Renovated RV Tour: Full-time Traveling Family of 4

hi i'm emily and i'm charlie we are here to give you an rv tour today but we wanted to start out telling you a little bit about ourselves and the rig that we're in we've lived full time in our rv for about a year and a half now some of that time we've been stationary and some of it we've been on the road we have a keystone montana 2017 370 mbr mh br 370br okay it's uh it gets a little confusing um what that stands for is we have technically a bonus room in the mid bunk area so a lot of people have a mid bunk with a loft on on top we just have the bonus room so we have just consistently challenged the idea that fifth wheels are just for camping they are so much more than that and they unlock so much opportunity for people in different ways so we just always invite people to re-evaluate their lives and see if living in an rv can actually open up opportunities for them in different areas and as you'll see during the tour of our trailer you'll see that like emily said there's some things you can do to really change the trailer to make it not feel like a camping trailer you'll see that this is our house this is where we live this is where we've lived for over a year and a half it's where i work it's where she homeschools the kids and does her work as well and the best part about it and what we love i think the most is that it can be anywhere we have both grown up in the northwest but over the past year we've been able to travel through the more of the northwest and we're currently in utah and we're headed even further south so it really does present a lot of great opportunities as well as just a simpler way of living yeah and also just one thing to note we have made a lot of changes to our rv and we're not um encouraging everyone to do this you'll find your own balance of what works for you but we are going to share five different quick easy products that you can install in your rv to make it a little bit more comfortable whether you're camping or you're living in it full time so we'll have those linked below in our amazon store but shall we get to the tour show them all the good stuff let's show them all right so here we are at the front door and the first thing i want to show you this is a product by camco and it is a bar that you attach to your screen door it just makes it so easy to open and close the door so we will link that like we said there are a lot of changes we've done to the trailer one thing that we've never really believed in is having a dining room table this has been a really tricky spot for us you can see i can put a clip in of what this looked like when we originally got the trailer it's just had your standard dinette with four chairs and it just wasn't working for us so we took that out and this is a table that i built it's really simple there aren't a lot of options for this so i had to build something custom but most of it started with a cabinet that we already had and i created a new top so i did a custom top for it at a butcher block and then i added this drawer which is just kind of a tech drawer it has chargers in here so all of our charging cables batteries everything lives inside this drawer so you can see it's a mess but it's also organized and out of the way and it's also on double extension guides so you can have it out all the way but then you can also push it all the way back that way when you're sitting on the table it you don't hit your knees on it there's some shoe storage here and just kind of a catch-all and as you can tell emily likes plants so she has her plants up here on top and then we even have a outlet here for a bulb when we're not getting a lot of sun especially up in the northwest we can plug that bulb in and we can give the plant some sun so that's our desk and then i guess we can talk about the cabinetry this is actually what i think is one of the most unique parts about our trailer my background is in custom cabinetry and what we wanted to do in doing our trailer is that we didn't want to just spray a latex paint on the on the cabinets as many people know the cabinets are really tricky in these trailers because they can be kind of lower quality and we wanted to preserve what we had so this paint is actually a conversion varnish product it's not a latex it's a two-part mixture and it has a hardener in it so it's more like what you would spray on a car in that it has that hardener so we did that on these cabinets and it's been really really good yeah it actually has preserved the cabinets we've lived in the trailer for over a year and a half rocking and rolling down the road and also having two young kids and it really doesn't show anywhere as you can see we also put on the custom hardware to match and then if you'll notice that the appliances aren't what you would normally see we originally had a [Music] originally had your standard propane electric fridge and we took that out and this was this is a hair fridge h-a-i-e-r and we actually got it from costco.com and it's a stainless fridge but um i have in the past done some vinyl wrapping with automotive so what we would end up doing is this is a satin white vinyl wrap by 3m and it's automotive grade so it's very resilient it's been a great product it's really easy to work with so that's how we were able to spot the color on that and then we also did the microwave and the oven at the same time we swapped out the faucet while we're at it this is a residential faucet we have a drinking filter under as well so we can make sure we're drinking good water but that's a big tip that we have