Dinette Destruction! - RV Dinette Replaced by Improved Work Space - RV Renovation

today we are starting a huge renovation project on a trailer we are removing this you dinette which takes up the whole rear section of our trailer the reason we're doing that is because this area is the primary workspace for Jenny and I we work on our laptops Jenny here and I here for eight to ten hours a day and the ergonomics at this dinette are just awful the cushions have flattened down so it feels like you're sitting on raw just bare wood even though we replace this cushion and this cushion with high-density foam they've already started to sink back down our necks and our backs are really starting to hurt us and we're both getting tension headaches all the time now because of it so we are pulling out this dinette and we're gonna replace it with comfortable ergonomic desks and chairs so that it doesn't hurt us just to sit in one spot and work for eight to ten hours a day also this is the only seating in the entire trailer so we also eat here so our laptops and other electronics that we need to work are they just take up this whole table so when it's lunch time dinner time or breakfast whenever we want to eat we have to move all that out of the way to make room for bowls or plates or whatever and it's just a pain so not only are we gonna have two desks but we're also gonna have a fold-up chair or a fold-up table between them that we're gonna use for our eating space so the first thing that I need to do is take all this out hopefully it's gonna be easy because I'm pretty sure it's all just screwed in hopefully there's nothing glued in but we'll find out let's get to it now this is your first time on our channel my wife Jenny and I are full-time our Vere's which means we live in our RV so the fact that this dinette is the only seating and the entire thing and it's so incredibly uncomfortable is massively important so we need to make a change so the first thing that I'm gonna do to get started on this project is go ahead and take this table section out by unscrewing you know these little mounts for these pedestals and then I'm just move to each section of the dinette and just pull them out in sections [Music] [Music] sorry puff and there you're comfortable but you got to get off now go on what what is go yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] right okay yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the couple issues we need to address with this renovation project is that the furnace used to be covered by the dinette now that we've removed that it has exposed it so we need to recover the furnace so what we're going to do is we're going to build basically a box out of it I've got two by twos that I'm going to bail build a frame out of and then cover that frame with quarter-inch plywood and then we're going to remount the factory air return vent onto this side of the box so that air can still get to the furnace [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Wow Wow okay hey it's good though huh all right flip it are we good over there yep all right same thing flat [Music] yeah just like that okay yeah I mean it's oh it might be okay is that good yeah okay it's like oh right my helper Jenny this doesn't have another screw in it dang it she's a helper hello but as we are not done yet she's too curious she couldn't wait couldn't wait we're able to finish the frame for the furnace box and we put this crossmember up top here just so there wasn't this big void for the plywood so that had another crossmember spanning that for support and we actually had to run to Lowe's and get some more of these two by twos because or two by two lengths because I failed to get enough in the first place to make all the members that we need it to I'm sure some of you know what that's like because you know you start a project oh I gotta go to the hardware store okay start working again oh I gotta make another run to the hardware store that's basically me in a nutshell but because of that it's getting a little late so we're going to go ahead and stop for the night and then we're going to pick right up tomorrow making the plywood for the top and the sides no playing on the jobsite I guess we're done for the night right okay yeah I like that loves her big dog yeah alright let's go to sleep yeah now it's day two of our dinette removal / workspace renovation project in our trailer and we woke up this morning and realize that we've already made a mistake the furnace box that we were constructing last night we realized that one side of it was actually too long we need to fit a fold-up table between the furnace box and a cabinet and we actually made the furnace box too long so that that table wouldn't fit so this morning before turning the cameras on we went ahead and disassembled the frame recut some of those members and put the frame back together so that that table will now fit so now that the furnace box frame is the side that it should have been we can go ahead and make the plywood sides and top to that furnace and box [Music] Shack look good I'm happy you happy for me [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] fantastic now that I've got this opening in this side of the plywood so that this furnace vent can go there and the furnace can breathe the construction of this is almost done the last thing to do for the furnace box is to cut this trim so we've got flat trim for the sides that go against the walls and the ground and then we've got this 90 degree trim for this side this side and then this side so this is so it kind of gives it a nice finished look and it also hides the screws that is going to screw the plywood to the frame and then once these are cut got a paint 'im and then the furnace box is basically done but this whole time I've been cutting stuff jenny has also been working on her project so what have you been doing Jenny it's right promise I I'm gonna get comfy okay you do that I have been cutting this rug that we bought which is right this rug is what five by seven and a half yes so it's five feet this way seven and a half feet this way and unfortunately it doesn't perfectly fit in here well yeah because we've got this and so it doesn't fit perfectly so what I've been doing is I've been cutting out and then sealing in the edges of this rug I've started with this side here started with this and this side fits perfectly yes it does it's a little off-kilter because of the way it was just folded but but it fits perfectly and I sealed it with hot glue the edges edges to keep from Frank Sheeran a bead of hot glue all along the edge so that should keep it from frying out but I have two more to do and hopefully I will have enough left over that may be because it's not actually quite long enough this like seven and a half feet and we are seven feet