It’s been a good summer! While our trailer isn’t quite ready for its first camping trip, we’ve gotten a lot done on it over the last few months, plus we’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the other fun things we’ve done, too. If we can find the time–given our crazy school year schedules–maybe we’ll be able to do some fall camping.
Aside from building the doors for the front of the bed extension (and painting or staining it), Wayne has pretty well finished up this project. It looks really good, it’s very strong and stable, and we’ll have lots of storage space underneath.
Last spring we bought an air mattress, thinking it would be a fast and relatively inexpensive way to finish the bed, but when we measured the height of the platform a couple of weeks ago, we realized that it would be too tall! We have outlets on the bed side of the cabinets and the air mattress would completely block them…. Well, darn….
A lot of folks with RVs–and especially with Scamps–have recommended Memory Foam, so I used the credit from the return of the air mattress and ordered a 6″ Memory Foam mattress. I’d read that this type of mattress could be cut to fit the curved walls of the trailer, so that led to the search for a used electric knife. I found one in the third thrift shop I visited. 🙂
On Friday, August 14th, we put a tarp out in the yard and removed the mattress from the box and packaging. We unfolded it, and it immediately started to expand. After waiting a little while, we unzipped the outer cover on the mattress and then cut and peeled back the inner liner to reveal the foam. Using the curved plywood from the bed platform as a template, we traced the shape onto the foam. We were so busy doing all of this that I neglected to take pictures!
After cutting the foam (actually very easy to do with the electric knife!), I pulled the inner liner back up over the newly-rounded corners.
I stitched this back into place, then we zipped up the outer cover and took the mattress into the trailer to finish expanding. SO COOL! We have a bed!
We also have a new spare tire (and cover), which fits on the bolts that I’d cleaned up on the back.
The current project is the installation of an air conditioner in the closet. We temporarily removed the upper “floor” of the closet in order to have better access to the space.
There was an air conditioner in the closet at some point in the trailer’s history, so there is already an extra-large vent on the outside, some wooden support pieces, and a drain hole and tubing through the floor. (We had an outlet for the A/C put in the closet when we had the other electrical work done.)
We bought a thin sheet of foil-lined Styrofoam insulation, as well as a small litter box. Litter box? We’ll modify and re-purpose it so that it will serve as a drip pan for condensation. The insulation (and foil tape) will be used to create a sealed “box” within the closet so that the A/C will do all intake and exhaust through the vent, keeping it separate from the air inside of the trailer.
We are SO pleased with how pretty and how comfortable our little trailer is becoming!
Oh, yeah…. This is going to be nice!