as well is that with your fixtures a lot of fixtures that they have in these trailers are very much geared towards just weekend warriors they're not really meant to take a lot of wear so what you can do is you can swap those fixtures out they're nothing special the connections are the same as in the house so you can go ahead and put really any fixture you want in as long as it's the same configuration and that way you don't have to worry about wear and tear and this is going to last longer than the trailer so do you want to show them our next product on the sink this is number two on our list this was something that emily picked up as you know we have inserts for inside of the sink here but what we didn't like about them is they're heavy they're kind of in the way and when you don't want them it's a lot to get them out of the way so emily found this and it's it's actually really great you can pull it out of the way it's really lightweight most time we have it over to the side but if you want to mix lettuce or if you want to uh we even you know do some cutting on it it's a really great item that we've added just to give us a little more working space because the counters are kind of there isn't a lot of both so this just gives us a little more space to work with and it's imper it's heat resistant too so you can set a hot pan on it you can so that way if you're worried about the countertops you can just put that hot pan right on top of it so that's the kitchen i don't think there's anything else we've got our fruit baskets over here those are a popular popular uh request so those are in our amazon store as well you want to show them your favorite yeah i guess this is uh this is number three on the list so this was a cabinet i really struggle with mostly because not all rigs but some they don't have any sort of a lift on these so when you open these they like just slam back shut so i actually added a cable stay uh it's a added a hinge that um you can leave the door anywhere you want and the best part about it is that now that it's open we can actually use this space so what we did a struggle we had was with all of our spices where to put them and we found this on amazon and it's it's the spikes track so the spice rack it just drops out of here you can grab what you want and we added these little ikea puck lights to that as well these are battery powered and we use amazon rechargeable batteries in these and so we just swap them out they generally last a couple months but yeah when you open this up you can pull your spices out use what you need and then put it up and out of the way and close it up so that's been a really really big improvement we struggled with that space for a long time and we can move on to um to the pantry and this was another really big struggle for us was just this cabinet as a whole because you have the fireplace here and then behind the fireplace is just an open void so one thing that we did is when we were doing the renovation i noticed that there was some space some dead space behind the fireplace so we have a sony soundbar and we have remote speakers back behind but we actually have a subwoofer that we stuck back there as well so the subwoofer for our system is back behind the fireplace there's already a power plug so it was really really easy to set up and then as far as the tv is concerned um if you're not aware and i can insert another picture of what this typically looks like um on your typical fifth wheel or just rvs in general they put a center division behind where the tv is going to go and that's just they bolt the tvs directly to it um and then typically you'll have an articulating mount that allows you to pull that tv out of the way and then reach behind but it's really awkward so after we lived in the trailer for a little while and we kind of thought about it and what i end up coming up with is there's actually a handle here and then a latch as well and you'll see why there's a latch so you just pull that handle and now you can see that we have usable space behind the tv so i installed some shelving and then as far as how i did it it was really simple this is just some half inch plywood that i painted white and then i actually put bolts directly into the tv into the mount pieces so there is no tv mount it just bolts straight through the back of the plywood and then i used four um 110 degree concealed hinges that you would see within a cabinet in your home so real standard stuff it wasn't too complicated and then when you're all done as you can see we have another ikea puck light in there just so you can uh so you can access so you can see what you're accessing and then once you're all done so we have a hole going down through the components and once you're all done getting your food or whatever you want it's really important to make sure you get this shut and on moving day as well we added a latch so that this doesn't swing open so it's a nice firm it's not going to go anywhere while you're traveling and so that was a must for us once we got it all built all right so now we are in the main living space of the house i feel like we should measure it we'll measure the distance across so you can get a feel um of how big it is and we'll put it on the screen but we have this couch from ikea it's a super comfortable couch i am all about things that are wipeable with small children you can see it's already got messes on it since this morning under the couch we have toys for the kids there's one way back there anyways i like to talk to people a lot about toys and toy storage and rvs for kids so they