it and we invite you to like
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check out our RV tour video at the link above until next time we'll see you on
you