Best Upgrades to Make your RV Feel like Home

do you need space saving ideas to make everything fit in your rv are you wondering what modifications you want to make to your rv to make it more comfortable to live in in this video we'll show you what changes and upgrades we made to our rv to make it more comfortable for us to live in full time and we'll give you ideas to customize your rv to make it awesome for your lifestyle [Music] he's steve and i'm erika puvalowski and we travel full-time in our rv to job sites around the united states in our 2020 open range 371 mbh now don't worry you don't have to have the same rv as us but you're going to get some great tips and ideas out of this video we're going to cover three different subjects in this video and we have the time links below so if you want to jump to a certain section you can do that by hitting the numbers in the description first up is the modifications we made to the manufacturer's build to make the rv fit for our lifestyle next is space saving solutions and my favorite this helped us find spots for everything that we needed to bring in the rv with us and make them easy to access in the last is upgrades which is his favorite these are things we customize added to the rv so it will work for us to travel full time across the united states now we have the products that we talk about in the video in the description below so if you're interested you can just click on the link to find out more information now let's get into it this section is about the modifications we did to the rv after the original factory build our front wardroom has this hook up here for all of our clothes it was a little bit too close to the front where my big clothes were hitting on the door we tried to close it i moved it back just far enough so it still had wood to grip into but it has room to close the door on the drawers down below these are very shallow from the factory they don't open about that far i built a new box behind here so i can put my big jeans down there have a lot more space i am jack of all trades i can do a lot of things i basically followed the template they had before so everyone's drawers be a little bit different but it was pretty simple to do these so you went from 12 inches to 18 inches yes and also on the front of these we had an issue with these drawers opening up as we traveled i installed these little locks on here so when you push this button the drawer does not open anymore i'm sure you're aware rvs don't come with the best mattress when they are built we upgraded our mattress we'll talk about that a little bit but we did a few things on the mattress area so it wouldn't have any issues the ross is going to go for a ride here it's going to be interesting with a heavier mattress we had to put bigger shocks underneath and we went from the factory ones but i think we're 60 pound shocks to 120 pound shocks and what we had this issue down the road was this piece of wood that the shocks hold on to it only had three screws going through the plywood after a couple travels the three screws ripped out and the piece of wood was laying down on the bottom and the bed would pick up anymore so we picked the mattress up i just screwed it all the way through doesn't look pretty but it works another thing underneath the mattress you see the duct tape up here where the hinges for the bed lift we put that over top the hinges and the screws we were afraid that the mattress moving around will start poking a hole in the bottom so we put duct tape over top of that we have the pull down blackout shades when we pull these down and the fan and air conditioner was blowing this would flop around i put a piece of velcro on each side of the bottom which took care of that and we also worked night shift from time to time and we had some extra light coming through on the side of these then i put some more velcro on each side so the gaps were tightened up on the side it makes it much darker sleeping during the day when this slide comes in when we travel we'll boondock in different areas and it makes a gap underneath of the bed we found that there's a little space that the cats can go underneath the bed and up into the dead space around the top of the bed i put some cardboard underneath there and stapled it in once i took off the top piece of plywood and that took care of that this is a pet friendly rv and some of the things i scratched my head on a little bit like we wish there wasn't any carpet up here in the front but we're not going to take that out but one of the big things was your motion sensor lights so this motion sensor turned this light on and there's also light in the hallway night number one sleeping in the rv the cat's coming around setting up the motion sensor we had to take care of that i took off the light down here took the wire clipped it put some tape over top of it but i didn't realize at that time there was a light in the hallway it didn't take me long to realize i had to do something more i put some duct tape temporarily over top of the sensor but what i really had to do was take the sensor off find the main power wire into the whole motion light system and disable that we are not tv watchers so the mount that was up here for mounting a tv on we got rid of that and put our calendar so we can plan out our travels ah there's so much room to do these videos don't worry the seat is down naturally when you're in the bathroom you want to grab something underneath the counter extra toilet paper you'd want to grab a handle like this open it and close it our door the handle was on this side so you had a stretch way across i took the door off put the hinges around and the handle upside down so now it works the correct way also in the bathroom all these drawers were this size and they pulled out i took the bottom drawer took a little bit of figure to make this work basically i took both drawers knocked the bottom out of the one took some wood to make a box inside it