don't need a lot they don't really need any battery operated toys you can keep it really simple um so i have building toys in the living room we have a basket down here with diapers and wipes for our littlest and yeah this space is great we also have a sofa table back here of sorts it's really just a 2x4 but we have outlets inserted there so we can charge our phones set a drink down small places you just need a place to put something so that's a really great area now going on over to our girls area so they eat here they do school here they play here it's a great space this is an ikea table um i painted it and put epoxy on it and painted these fun little designs for the girls it has storage in here so we have coloring books and workbooks colored pencils we have household things up here so we have um laminator and things for school nuts and bolts and screws for the walls board games and i think there might even be some backup food storage there so and then over here we have my white couch which a lot of people are like wait how do you have a white couch in a small space with kids well um this is from ikea it's the valentina line and it's super durable and i just clean it with um go clean co you should follow them on instagram they give great cleaning tips so i clean it with tide and it washes up really well this is brody and his favorite pillow brody can you say hi can you say hi brody huh um i think brody knows he blends into that pillow so um as you can see here there's a zipper and this falls out so this effectively folds out into a twin bed we'll insert a clip so you can see what that looks like it's actually really comfortable i lovingly call it the infirmary because usually it's one of us is not feeling well and we sleep out here all right so now we walk into the girls room and down here we originally had a um jack knife sofa but we took that out and created more play space so the girls have all of their toys there and this is a sharpie mural that i did for the girls over here we have a um toddler size bed so this is a crib size mattress and we have baskets underneath for shoes and socks and things like that we've got some books this is a baby doll high chair something that is so great for tiny living is this hatch nursery clock so that tells our girls when to go to sleep and all of that this is the storage up here so all of the girls clothes are in here up above we have alternate toys life jackets back up diapers and things we also added this curtain rod which has been really great to have all of the fun little girl things but not in the way and not taking up storage space one of our favorite things in the rv is these magnetic door catches so we've got the room all decorated we love our princess dresses and this works really well for us the bed is on wheels so when we pull the slide in the bed goes into the slide brody come on out and that's it that's our girls room and moving on to the rest of the trailer you'll notice a couple more things one if you haven't noticed already the walls are not brown we can i'll put another picture on the screen of what color the walls were they kind of were a tan uh a tan color and also there was brown everywhere so you'll you'll catch on to that so i went through and i painted all of the walls they're all white now and i'll go through in a later video i'll go through more detail as to what that process looks like emily picked out this vinyl applique so we these are actually die cuts so it's a really nice piece and it was easy to lay out wrapping and just doing wallpaper in general can be really really difficult inside of a trailer like this for two reasons one is because nothing is square because it's meant to move down the road and then secondly because we've had issues with adhesion to the the wall even after we've put our own paint on there so later in another video we can talk a little more about what this uh what this took so moving on down to the closet i'm not sure how easy this is going to be to show you but this is actually a closet that we redid you'll notice that there is a dyson vacuum in the closet and there is a charger in the closet so i actually moved a outlet down there so we have the capability of having a place to store our vacuum we don't really sweep we vacuum so that's where we store that as long as well as the parts for it and some rags and then in this top cabinet we have our control panel just like any other rv but this is where i also have our internet setup so here's our uh our modem and router as well as the simplesafe and then i have a this is for the temperatures i have sensors throughout the rig just to see what our basement temperature is what the temperature is in the girls room things like that so just gives us some good metrics as to when we're heating in cold temperatures we know what you want to do as you can tell this was also painted so it really makes this look a lot cleaner if you know me i have everything labeled to make sure everything's in the right spot we do have on-board generator as well even though we really haven't used it at all so that is it and then this cable you see along the ceiling is just for my external lte antennas which is another video i'll be doing in the future all right so now we're coming up the stairs into our bathroom this is a pretty small space but it works really well for us we took out the big glass shower door and put in a rolling shower door so this lets a lot more natural light into this space we love that this medicine cabinet has everything in it that we need for daily use we have additional things hidden over here