Life in the 5th Wheel

hi it's joan with i love rv life we're getting ready to take off from yet another adventure and i thought you might like to know just how we make our fifth wheel like home [Music] uh all right when we first get to the campground it looks something like this joe let's go ahead and get our slides out and you can see here on this side this is what it looks like with the slides in this is both slides we've got one in the bedroom and one on the inside good news is it's manageable we can actually come in here when we're you know pull over at a rest stop and we want something to eat and we can come over here by the couch and we can you know have a place to seat and have lunch uh we've actually got you know a spot here at the counter that uh you know we can make our lunch if we want to do a sandwich or something like that the other biggie is we can gain access to our refrigerator now we don't have a generator so we can't run the microwave so we are eating cold lunches but no big deal and then another big benefit when we travel and uh joan right here where jones at we have access to the bathroom now this is a biggie as we start these slide outs is not having access to your bathroom so in travel mode that door is closed and we'll open it up and then we've got full access to the bathroom you know to do all necessary bathroom things that's a benefit isn't it hun yeah it's really nice to be able to have that okay i'm gonna get our big slides out here so let's go ahead and do this and i won't do this in real time it takes just a minute now this is the what we call the heavy slide this has you know the stove the refrigerator those types of things we'll kind of go over some things this is you're going to see travel mode here and this is going to change really really quick so you see here we're still kind of what we call travel mode um we still have everything kind of strapped down these straps did come with the gateway so what i'm going to do is i'm going to set the camera aside john what do you what do you think it takes us to get out of travel mode maybe 10 minutes maybe to get everything set up maybe maybe a little bit more because you are outside sitting up and i'm inside setting up so maybe about 15 to 20. 15 to 20 minutes that includes you know water sewer those types of things all right let's uh let's take it out of travel mode okay okay so we're in travel mode right now uh and this is just everything just kind of strapped down but it just takes a minute and sometimes jonah and i just kind of jump into this together and knock it out really quick so john don't you go ahead and get us started we've got a we've got these straps that kind of holds everything down you just kind of pop them loose no big deal i'm going to talk to you about the furniture too because we made some make some changes we'll talk a little bit about the mods of what we've done to make travel life a little bit easier a little bit more comfortable uh one thing uh we don't have a silly fan here so we just bought one of these inexpensive what are those called laskos you know the little rotating fan so that's kind of nice to have that blows just you know you need a little air movement as i talk about the furniture upgrades this is one of the first things that we purchased was uh this ottoman so this ottoman here is a is a really nice little addition it kind of serves two purposes both this and this is where we keep things like our winter items but also part of travel mode you'll see we have lamps joe why do you have lamps oh i like the indirect light not the overhead light yeah this is one of those things where we wanted it to feel kind of like home in it hun oh yeah and you know this is another one of those things of a 10 to 15 minute setup and to be able to have this set up to make it feel like home is a big deal black shades are kept upstairs and i have to run up there and get those yeah we don't we don't try as you can see uh look we've been this is one of the early purchases that we made too isn't it we oh yeah we did this like year one um and this is you know kind of like jones decorating stuff you'll see these straps here um that we have uh they just literally pop up out of the floor you can just kind of toss them back in the back um i'll kind of semi here's a we've got pantry we'll show you more you know a little couple dollar stool from walmart desk chair that we have here jim can we get these chairs now we'll talk a little bit about furniture because the furniture that you're seeing here did not come with this fifth wheel this is another element that i'll show you here again joan and her decorating you know we want that home feel this is our home now we are not full-timers we call ourselves long-timers we might go out a short turret for two weeks those are rare but a lot of times we go out for a month and a half to three months it just you know just depends on what's going on and where we're going like we've got an almost two month trip here scheduled and i know this looks kind of squirrely uh joan's gonna grab the lampshades we'll put those on just a second but i do want to talk about the furniture that you see here let me first put this up this is a picture of the rv when we bought this labor day weekend of 2014. now you'll notice over here on the big slide what i call plastic furniture they call it leatherette it's a plastic it doesn't hold up and i must admit to you we hate hated that sofa didn't we joan oh yeah and uh and it was just not comfortable at all so the sofa that you see here was one of our first replacements as we were making some mods and joan we probably looked for what uh six months oh at least six months and uh and the problem was was finding something that here was the challenge uh we had to get through this door and this door is 29 inches wide so believe it or not joan kind of pull those pillow one of those pillows off the back this is the key thing about this sofa this is not an rv sofa this is what they call an apartment style sofa and and it was designed to um be able to get you know like in in tight stairs or through or narrow doors at a at a at a apartment or something like that so these pillows come off but this sofa was bought in 2015 i believe i believe it was 