and it's a one deeper drawer so we can put taller things like shampoos and things like that we took some of these hooks from the hallway closet and put them in the bathroom for hanging our towels we have cats and there's a top loft above the mid bunk and we built a cat launching pad off of the ladder so the cast can get up to the top easier if you want to see how we put that together the video is above our garbage is underneath the sink with a pullout drawer the handle was on the side of it and it pulled out really quick and it really didn't work i took the handle out of here put it to the top in the center and pulls out much smoother another handle that we moved was on the longer pantry door it was all the way down at the bottom when you try to open it up the door came out really crooked i moved the handle up to a more natural position it was closer to the little latch opens smoother inside of the whole pantry i added a divider shelf between each shelf to utilize a space better above the microwave this did not have a little shock to hold it open it was very annoying to try to hold this open and put our grocery bags up here so a little shock on the right side of that on our spice pull out area the things would fall behind at the top so i screwed a piece of wood behind that as a backer so we don't lose things in the pantry and that was really hard to try to go fetch those too we have the storage that's behind the tv over top the fireplace and the bottom layer of that shelf is a piece of wood that's stapled up underneath of some boards what we figured out was when we travel and all the things in there would bounce around it was pushing that piece of wood down and popping the staples out what i did to fix that was put some boards underneath of it when i pulled the fireplace out put some screws brace all the way across so that board is not going to fall down anymore in a min bunk room as you can see i'm tall six foot five and the bunker room was a little bit short for me it's not really an issue to me get in and out of here so we don't have to do any modifications in this room but a lot of mid bunks have a loft that's above this couch so that would be an issue for me if we had one of those would have taken it out but as you can see i can sit down without hitting my head now we're two storage solutions and this is definitely my section because steve built it but he definitely didn't design it one of my favorite things and you'll see this all throughout the rv are these ikea organizers they're boards and you can buy all these pieces separate move them around however it works and then like these are clear little bins you can pull out and then they have some rubber bands bungees i use them to hold these on so when we travel these doors don't come off and then they also have these really great bags like i just love this thing and that's going to be linked down below and with this closet one reason we wanted this rv is because the washer and dryer was not in the master bedroom that helped us out with weight distribution so when the washer is running we're not shaking as much as other people and then we can also put one of the litter boxes in the bedroom that we needed for our four cats i also have another one of these ikea organizers on this side of the bed it didn't fit perfect steve trimmed it down and he has one on the door of the bathroom and one of my favorite items is this under the bed shoe organizer it fits out of the way the mattress does come to the edge of the board it's not hanging over and the shoes are pretty much flush with it so that way i can bring more shoes in the rv and i have command hooks everywhere i love them i have some command hooks hiding at the bottom of steve's door this is his organizer more up top these are mine you can get brown to match the wood white to match the white walls if i would have known i would bought stock and command before we bought the rv in the bathroom again we have ikea if you use one of these just make sure that you leave space for your head which you can do because you can move everything around open it up steve we use these baskets everywhere we put baby wipes in there to utilize the space better in the bathroom we have the soap organizers which are great they do not fall off i get that question a lot i have my shampoo conditioner steve has his and then we have soap over here and what we use that for is when we travel we remove everything off the countertop so that way we can easily get to the soap when we stop and use the bathroom and then we have these hooks these big command hooks are awesome they hold a lot of weight they're rubber and things don't fall off of them and we use those two to hang our ring gear off of we do construction and hurricane relief that way it gives us room to hang it have another one over here and then we use a brown towel for a bath mat so when we shower we put this on the floor to collect the water when we're done we hang it back up to air dry and it works and then we don't have a bath mat in the way we have a wire basket on the outside of the cabinet to put kleenex so it's easy to reach and the kleenex box fits in there perfect inside our bathroom cabinet we have a whole bunch of the clear command cubbies and then little containers that we can easily take out and that they fit and that keeps everything organized we never have a problem when we stop if the drawers are full if this doesn't have a lot of stuff in it then some of these items will fall over and then we also have those little cubbies in this drawer to keep everything organized it's so hard to film in these small spots in the rv this is a hallway closet that had hooks that we moved to the bathroom door and we took those out installed this cubby so we can put sunglasses hats gloves things that we need have a little area to put stuff at the bottom and then on the side we have some command hooks and we put our umbrellas in there we use the loft as a cat area and storage