nine inches this way so I'm short three inches over there which means maybe with my scrap I can fill it in don't know maybe I'll just leave it we'll see when I get the rug all cut up right so back to work [Music] get outta here [Music] [Music] [Music] I got the rug all cut up to fit the different things that needs to go around in here but the rug itself is seven and a half feet wide Wow so does not feet long but from wall to wall our RV is seven feet nine inches so we've got this space right here a big piece of scrap for where I cut out for the furnace so I'm going to see what I can do about fitting some scrap pieces in here to cover this - hopefully it doesn't look really bad now that Jenny's basically all done with cutting & fitting the rug I can get back to my part of the project and the next part is the trim on that furnace box I already measured so I know exactly what length cuts I need to make on all this trim yeah but the problem is is that I've never trimmed anything before so what I've done is I'm gonna leave all my measurements all my cuts a little long so that when I start fitting everything in it's easier for me to just come back and shave off the lengths if necessary [Applause] I finished making all the cuts on the trim and everything's looking really good it's all fitting in nice and snugly leaving each of the trim pieces the little long and then coming back and just shaving them and fitting them in so that they're nice and tight was definitely the way to go and that's exactly what I did with these miter cuts as well so yeah it's all looking really well and yeah there we go perfect right yep you got it to balance yeah I did well all that's left now is this all needs painted so take all the trim off take the plywood off and paint all that but unfortunately it's already starting to get dark and the air is starting to cool off so we don't have enough time to paint today you know it's so late in the season it's getting dark at like 5:00 p.m. so we ran out of time today we're gonna get to that tomorrow but there's another issue we can still address tonight another problem we need to address with this project is this storage doors right here I used to lead to a storage bay that was underneath the dinette so now that the the dinette is out it just leads right on to the inside of the trailer it's on the opposite side of our furnace box and what we need to do is insulate this area because I can already feel that this is a lot colder than the wall so we want to insulate this and also seal it off so that's what this is for so I just got some blue board foam insulation so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set this right here have Jenny hold it and then I'm gonna go outside open that storage Bank kind of trace it out and then come back in and cut it to fit with a stanley knife and I'm gonna cut it a little big so I'm gonna come on the outside of the line so that it pushes in really firmly and I kind of gotta jam it in there and then after this is in there what we're gonna do is we're gonna cover this whole wall up to you know about here just so the blue board is hidden and the storage bay is sealed off we're just going to use some quarter-inch plywood to seal this all off [Music] so I finally got the blue board foam insulation literally jammed into this opening I really wanted to make it super snug right there so that it filled any gaps and just did the best that this type of insulation can do at you know insulating so this is all we're gonna do for today tomorrow we're going to seal this off we're gonna cut the plywood board that's going to go in front of this - really - seal this and cover this and then at a later time we're going to cover that in a kind of stick on vinyl that has a peel back and then you just stick it on and we're gonna use something that kind of has a wood look to it so it'll look really nice so we don't have that yet so we gotta order that and we'll do that a later time but tomorrow we're also going to paint the plywood and trim for the furnace box and yeah but so that's all we did for today see you tomorrow now which house you're going to town on my toe aren't you geez Alice and now it's time to paint the wood for the furnace box so we can go ahead and finish that part of the project so now while we're waiting for the paint to dry outside we're coming back into the trailer and we're gonna go ahead and wrap this cover board that I made with this stuff it's like a vinyl wrapping and we got this gray wood grain that we thought looked good and you just peel off the back of it and stick it on and then we're also going to apply this just as high as this board is to this wall and then the wall across from it just to kind of give this whole area uniform look just roll the towel roll it out [Music] Oh too fast okay that's good pace [Music] [Music] yeah [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and now since this wallpaper is put in behind the frame I can finally secure this furnace box frame permanently to the floor and the walls [Music] [Music] now that our frame is nice and secured to the walls and to the ground we can go ahead and start putting the plywood panels on and then after that Brad nail the trim on and our box will be finished so after test-fitting this trim on I've noticed that these corner sections this 90 degree trim isn't going to cover these screw holes as well as I'd hoped so I'm going to spackle over those screw holes with a white spackle so that they're still hidden even though they're peeking out a little bit from this trim all right well then we'll see how that looks once that spackle dries if it still doesn't look good enough I'll go ahead and take a small little brush and that white paint I used to paint this and I'll just you know touch up over that spackle once it's fully dry and now that we've got those holes covered up with spackle and I also painted them white after they dried it's time to Brad nail our trim on finish this side of the project up well the furnace box is finally finished for the most part I am gonna come back and spackle over all these Brad nails and paint over those so you can't even see them and also this like I said before this air return vent was supposed to be white but when we went home for the holidays we forgot to take it with us so we're not able to sandblast it and paint it but next time we are back home in Fort Wayne we're gonna get that taken care of but for now you know it works now that the interior modifications to the trailer are all finished it's time to create the desk that is going to replace the dinette and be our primary workspace inside the trailer now we're going to use a 2 foot by 8 foot slab of butcher block countertop made out of birch and currently it's a little too big to fit in the trailer so we got to cut it down lengthwise and