we've got all of our it's a porcelain toilet and this is a bathtub that we use for the girls it's collapsible the skylight is really nice my husband is just about six four and he fits in here just fine we uh we painted the cabinets and replaced the faucet and added this fun wallpaper and now moving on to the bedroom this is probably been one of the more difficult spaces for us just because we've demanded a lot of it not only is it a bedroom it's also my office it's also the laundry room so i'm going to go through a couple of things that we've done to make this space work better for us and make it more functional so the first one you'll notice is that the bed itself typically the beds in these trailers face east to west so you're going to have the head of the bed on inside the slide and then you'll have the foot down here but for us you can notice that i have a desk here and so for me working it was really difficult because before the back of the mattress would be right behind my seat so i would i couldn't even scoot the chair out so it was really really awkward so one of our favorite things we've done is we rotated the queen mattress into the slide so it actually acts like more of a day bed during the day and it's been a really really big difference for us um we love our headboard and i believe that's from urban outfitters and it's a really nice piece really good quality as well so that's the big change we made and the next big change is going to be the closet so this is something that i struggled with for a really long time i just did a couple different designs and ultimately this is what i came up with kind of feels like a big reveal of some sort but we have typically you would have big bypassing sliding doors and that wouldn't work for us so i took those out when we first got the trailer and then thought this design this is what i came up with so these are this is our closet we have a nice bank of drawers we have some long storage long hanging storage over on this far side so it goes all the way from the floor to the ceiling and it's been really great for emily for her dresses and for longer items we do have a pull out here as well so this is um pretty empty we don't have a lot of stuff but this has been great uh just for odds and ends to keep them stored here um and we also do have this splendid washer and dryer which actually have been working really great for us we've had zero issues since we moved into the trailer with these and so they've been a really great addition we have hanging storage and then also there is one more cabinet over here and this is just where we keep the soap and everything for doing and there's access right below of course yeah that's actually this cabinet was very intentional this is where the design started was because if you know these trailers you know if it has a washer and dryer um your drain hookup or your drain pipe is going to run right down here so this cabinet actually comes apart there's a false bottom and it falls back that if i ever have to clear a clog or if there's ever a leak i can still access back there and of course you can still pull these out of the cabinet as well so when you first get the trailer um what i think their intention is that you have the washer on this side because that's where the piping is and then there's outlet over on the uh driver side of the trailer for the dryer and that really that configuration was really awkward it didn't work for us so i ended up putting the vent for the dryer out the passenger side of the trailer i it's a really hard thing to figure out i actually talked directly with the manufacturer they weren't able to give me any good direction with that so ultimately what i ended up doing is i realized that in this wall the walls themselves are framed with framed with steel studs that being the case i just used a magnet and some masking tape and i mapped out where all of the steel studs were and then very very carefully drilled the four inch hole in the side of the trailer you can emily can vouch for how nervous i was and how much i didn't want to do that but we also didn't want to be going to laundromats so that was our that was our our consolation and this may be hard to see but this is the desk so this is where i do all of my work and it's actually a really great space it is a drop leaf so it's from ikea we can drop this out of the way but honestly since we changed the configuration of the bed we really haven't dropped this very often we typically leave it where it's at another thing we did is if you'll notice the toe kick down below this is traditionally a square and what i did is i put a bevel on it when i rebuilt it so that it's more of a comfortable spot for your feet so that was a big change that i made as well and it's all magnetic too the whole all that total kit comes off and if you need to address any of the plumbing that's hidden in that toe kick you can do that and then as far as this desk is concerned um when i first started working from home it was really difficult because at my office in seattle i actually had a sit stand desk so i could adjust it and after a few months of working here at this desk i really missed it and also it's kind of a small space so i ended up putting in a second tv mount up higher which emily likes to hide with this picture but you'll notice there is a second mount up here higher and so i'll uh i'll input a video right after this of what that looks like but what i can do is you can actually grab the tv and you can hook it up higher and then i have a keyboard riser so i can stand here and do work and just