so we get their cages up off the floor which is great because they're big and bulky we have extra toilet paper paper towel cat clothes because they need that their beds and a heating pad you like it up here squeak i think he approves over here is the cat closet it's up out of the way steve requested that i put everything up high so when he walks by he doesn't rub it and knock it down so these are the harnesses each cat has a different color so it's fitted to them and then we have a little thing of cat items but these are the command bins that i love in a tip is to buy the replacements that are blue for the stickies those are for waterproof for the bathroom and they're a lot stronger so if you have the clear ones they tend to come off after a while so i try to replace all of them with the stronger ones and then we have the command hooks and then all the little cubbies all up here to put different items up out of the way construction we have a lot of safety glasses and i have more command hooks these already have hooks up here but i put little clear ones for keys and then underneath of here i put even more that way we can hang items like fly swatters and stuff and they're not using the same hooks as the coats and then we also stack floor mats down here that way when we need to use them when it's muddy we can take our muddy work shoes off and either put them in the bonus room or put them underneath the slide and if we're not using them then we can just stack them up here and then they're thin you know easy out of the way now one of my favorites and steve said we didn't need it and now he actually loves it he doesn't admit it as much he'll be like yeah i like it is my command center this is great to put all your notes we have dry erase boards we have a cork board that way when you get information just like right a campground right now they give you the wi-fi password get your information you can pin it up we have our emergency information for where we're at we have our maintenance checklist the food that we have so remember what to eat so it doesn't go bad absolutely love this then up here i can barely reach i have a stool to get up here i have all these different cubbies to store everything that way we can get the most amount of stuff then i can lift them up and bring them down and i like everything to be functionable so i wanted these up on the wall so i could use them all the time so i have a broom and a mop in a tip i just bought a new broom and it didn't fit because there's a difference between a kitchen broom and a garage broom they look the same but the handle is bigger and bigger handles do not fit in here we have four cats and they need a scratching post so we put a cloth one right here wood here because my two that have nails love the wood even though they also took over this but i said hey i'll let you have it since i made you come and live in an rv with me and you were a feral outside cat and next we're going into the fridge these plastic bins are absolutely amazing to travel not have your food everywhere we have them all in the fridge we have different sizes some on the stove i'm not using them in the fridge right now i just keep them up there and then when i need them i put them in the fridge we also remove the door here to put a litter box that way we have another litter box out of the way for our cats we have more hanging baskets i put some inside the doors outside the doors easy access for the items that we use i also absolutely love this paper towel holder thank you kyd for the idea we use these cat backpacks daily so we want to make sure they're easy to get to so i got these little door hanger hooks to hang them on the baskets are lightweight so it doesn't put too much pressure on it i also i don't have anywhere like my old rv to put this but i put my banana hanger but you can use it for anything it's a nice fold up hook also remember what those hooks we use for the cat backpacks take those down when they travel because they will bounce off and can get caught underneath your slides true story and then we also put a couch cover on because this is a cat couch so it doesn't get all scratched up on the back side of the island we have a fold up shelf which gives us more room for the items that we use all the time and then when we travel it easily claps and we can set it over here with items on top of it and it travels nice and easy then we have the famous cat window seat of course there's not going to be a cat sitting in here hold on a second squeak there that's what it looks like most of the time the cat window seat this is nice because it's up out of the way and they use it all the time and then we took the four chairs that came with the rv and got rid of them and there's only two of us so we have a chair and a bench slash scratching post but the bench we use to put shoes in it so we have more shoe storage and then we can also put our smaller shoes our tennis shoes and flip-flops underneath here so that is very multi-purpose in eyewear size 15s and those do fit inside of the bench sideways well the boots you gotta turn those sideways is this a bonus round it is or the bonus room it's the bonus room so on the door we put extra hooks so we can hang items most of the time steve will get his work clothes ready for the next day and put them in here or oh there is the door of course rosco wants in rascal what's up she's just following all of us and then we also have hooks over here so we use these all the time for work clothes basically come on in i also have command hooks all over on this wall so i can put my exercise clothes and help air them out and these are out of the way when the slides come in i have to switch to the wide angle to get it in i have little command hooks right here to put up pictures and then over here is my favorite because this is our office space we have a charging station where i have all of our chargers and little cubbies to put cords then we have another dry erase board