2015. it took us about a year to find it and um you know it was it was literally you know we measured from side to side to find something that would fit this also is a queen sleeper we didn't have a sleeper here we're getting ready to replace that mattress and then that and the ottoman provides a very very nice environment so the decor that you see here is pretty similar to what we first started off with um curtains joan do they bug you no we we kept the curtains i enjoy the curtains and the uh shades yeah those are um i think they call them cell shades and we kept those and yeah some people that's one of the biggest complaints that you hear like if you watch the rv show on tv oh my gosh it's dark we don't mind the wood tones do we no because we throw the shades up most of the time and we have plenty of lighting we store our shades upstairs so that they don't get messed up and so i bring those down and get those set up and that's another part of just like the 15 minute setup again you know we're looking at the sofa here we talked about that the other thing i want to share is joan puts these shades up if you'll notice we've got these euro recliners they're not my favorites you know if i was to buy euro recliners again i'd have the ones with the self-contained foot rest these have the you know the little stool but you know when we when we travel we we flip them up like that so it's not a big deal when we travel the only thing that i don't like about them is um when we're when we're here in the camper and no one's sitting in the chairs are kind of in the way it's not a big deal you know it's not monumental but here's the reason i bought these first of all it kind of matches the decor when jonah and i were looking for them these came from wayfair these again are not a rv type furniture but the reason i put these is i got these things i think they were on a closeout sale and i bought both of these for 350 bucks brand new we've been using them five years are absolutely fantastic and before we go into the kitchen one more comment um here again i'll put a video up here at the top where you can see where we did the customized desk we're very casual in how we dine this uh the losing the dinette was a small sacrifice to give me an office because i work on the road so so that was very very important again when you look from a space saving perspective we've just got tons of room here so when you look at this and we bought it we wanted to make sure we were going to be comfortable didn't we yeah yeah and you know we were looking for really what i call a couples coach so we wanted a you know big seating area big cooking area the bedroom we wanted comfort but it didn't have to be massive and that's kind of like what we found and joan also wanted a tub in the bathroom and that kind of made some challenges but heartland gateways was the only one that we found with a tub and it has a real tub in it so you know all that being said how big is it well it's roughly about 300 square feet we kind of refer to it as our apartment we drag behind a truck and that's kind of like what it is now let's look at this from this perspective as you look here we have tons tons of cabinet space i mean we are nowhere short on cabinet space so i kind of call that jones cabinets and then up here we have everything from electronics down below we have various items we do carry a mr buddy heater with you these are my cabinets i keep things like hiking gear and things like that you can see my my pack you know there's my hiking pack and then i have a few little things over here but this is jones sacred place this is where i keep all my daniel steel books because when we're traveling it gives me a lot of room to just read i love to just read and and so i keep all my up-to-date danielle steel books up there this is just a little storage place in fact i think i've got my journal have my journal up there so that i can keep up with our trip when we talk about space joan and i have a term one of the things that you'll notice in here we're not clutter bugs and and i understand you know lots of people when they travel and especially if you downsize you know you need space and you want to keep certain mementos it's not that we don't have certain mementos like jones favorite thing you know we've got these small items like jones saying here in the south we don't hide crazy we parade it on the front porch and give it some sweet tea you know so that's that's a journey-ism that we have here but um one of the things that you'll notice is there's not a lot of clutter and really this is the way it is all the time again we're not neat freaks about it by any stretch of the imagination you know just little simple things like when joan sits right here or you know this is joan's space right over here and then when she goes up here when we get set up she has a a little thing that she sets here on the you know on the ottoman you know it's for her glass it becomes her end table as well and you know she's got her pens and pencils and you know those types of things that she uses to set up so we talked about remodeling and leaving some of the decor as it is we haven't painted anything we haven't changed out any of the drapery but we have made some substantial changes i mentioned taking the dinette out and putting our desk in but this area right here is probably the largest area that we made some substantial changes we here let me put a picture up when we first bought this in 2015 14 and you can see how this crazy island was joan you hated that island didn't you yeah i didn't like it because you had to get up and walk all the way around to get into the kitchen to get anything so when we did the remodel on this he took that space out so that we could just get up and walk through and i'm gonna put there's actually an eight-part video series i know it's long but i go into some substantial detail of how this whole area here was changed again joan talked about this this island actually went inside where those cabinets are located and i actually was able if you'll notice this all looks factory here and you can watch those videos if you want to see how i did it i was able to salvage all the wood this countertop is different we put in a real sink and you know we again