get a little bit of a break during the day from having to sit so that's been a really nice addition for us as well back here i have all my jewelry hanging we have yet another um magnetic catch there's brody he follows me everywhere a body um we have new carpet in his bedroom so when we gutted the closet and put in the um drawers we wanted new carpet and so we've done that um another vinyl moment here this is vinyl finish so um something to consider it's a really great material you don't have to chase chips and your finish is perfect so we did some diy leather pulls this is a super lightweight design yeah so we can go down the road it can flex it can move and it still works great every time we park that was something we had to be really careful with because we do know that these are manufactured to have weight in certain areas so for us in designing this i made sure to use really light plywood um i don't have plywood or any support where it doesn't need to be and and ultimately that's kind of why you know we use the vinyl wrapping on the faces and the leather poles we were trying to keep it as light as possible and we know we took a lot of weight out of the trailer when we did the work but we just want to make sure we weren't over loading ourselves and we've checked the scales everything's great still so we don't have to worry about that and let us know in the comments if you want a walkthrough on how charlie designed this and um just some considerations on how to do it yourself yeah it's as you know you know these are these aren't designed by the manufacturers to live in full time and we are fully aware of that and that's why what from when we first got this trailer we knew that we would need to make some changes so this was a really big change and since making it we have not regretted it i know it's really hard to see a nice finished wood piece that came with your trailer and you think man this thing's only a few years old and we're tearing this out but ultimately it was worth the level of happiness we've gained just by having an efficient space up here because before as you know you know it's it's two doors there's really no shelving there's no drawers there's nothing originally there was this very very small dresser here with really shallow drawers it was just completely not usable and there was a tv cabinet up above i'm going to scatter some of those pictures throughout the the video here so you'll kind of see where we started at but that's the bedroom all right so that's it um let us know if you have any questions uh follow us on all of our social media especially here on youtube you want to tell them about what we're gonna do yeah i mean we're new to youtube and this is kind of our first this is our first video and we have a lot to learn but what we really want to do is we want to go back i know that was a very high level review but we really want to go back and talk room by room how we did certain things because we know that everybody's going to have questions about that so that's our plan for youtube so far and then we do have uh some plans for really big plans for the coming year we're we're looking to do another trailer so i if you like what you see let us know because we will be selling the trailer shortly um but there's still a few things we want to get taken care of before we do that but yeah in the next year we're looking to do it again so make sure you like this video make sure you subscribe we're on instagram that's where we've been for most of our journey so far and now we're adding youtube we just really would love if you would come along the journey with us we have definitely gotten the rv bug and we're here to stick with it and we're here to get to know more of you and with our plans for 2021 we would love to get your ideas and feedback and understand more of what you want to see and what we can help you with because we all have something different that we need from this and we just want to be of service to you so at the end of the day that's always what we say is we're here for you if you have questions instagram is a great place to ask those we have an awesome community over there and um yeah we we're just so grateful and excited to share more if you have any questions as far as a product you saw something you know if it's our faucet or the door pulls whatever it might be we've tried our best to add as much as of those products as possible to our amazon store so if you look at below in the description you'll see a link and it'll be a link to our store on amazon as you know anything you see in there we do get a small portion of that but that really just we thank you and that really just helps us out with being able to continue doing this because that's what we're passionate about we really want to make this work so make sure you check out those items down below and let us know what room you want us to show you first when we do our renovation tour do you want details on our kitchen do you want details on our bedroom um what what do you need to know what can we share with you so thanks again everyone all right thank you bye [Music] you

Channel: Less Things Big Dreams

Views: 379,467

Keywords: 370BR, montana, hm370br, RV, Rennovation, Keystone Montana, Renovated RV, RV tour, RV Renovation, High Country, Keystone, 5th Wheel, full time rv, fulltime rv living, rv life, rv remodel, rv tour full time, rv tour family, rv reno, rv transformation, tiny house tour, rv living, keystone, montana high country, fifth wheel

Id: 9FUVuvPXTtE

Length: 31min 5sec (1865 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020