cork board for messages and then i have all my office supplies we'll get to the washer and dryer in the next section but since we got the combo unit we have all this room up here for extra items so we put our dirty clothes up here we have ice machine and our dehumidifier sits in there steve has a camera again so small to get these in here so these laundry baskets also a kyd favorite that pulled up nice and i do believe they fit in a suitcase too so these are great and then i also have two other types the fight the struggle that one was heavy these types too so if we do do our laundry if we have blankets sheets or a much stuck in someone's house we'll break these out so we can transport stuff easily as you will see these baskets also turn into squeaks toy we leave them out you saw that one coming everything turns into squeaks toys what did you say raska if you are getting some good ideas from this video please hit the like button with that paw and then we're on to the next section with steve i told erica i'd be okay sleeping on the rv mattress well after one night sleeping in it she definitely proved me wrong we upgraded our king size mattress which is a 72 by 80 inch mattress to a wilderness rv mattress those are the ones that come in the boxes and you put them in there and they all flop out make it to a mattress the tip for that is to make sure you bring the box into the bedroom where your mattress is going to go and let the mattress unflop there do not do it in the living room and try to drag that big mattress down the hallway yeah i think everyone does that so we're going to show you how thick the mattress is you can compare it to yours at home so also put a little l on your sheet so you can get them the right way on and ours so you can see this is about a thick the mattress is so it's a solid about eight to ten inches thick and we have a heated mattress pad on the bed which is really thin but the heat is very nice also a waterproof cover in case we ever had a spill or a mess we do have cats we make sure the mattress is protected you mean cat puke yes as your rv might have is one of those plastic toilet seats that feels pretty chintzy so did ours we took that trucked it went to a local home depot store i think it was actually menards but a wood toilet seat that fit on there wasn't a perfect fit but it works for what we need to do and it's easier to clean that little thing right here is a little felt piece so it doesn't hit the wall remember i am six foot five i am standing in our shower with plenty of clearance i still have about three inches over my head inside of the dome and the number one reason why we bought this because he had to fit in the shower and many of them you can't when you're six foot five okay now we're talking about taking showers these action oxygenetics shower heads i'm not saying that quite right these are a lifesaver they work really well in campers because campers usually have lower water pressure and they somehow input air into the water and comes out to make a nice spray really helps for rinsing off and making your water last longer it has great water pressure now we do have a 12 gallon water heater which is bigger than most but with this shower head we can shower for a solid 10 to 12 minutes before running out of hot water and that is not shutting off the water the entire time let it rip well you can kind of see it but you can't we have the ring security system our main keypad is right by the main door we have three cameras with the door sensors motion sensors and also the flood free sensors what's really nice about the ring system we pay for the subscription throughout the year which is around 100 and it has a 4g card inside of the main base station so if we don't have wi-fi it will pick up at least send us alerts but otherwise we tether it to our wi-fi hotspot and we can log in to see the live view on the cameras so i can see my cats too when i'm not around and talk to them yes and freak them out and then they run we picked up this tip from changing lanes so thank you chad and tara inside of our vents where the air conditioners are we have a little rubber door stop stuck up in there that helps disrupt the air and push out the vents to get a little more air conditioning airflow okay i had to kick steve out for this one because i wanted the kitchen faucet and he would not do this clip justice so this kitchen faucet is an upgrade from the other one i don't think the other one moved at all or it was like really tight to go back and forth and i always have to get the food out and this one has a normal like regular flow the sprayer but what's awesome about it is a power sprayer to clean the edges of the sink show us how it works oh yes don't you come in for this come on regular spray power spray blast all that stuff off of the sink it's like a power washer for your sink normally rvs only come with one fire extinguisher by the main walk-in door we upgraded that fire extinguisher and added some additional ones one in the kitchen a bigger one in the bedroom and also ones outside by our propane tanks in our back cabinets where we keep our food we have lots of cubbies in here for storage and we added some reflectix insulation behind and on the top of this cabinet and that kept it about 10 to 12 degrees cooler in the summer months we were a little concerned if it would create moisture behind that so i kept checking and left some spots open in case moisture was to accumulate its spot to go and has been great for us and keeping the food cool we have the splendid combo washer and dryer it is the vented unit for the vent i had to cut a hole in the side here and then the hose goes through the basement had to cut another hole in the side of the rv for the vent to go out when you buy the dryer kits that come with these they only come with a two foot flexible hose i had to go to a hardware store to pick up an eight foot flex hose and that was just long enough to make that work in our mid