widthwise just a little bit to make it fit the interior width so from wall to wall inside the trailer measured 7 feet 8 and 3/4 inches wide however the trailer walls you know kind of bow out here and they bow in there they're not exactly straight so we're actually gonna cut an eighth inch under what was measured just to make sure that it'll fit so we're gonna cut it down to 7 feet 8 and 5/8 of an inch and also width wise it doesn't fit as well we need to remove one inch it's currently 24 inches so we're gonna cut the width down to 23 inches and since we don't really have a table saw that's suitable for this large of a slab of wood what we're gonna need to do to get the straightest cuts that we possibly can is use a circular saw with a straight edge clamp to the tabletop after cutting the table down to size I went ahead and sanded the entire table top bottom and sides with 220 grit sandpaper which is what was recommended by the polyurethane that we purchased we tested a drop piece that was cut off of the table with water-based and oil-based polyurethane and it turns out that the water-based polyurethane matches the fold-out table that we purchased for our trailer almost perfectly whereas the oil-based polyurethane giving much more amber coating so we're gonna go ahead and go with the water-based satin polyurethane purely because it matches that other fold-out table that's already in our trailer and it's nice for both of them to match so after sanding I've vacuumed the whole table and then went over it with a tack cloth and I'm going to be applying three coats of this water-based polyurethane and I have to wait two hours between coats and I'm gonna sand with 220 grit sandpaper between coats to just get a super smooth surface [Music] now it's time for the very last part of this project which is getting this new desk into the trailer and what's gonna make that a little difficult is that since this desk is so wide we can't put it in through the front door we really can't maneuver this desk around inside the RV to get it into place so we actually have to bring it in through this storage Bay which is okay since we remove the dinette this storage Bay just leads right into the inside of our trailer hi puppy hi Jenny but before we do that we're going to pre fit the legs that are gonna go on we're gonna pre drill the pilot holes for the screws that are gonna hold these to the table and then we will bring it inside and put these legs on inside the trailer and the legs we chose for this are what's called hairpin legs and we did these because we just really like the design of these they've got kind of a minimalist sort of simplistic style to them that we just really like and we went with a clear coated raw steel look so you can even see the uncleaned welds we just find that really cool and for this project we had to get two legs that are actually 12 inches shorter than the other side because of the fact that we've got the furnace box on the one side of the trailer so these legs are actually going to sit on top of that furnace box and then the two longer legs are going to sit on the floor [Music] yeah there you go perfect this side first right so if she said oh boy this is this again if we do it [Music] what are you coming doing ready yep [Music] [Music] thankfully now that the table is in and the legs are mounted this project is coming to a close we've just got a couple things left to do though and one of those is we're going to secure the table to this wall this wall and the one on the other side using 90-degree brackets and we're doing this just to keep the table from moving as we go down the road and it's just going to tie these three walls together with this table and you know just secure everything real good we bought six of these so hopefully we're wanting to put four into this back wall and then one into each side wall [Music] [Music] and now it's time to Brad nail this cover board in we already placed the foam insulation the blue board in this cavity behind that storage door for insulation like I showed you earlier in the video now if we can finally fix this to the wall since the table is in and we have no need to ever open that door again and then the very last step before this whole project can finally be wrapped up is I'm going to spackle over these Brad nail holes and then once the spackle dries I'm gonna paint over it so that you can't even tell that they're there just for that nice clean look and then I'm all done that feels good to say [Music] [Music] [Music] it feels incredible to say that the dinette project is finally done oh this was a long project but it is so worth it this space is so much more open and it's so much more usable now these workspaces that Jenny and I have are much better than before they're much more comfortable much more ergonomic and we actually have more room - with this desk spanning the entire wall not only that but one big thing for us like I said earlier is that we wanted to have separate eating and working spaces so now we can slide this table out fold the leg up and then have dinner facing each other and we don't have to completely tear apart our workstations meaning move our laptops move all the junk that we've been working on and then eat and then afterwards put it all back it's just a big hassle big waste of time and just a headache in general so we think this space is gonna be a lot more usable now and we think it's a lot more attractive - which is good you know doing stuff like this kind of makes it feel more homey instead of just you know living in a camper so yeah we're very happy with how it turned out and I I think the animals like it - butters has a little perch now she can look outside you know just the little things like that add up - so we're very happy with it and glad to say it's done Jenny are you happy well is that a yes oh yeah all right guys if you've got any questions on anything that I did go ahead and post those in the comments below and I'm also going to be putting links in the description below to all the various things we bought like this table and the legs etc just random stuff that I used or that we bought during this project in case you are interested in that yourself but till our next video see you guys later bye [Music] you

Channel: Fate Unbound

Views: 207,401

Keywords: rv, full, time, rving, rver, full time rv, full time rving, full timing, rv life, rv living, full time rv life, full time rv living, fate, unbound, fate unbound, travel, trailer, travel trailer, full time rv couple, vlog, video blog, rv renovation, renovation, dinette, dinette removal, rv dinette, diy, project, dinette replace, dinette replacement, Dinette Destruction! - RV Dinette Replaced by Improved Work Space - RV Renovation, rv diy, rv project

Id: 9Tehm-HODy0

Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019