we treat it like home and um you know it's a very deep 10 inch sink so you can actually wash pots and pans in it and not you know hose the floor down we put a kitchen style you know off amazon faucet that was here but this again this is travel mode this made so much more difference this thing was cut at an angle so we lost part of our cabinet space that door here was it's kind of bizarre was located here on the outside again at an angle and didn't give us much space this is not the original refrigerator but uh it is a regular home refrigerator it's not a camper refrigerator uh when we wore the first one out we went to home depot i think and purchased this which is another home refrigerator not a camper refrigerator we love it because of the space it adds and have a good freezer down here and it's it was just as easy to put this one in as you know as it would have been to put a camper refrigerator in they're so much smaller joan's talking about this refrigerator that we have here um this you know is what they call a residential refrigerator she was talking about what you would see in a home it took us a while to find one that would fit i did not want to do a lot of carpentry over here to make this one fit as you see here it's it was a perfect slide in i think this refrigerator was maybe a half an inch smaller this is an lg it's european style i think they call them inverter compressors i'll put a picture up i actually built a custom box and put some golf cart batteries in here and this runs off of an inverter and joan we can travel all day long and we don't have any problems with this thing running and staying cold no not at all and if you'll notice everywhere we go we try to get a bag that and decorate that's part of our interior decoration you know you can see we've got magnets and grandbabies and everything else we need to update the grandbaby pictures real bad but and we're going to do that here soon but you can see our magnets that we put on sometimes we remember to get them and sometimes we don't and then over here where joan's standing you'll see we call this the coffee bar and you know we put our coffee makers toasters and i'm not going to get it out right now just it's a little heavier and i have to slide things around but we put we've got an eagle ice maker that joan just absolutely loves and we put that on there as well one of the things i also want to talk to you about mods i guess we've done a handful um some were a little bit more extensive than other we didn't paint we didn't wallpaper we didn't do that but we you know aside from furniture aside from the desk one of the simple things that we did was this little backsplash area this is that pill and stick backsplash this thing had a terrible half of a backsplash splash and we wanted to finish that so that was something that took 20 bucks and we like that the next item that i want to show you is you see that little dark spot right there that goes what we refer to as the kitty ensuite and before that we came up here into the bathroom and right behind the sink right there we put the litter pan and that was a disaster it was just litter everywhere it was uncomfortable for the kitties it wasn't good for us and here i'll take you outside and show you how that works this is what i created here this was space here behind the behind the steps it was just absolutely lost space and i kind of created a little custom track cut a hole out but built a plywood box in here uh for the kitty pan now i've taken the kitty pen out for obvious reasons uh but i'll show you that as we we go inside here but this just slides open like so and now i have full access to be able to you know take the pen out and clean it from outside and not you know drag a lot of litter all through the camper i keep a little shop vac here a little cheap 59 dollar shop vac you know just to clean up the litter that's inside here now what i use right inside here i use one of those aluminum turkey baster pans i designed this to fit that and that way we can use it for about two weeks or so empty the litter throw it away put another one in you know they're just a couple dollars and then you'll also notice for mink and molly you know we have a little led light in here for them but the biggie here is this little computer fan it's a little small computer fan and you know it just draws the air out so any scent that builds in even though you know we put one of these little inexpensive citrus you know odor eaters in here which helps a lot but that fan creates you know i put a little hose on it and i'll show you where i ducted it to the other side and that that really helps keep any kitty odor outside so we take that you know empty out the pan just kind of wipe the sides down with a lysol wrap you don't want to use anything with clorox with urine in case there's any overspray and that just provides a super super spot for mink and molly jonah and i like it too because it keeps a mess down to a bare minimum and it makes it easy to empty too that was a game changer i am i'm a woman and i definitely love a long hot bath and this one has the tub in it so sometimes jerry misses me for a couple hours and then i come out i'll clean up this bathroom has a lot of good storage and we really love that here we have like medicines and hair products and paper items and then over here we use this for towels we always keep a jug of water just in case the water goes off so this is so we talked about joan talked about travel mode and then she talked about you know once we get here when she talked about we keep a jug of water okay we do not travel with our water full what we do is like if we need water while we're on the road in the refrigerator we'll keep bottled water those types of things but we also keep a gallon of water up here and i learned this from a guy who had been in rv travel for something like 20 plus years and i go you know gosh we're carrying 20 gallons of water 10 gallons of water you know it's 8.7 pounds a gallon and he said no not me i'm not carrying all that weight what do you do i carry a gallon jug i know this sounds crazy but it works so we take that gallon jug if we have to pull over while we're traveling and use the facilities for whichever we have to use then to flush we