bunk situation also right behind the washer dryer is the ring flood freeze sensor and if we ever overflow the grate tank by forgetting to open it it will go off right away so we can clean up the mess before it is a problem we installed the keyless entry door lock which is really nice without having to carry a key in your pocket every time you go in and out of the rv now we do have a spare around here somewhere just in case a battery is ever to die so we can still get into the rv squeaks behind your head watching on our way to this campsite we're trying to beat a snowstorm got a little bit of snow and salt in the process our rv is trashed we need to find a car wash after we leave this campground looking at our outdoor shower we have all these little mini fridges out here it's totally outdoor kitchen looking looking at our outdoor kitchen we have one of these little rv mini fridges outside here i ended up putting a child proof latch on here to keep the door shut because when you put item aside there it would open this up and let all the cold air out and our items get warm in this area you can't see it from the outside because everything is inside the basement i remove the batteries from the front bake apartment put them behind the fridge in the outdoor kitchen we also have our inverter in that same spot we'll throw a picture up so you can see that i added a smoke co2 sensor in the basement storage just in case a generator put fumes in here or had any issues with the inverter so we could be alerted we have the onan 5500 gas generator that's right gas generator most times the fifth wheels are not toy haulers the generators run off the propane you don't get a lot of usage out of a propane tank running a generator so i put a 22 gallon gas tank right next to that and the fill up is by the propane on the driver's side so i can go through a pump to top that off and i put a little lawnmower battery next to the generator and the starter battery so if i ever drain the house batteries to dead i can still start the generator to charge everything back up i put little manual bubble levels inside of the storage compartment by our leveling system that when i'm parking i can make sure i'm pretty close to level and the leveling system takes it from there we have a unique water system as most campers tell me they see me set it up we have the clear 2-0 water filter which we're loving that so far make sure you check out the video on that and i have the double soft water softener which really helps for scaly stuff inside the shower lathering up and making sure your skin doesn't dry out one more thing in a water system we have the adjustable water regulator this is a lot better than the little inline ones when i realized the inline ones if it had a lower water pressure they really restricted the flow on this regulator if we have lower water pressure the flow still comes through without a problem this looks like a crappy situation not right now because only the gray is open i put the valterra valve and end of our sewer line this helps with a couple things one if you are going to hook your hose up take the cap off you don't get a little surprise of water left in the hoses usually it's only gray water but it's kind of scary also the valterra valve will help if we are boondocking i can leave this valve closed open both of our gray tanks and it'll balance out the gray water between the tanks so we can maximize the water usually the shower fills up first before a kitchen grating we have the rv snap pads on our leveling feet we love those we call them little shoes for our rv they really help to stabilize and they make a little wider footprint so you're not making dents inside of asphalt or gravel also back here it came with one sewer hose holder i added on two additional sewer hose holders these ones are a little bit longer they go the full width of the frame so i can put two ten foot long rhino hoses inside one of these holders i made three upgrades in the truck which really make travel days more pleasant my favorite is the additional fuel tank slash toolbox in the bed of the truck i can haul an extra 51 gallons of fuel which means we don't have a stock point as often and we can find cheaper fuel stops the bottom section of this is a fuel tank and the top section is a little tool box we can put some odds and ends in there next up is the airbags these are the air lift 7500 xl airbags with our dually f350 they really help soften the ride as you travel they help a little bit for leveling your headlights but the really big thing you notice when you go across a big bump the truck floats a little bit as you go across and doesn't have that sudden jarring last on our truck upgrade list is our vava dash cam this thing is really nice as it records as we drive down the road non-stop and if we were parked it has a battery in there and a motion sensor so the truck was ever to shake or any vibration it'll start recording you'll find links to the products we talked about in this video in the description below and remember if you want to see more videos like this hit the subscribe button we organize all the videos in the playlist so they're easy to find so you can get the information you're looking for and we'll see you in the next video almost do it again and we'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Radar Road Warriors

Views: 99,544

Rating: 4.9355755 out of 5

Keywords: RV Storage Solutions & Modifications, RV Modifications, RV mods, RV space saving solutions, RV Upgrades, RV Storage solutions, Top RV upgrades, RV upgrade ideas, Radar Road Warriors, Ideas to customize your Rv, Rv modifications diy, rv diy ideas, rv modifications ideas, rv mods modifications upgrades, rv upgrades diy, Rv upgrades and mods, rv mods and hacks, rv storage solutions ideas, diy rv storage ideas, rv storage hacks, rv storage ideas, Rv mods and upgrades

Id: l4jghxDYBpE

Length: 27min 49sec (1669 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021