Camper Makeover: Demolition

Demo time! Remember our camper makeover?

Come inside!

(See the “Before Pictures” here.)

This is our 1984 13-foot Scotty “canned ham” camper. It’s seen better days, but I had a vision! A vision, I tell you! I spent weeks making design plans, researching camper remodels, searching Amazon–and shopping.

Then we started tearing it up.

Oh, yeah, that’s torn up. So the interior plans included tearing down the benches to the frames.

That big gap to the upper left is where we took out the old gas refrigerator. (It had very complicated directions for turning it on. I hated it.) We ordered a new, larger fridge, so we also took out the drawer that was under the fridge to make room for the longer (but not wider) fridge.

Bathroom, straight ahead. (The door was taken off for painting in this picture.)

What a nightmare. This room was horrible.

This room is getting all new walls and ceiling, new shelving, and new faucet and shower nozzle/hose.

One of my major points of interest has been the kitchen, of course.

The stove hood and stovetop was taken out and painted white with appliance paint. (Begone, outdated almond!) The counter was also a terrible excuse for a counter, and a new custom countertop got planned. This will be a kitchen I would love to cook in before it’s finished.

If you’ll look at this photo from a similar angle, pre-demo, you can see there was a large cabinet blocking and narrowing the door near the kitchen.

That cheap, veneered, flaking, peeling, crappy cabinet is gone now.

This did a HUGE thing for opening up the space, making the entrance feel roomier, and getting rid of crappy veneer. I have plans for replacing the storage the cabinet offered, but honestly, the storage in the cabinet wasn’t that functional.

The benches, when rebuilt, will have all-new custom upholstery with new foam.

All new walls, all new ceilings, all new floors, all new almost everything. The tear out took a couple of days, and the rebuilding has been ongoing ever since.

Of course, when you do any kind of remodel, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Problems cropped up, creating on-the-spot decisions and re-decisions. Such as–hey, who KNEW the cabinet was hiding a wheel well? I had huge plans for building shelves, but hey, the wheel well is in the way! I made a new plan to solve that problem and still create storage.

Then, of course, the walls and ceilings weren’t in perfect condition. Once we started peeling back from the surface, we found places where there had been previous water damage in the past. We had to remove entire sections and rebuild some foundational elements. We re-coated the roof and re-caulked everything to make it water tight. (Campers and trailers need to be coated and caulked on a regular basis. This camper wasn’t getting enough love–it is now.) And, oh, let’s talk about vinyl planking! I had this cool idea of putting vinyl planking on the ceiling! Cabin vibe, you know? Never mind. There is not enough glue in the universe to stick vinyl planking to a ceiling, don’t try it, trust me. We solved that problem with a new plan.

The ever-growing debris pile:

Right now, we are about two-thirds of the way to the finish line, with all new walls, ceilings, floors, new fridge, and new custom counter in the kitchen. In the next few days, it will be trimmed out, finished, and I’ll be taking more pictures of the After!

It is already starting to look absolutely beautiful.

Update: See the makeover reveal here!