Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Lighting for my A frame

The harsh LED lights were too much so it had to happen... A doily chandelier for my camper.  This is nice because it packs up good and flat and sets up easily.  I love the way it looks from the outside at night.  I will have to get a picture of that sometime.


Thursday, May 1, 2014

My New Baby

Introducing my newest obsession:  our Rockwood A-Frame Pop Up Camper!  We have come full circle and have decided to go camping once again.  We camped for years before we had kids and before we were married but once we had two little kids and a dog, camping became more of a chore.  After 10 years of owning and loving our little cottage in Canada we decided to sell last year.  It was time to downsize a bit and try going to new places.

I really had my heart set on a teardrop trailer or vintage style trailer but we have no where to store it and I did not want to pay for storage.  After going to our first RV show and visiting a couple of dealers in the the area we came upon the A-frame style pop-up.  These are cool because you get the hard walls of a trailer but they fold down and can store in your garage.  They literally set up and take down in about a minute, no wet canvas and they are really cute with tons of head room.  So we took the plunge and bought one.


Here it is set up in our driveway.  I would love to be able to get one in a sea foam green without all these graphics but not too much I can do about that right now.  Lets go inside:

These are the before shots.  I am wondering who designs the interiors for these RVs?  I would love a job with one of these companies because there are other colors out there besides brown!  I don't know where they find the upholstery and curtain fabric but there is a great opportunity for someone to improve on the looks of all of the RVs that we looked at.  This one was not as bad as some we saw.  I know that they are trying to choose something that hides the dirt but there are better choices.




I dug out some of my old vintage textiles and a friend of mine gave me some fabric she was not using so the cost was really spent on notions such as piping, zippers and velcro...lots and lots of velcro!


I made slipcovers for the cushions.  The originals are intact underneath (our salesman was aghast that I would choose to tear our new camper apart!).  I used a vintage textile for the piping and teal cotton for the body of the cushions.  I also made new hinge covers out of a heavy weight teal linen.  Bye bye  brown paisley.


I am kind of going with a travel theme using my old state tablecloths and state souvenir glasses.  I made some accent pillows from vintage textiles including the old Girl Scout print which I have been saving for years for just the right thing!  I just love it.






New curtains were made from an old table cloth that was still in good shape.  I used some old bakelite buttons on the tie backs.


I used white linen on the smaller window and tablecloth fabric for the tie back.


The door now has some cute vintage fabric print curtains and a newly upholstered header.


I would still like to paint the faux wood cabinets something lighter but my husband is a bit nervous about that....maybe next season!  


We purchased a memory foam mattress topper to help cushion the bed better.  RV mattresses are notoriously uncomfortable.  I am ready for my nap and to look out the stargazer window.

I have tried to make a couple of video tours but have not figured out how to successfully put them on my blog.  Something for the future.