Life on the Road | DIY Caravan Renovation | Stripping & Demolishing

Caravan Renovation DIY
Our life in the front yard of our friends during our DIY Caravan Renovation

Stripping & Demolishing stuff. People who know me well, know that I love doing that. Give me some tools and a hammer and I will smash the place down.

Building it up again is Lions skill. Give me the same tools and a hammer and I have no clue what I am doing in regards to making or building stuff. I am the assistant, Lion is the builder. I am the interior designer and get the ideas and inspiration, Lion creates it to an even better idea and builds it. From scratch. I am the sandwich maker, Lion is one of Bunnings best customers. ( For the non-Australians: Bunnings it THE hardware store in Australia )

In other words; We are the perfect renovation team! Our marriage survived, we didn’t do each other’s head in, and we definitely passed our first caravan renovation test. We will definitely do some other DIY Caravan / Campervan renovation projects in the future and our dream is to do a home renovation one day. But let’s start with sharing our first DIY caravan renovation project.

→Read this article← first, if you want to follow our DIY Caravan Renovation project from the beginning.

So where to start?! We planned on renovating the whole caravan – but we thought best to start in the bedroom.

DIY Caravan Renovation Inspiration| Layout of the bedroom

First, we ripped off the bed ( that was attached to the wall ) and got rid of that disgusting carpet. I mean look at it in the below pictures, gross!

The plywood underneath the carpet was in pretty good condition. Lucky us. Same game with the roof, it’s always a bit of a gamble. The previous owners (of course ) said they never had any leaks or water damage, but you never really know till you check it out yourself.

You can see some water stains on the floor though, but that could have been from a bottle of liquid dropped on the floor. It looked ok, we cleaned and sanded it and there was going to be lino on the floor anyways.

When the bed and the carpet were out, we had to decide what to do with the cabinets on the right side of the bed and the benchtop.

First, we were thinking of keeping the storage and rebuild the bed in the same spot as the old bed was. We would build a higher bed, so Sem would have his bed underneath our bed and a play area. So basically he had his own little space ( what was our number one priority ) and we were in the top bunk.

But we thought again and again and then we asked ourselves if we really need all that storage. Nope, we didn’t. So we decided to get rid of the storage cabinets and maybe create a little workspace for me in that corner.

Thinking Thinking Thinking… I could work on the table in the living room, and that would be handy with Sem sleeping in the bedroom anyway. And with him awake, I can barely get anything done anyways. So we might as well rip the whole bench top out.

So we were thinking and trying and talking, and then our lovely friend Jessica ( daughter of B → Insider Joke for one of our lovely readers 🙂 ) came in, had a look at our progress and she came with this brilliant idea.

Why dont you guys make the bed side ways – so over the full width of the caravan?

Ping! Jess was our lightbulb moment. Our bright light and our hero. We were so focused on how we wanted to have that bed and what to do with the storage, that we didn’t even think of that option.

It was suddenly all clear. We would make the bed over the width of the caravan, and Sem’s bed would go under there, where the old storage was, so we had plenty of space left to create his own little room! Amazing Idea! Thanks, Jess, you would be a great interior designer 😉

So we got rid of the benchtop, the sink, the pump, and the drain and ended up with holes in the floor, which Lion fixed with plywood and liquid nails.

DIY Caravan Renovation Inspiration | Furnishing of The living room

After we made the bedroom pretty much ready for the next step of our caravan renovation, Lion went to Bunnings to get the caravan paint and materials for the bed structure. Seriously… We sponsored Bunnings with hundreds of dollars and it became our second home during our caravan renovation 😉

In the meantime, I was looking for ideas for our sofa cushions. Ours were those very old-fashioned outdated browny/white colored ones, and we wanted something dark grey and easily washable ( 2 very important things when you have a toddler 😉 )

I love to look at Pinterest for ideas and found most of our inspiration there. Have a look at our style on our Interior Design Board here and our Caravan Refurbishing Board here

Yes, we love a bit of everything. Modern, Cosy, Tropical, Basics mixed with colors, Boho, Beachy, and Retro. And that all mixed together and you get the perfect recipe.

So via Pinterest, I also found this brilliant Idea of just using fitted sheets for our pillow covers. Easy to get on and off with a few safety pins, washable, and we could change colors if we wanted something else. And it looks pretty tidy. Oh, and it’s cheap! You don’t want to know what it cost to get your caravan cushions refurbished. So you pay a shedload of money and if you spill a drink ( weekly in our household ) your cover is messy and you cant get it off. So using fitted bedsheets for our caravan cushions was perfect.

So we went to Kmart ( our third home during our renovation ) and got two dark grey ones and one light grey fitted sheet and some cozy pillows.

Society6 has the best pillows in the world in regards to color and design, and they are very well priced, and have very regular promo offers. I really couldn’t choose and would love to buy them all if our couch was big enough 😉

Click here to check out all the designs and hundreds of other interior items. Oh and psst… If you buy something via this promo link, you get a 10 $ discount!

DIY Caravan Renovation Inspiration | Storage

So what do you do when you empty out your complete caravan, and you have to store some items you want to re-use later?

Put it in your spare car! 😉 All our stuff and our Kia was still in Mackay during our holiday with our friends Kelvin, Jessica, and Slayde ( Son in law, daughter and grandson of our special reader B 😉 and we bought our new car and caravan in Brisbane. The plan was to put our Kia up for sale as soon as we were in Mackay, but the first few days it turned out the perfect storage for all our caravan stuff!

We sold our Kia within two weeks, so it turned all out perfect!

 

→Click here to read our next article← on our DIY Caravan Renovation series about How to Paint & Wallpaper your caravan.

Want to stay up to date on our renovation progress and our life on the road? Leave your email here← and get updates from us straight to your inbox!

 

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