just take that gallon of water put a little water in there hit the flush handle put a little bit more to rinse it and we're done so these toilets that you find inside of an rv are so efficient they use such very little amount of water that gets us from point a to point b and i mean even on a six hour trip if we were to make two stops which we rarely do but if we were to make two stops we might use a quart of water half a gallon of water at the most let's go back here in the bedroom and then we'll show you that as well all right we're going to go into the bedroom again continuing our 15-minute setup uh we'll show you more about the why we have a folding chair up here in just a second another spot for joan but i'm going to put a video uh up here in the top that shows when i put in this fan if you'll notice there's very little head space what may be six inches so we can't put a ceiling fan up here so this is the this is the fan that we put in boy this thing is just awesome and you can see this this bedroom is a bit you know it's small but again it's it's for you know a little bit it's not an entertainment space it doesn't matter this bed here this is the new bedding that we put in from brooklyn bedding it is incredible uh here i'll put a link up uh where we install that in case you're interested in purchasing one of these it's a phenomenal bed just absolutely phenomenal and of course it has jones touch we you know we got rid of all the old crummy awful looking bed spreads that come from the factory you know i know it has a purpose for selling but they're not comfortable and they're stiff and this is you know and we have a summer quilt we have a winter quilt those types of things so let's talk about two mods uh back behind joan you'll see you know we've got mirrors for dressing and then that's also i won't call it a walk-in closet but joan we can be out for three and four months at a time can't we and not use all the clothes we put in it i know that that is an issue now one of the things that you'll notice here this is a very basic mod you'll notice that back on the back we have blackout style pull down shades these are you know this is a lowe's type thing they're very very inexpensive i did not like the sail style here because in the morning if you're either on this side or this side for the sunrise boom the first thing that happens around six o'clock in the morning is the sun comes up and smacks you in the face and uh so we put those in and that was just a very simple thing as we continue our bedroom if you look over here this is where we were talking about our walk it's not really a walk-in closet but it's a pretty good-sized closet but look over here we haven't talked about what's behind this door what's behind there john well originally it was the door for the washer and dryer but most of the campgrounds that we go into have very good washer dryer facilities so we use those and to have this extra space jerry decided to make me a makeup area and if you'll see he's got me a shelf for things that i need to put up there but this is where i put my makeup on that's why we have the chair here um it made me he has made me all of the different areas to put to put hair bows brushes and combs medicines whatever i need to store is there so there's a couple things here that i'll show you if you can kind of see right back here you know this is you know one of those multiple outlet plugs fortunately this was a 20 amp circuit you know for a washer and dryer so it can handle you know blow dryers hair dryers all those types of things and we're hooked up to the you know the facilities the electrical at a campground joan didn't show you the drawer here there's actually a drawer that i put in here as well you know where she can keep things like you know contact lenses and things like that and then as you look down toward the bottom this is our laundry facility as well and then this chair actually came with our dinette it's a very comfortable chair and it stays folded up here out of the way when we can walk around it and whenever she's doing drying hair putting makeup on those types of things this is joni's space it's really nice for joan to be able to have you know a lady spot because a lot of times what people end up doing is going down to the dinette or something like that and you know she can keep everything set up here she don't have to carry all of her you know all of her cosmetics around in a box and those types of things this is her spot it's home and that's what we have worked hard to do is make this even though we're not full-timers months on the road it's home and we treat it like so we do yeah we enjoy coming in to what we have set up as our living area when we're on the road and we are on the road quite a bit we hope you enjoyed uh our quick tour from the fifth wheel we you know we wanted to take you through it just showing 10 15 minutes we're set up and just kind of give you an idea of what the feel of life in a fifth wheel is when you're traveling so yeah it's kind of closed in but we have access to you know seats and kitchen and refrigerator and that's important we have access to bathroom and really if we did an overnight stop somewhere which we don't do the walmart thing but if we had to we could even get into the bedroom but we don't do that and then we just wanted to kind of open up our fifth wheel and just show you what life is for jerry and joan inside inside our gateway yeah we have made some changes furniture changes desk changes substantial kitchen changes yeah and even the kitty ensuite and let's don't forget jones makeup area makeup area so we just really wanted to bring you along and just show you you know what life is like in the fifth wheel with jerry and joan hope you enjoyed it and why do we do it we do it because we love rv life hope to see you soon hope to see you soon [Music] you

Channel: I Love RV Life

Views: 8,613

Keywords: ilovervlife, Jerry Neal, I love rv life, rv travel, 5th wheel travel, rv living, rv mods, rv modifications, rv upgrades, 5th wheel mods, 5th wheel modifications, 5th wheel upgrades, 5th wheel living, camper life, life in a 5th wheel, RV life, life in an RV, life in a RV

Id: i03200KV3v8

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021