Our Finished Project!!

It's bright and airy and shabby chic and feels like a cottage getaway....and we are going to make some AMAZING

memories with our boys. So many trips and adventures await us. State Parks here we come!

This is a shot with the shower/potty closed. It's a "bench" when it's not pulled up, and Adam is going to reinforce the seat, so that I can make it a reading nook for Jackson and I:

 And a shot with the shower curtains raised:

The Potty!!!!

The Shower!!!

 

 

 

Shower Curtain

Our popup has a shower. Yes! And a potty. Yes! All in one, tiny little "room", that is seriously the best part for me. The last time we went "tent camping", I had to pee in the wee hours of the night. And I don't pee outside. I mean, I'm a boy mom and all, but really, that's a no go for me. You won't catch me popping a squat. Ever. So I had to wake up at 4am, pitch black, start the truck (I'm sure I woke up nearly every camp site around us), go up to the communal restrooms, and prayed to the Lord the entire time that a serial killer was not hiding in one of the stalls. NEVER AGAIN.

So after our first trip out with the popup, I noticed that the shower curtain was white vinyl. Cheap, thin, white vinyl. Nothing wrong with it--did the job of making privacy, but it added nothing to the decor of the popup. And I needed something cute to add a little color.

I found a shower curtain at Target that I fell in love with:

 Threshold Home Grid Shower Curtain

Color was just blue enough to add some color, but soft enough to not jump out at you. So pretty! I brought it home and instantly hung it up. It was perfect--or so I thought. Once the floors were done, the cushions were in, and the bedding was sitting on the beds, the color of the shower curtain struck me as odd. Hmmmmm...

Ah. Because it was WHITE and everything else in the camper was ANTIQUE WHITE. Oh the horror! No one else would have noticed it, I'm sure. But I did. And it would bug me. As I'm sitting staring at the shower curtain, I said to my mom "Huh, wonder if we could tea-stain it? Wouldn't that turn it a little more off white/brown?" Yes it would! And so I stained it.

I didn't follow any special "recipe" and I'm sure there are MANY on the internet. I just made a bunch of pitchers of tea and threw the shower curtain in the sink! 

It just antiqued it enough to take the stark white out of the curtain. 

Ignore the horrible pictures. I shot them really quick in my kitchen, under those terrible translucent lights. :( Sorry. You'll see the full effect in the "after" pictures coming soon!

BONUS: We have this bar that you use to flip the kitchen over when putting popup up down and away. But it was an ugly brown. After we painted cabinets, I had bought contact paper for the drawers...and it ended up being nearly the same design as the shower curtain!....but, It's white. Oh well! I like it!

New Fancy Floors

The best part of the camper. The pinnacle of our decorating. The piece that pulled it all together: the floors. 

Again, nothing wrong with the original. Just a little yellowed. But, they were the typical 1990s vinyl flooring. 

White. Dingy. Boring. Vanilla.

We knew we wanted wood-looking floors. I wanted something rustic. Adam wanted something hand-scraped. His original thought was to use the extra pieces from our house (we have two boxes from when we did the new floors in the house!), but those floors have two things wrong.

• Heavy
• Not waterproof

Researched and again, found my friend at The Popup Princess had done their floors, and we really liked em! So we knew that yes, our idea COULD be done! Just had to find the right floors.

I took a trip to Floor&Decor, where I found a tiny selection of vinyl hardwood...and not the locking system kind. The kind that you had to glue down. And for the price, I couldn't justify buying anything extra, adding another step to the process, etc. Again, it's a camper. We have a budget. (FYI: I hate that word. Budget. LOL!)

Adam and I headed to Home Depot to continue looking for what we wanted. Guess what? I found it!! Guess what? It wasn't cheap! HA! Fact: it was the most expense part of our entire renovation. But, we loved em. Had to have em. Simple interlock system. No saw needed, just cut with a box cutter. Really?! SOLD! 

We went with the Allure Ultra in Vintage Oak Cinnamon. $58/box. And we ended up needing 2.2 boxes. In the planning/list making process, Adam's plan was to remove all cabinets, label, lay the flooring throughout the entire camper, and re-install the cabinets. Our concern: what if the cabinets do no fit back in properly? Again, nothing wrong with the camper--nothing pulling up, everything was solid inside. And because these are a simple click n lock system, we can always remove them later on with no damage. So we took the easy way out and he just measured, cut, and fit the pieces in like a puzzle. HA! And listen when I say "easy". THIS is where you need a Handy Husband. This was a tedious job. Lots of measuring. Cutting a tiny cut. Measuring again. Saying a few swear words. Cutting again. Did you know that NOTHING in a 2000 Coleman Timberlake popup is straight? Or square? Or level? True statement.

The floors look amazing. In the end, we added quarter-round to give the floors a polished look, and like the kitchen at our house, we painted them to blend in with the cabinets.

 

Once Adam had every teeny tiny piece of quarter round cut, nailed in, he caulked around the entire camper with that Summertime caulk I mentioned in an earlier post! 

Floors, complete!!!

Chalkboard Door

I have seen SOOO many cool projects for chalkboard paint. I love it. I used it in my last project when I renovated an old armoire for my Scentsy business. I've added it to jars for labeling. And after being on Pinterest, I found that chalkboard paint was going to make it's way into OUR camper. 

And where else, but on the ugly factory door. It will be great to post Activities and Menu and just fun Memories from the trips.

Taped it all off.

Used a foam roller brush and Rust-oleum chalkboard paint from Home Depot (that I already had, but it's also $8.99 a quart, and you will only use a SMALL amount)

It will take a few coats. Even now, all complete, I think the door needs ONE more coat of paint. I can see little beads of light coming through in some spots. But I am SOOOO excited to draw all over it!!

We bought a Popup!

Adam and I enjoy adventures. And we enjoy travel and fun with our boys. Sometimes you just need to get away from the hustle and bustle of real life. Our last toy we bought to be able to "forget real life" was our Yamaha AR 210 Jet Boat. 

We LOVED our boat! Our boys learned to knee board, we made amazing memories with friends and family on the lake, and it was easy to maintain. We loved being on the water--so relaxing! But our boys play baseball--and we travel for tournaments. So our poor boat sat in storage for a LONG time--almost 5 months. It was a tough choice, but we decided to sell it, with the intent of buying a travel trailer so that we could still get away, and possibly use it at our baseball tournaments.

We did our research, we shopped around, we followed Craigslist and RVTrader, and yet nothing seemed to jump out at us.  We found a bunkhouse that we really liked--but after thinking and debating, we just really decided that spending $22,000 on something that we weren't 100% positive we would use, didn't make sense for the moment. 

Growing up, my grandparents had a small popup. A Jayco. And I LOVED that popup. We'd play house in the driveway on Sundays when my grandpa would set it up! I remember my Grandma putting in new cushions and new curtains--so I KNEW that it would be fun to renovate an old 1980s popup. I've talked about it for a few years. So the idea of buying a popup finally started to sink in with Adam.

One Saturday, after talking ourselves out of a travel trailer for the moment, I happened to jump on Facebook while the boys were in the front riding bikes and cleaning cars. And a post on a Yard Sale page popped up. 

A 2000 Coleman Timberlake Popup: $2500. 

Pictures were great! It was clean. It looked like it was in great condition. New tires. New mattresses......so, I called! He had a few people already lined up to come out and look at it, so we said we'd come out and look to, and if it was meant to be, we'd buy it. The best part? I had cash in a little jar, burning a hole in my pocket! No excuses!

We went out to look at it--the owners live on an amazing piece of property outside of town. They were super nice and had bad news for us when we arrived: he'd sold it. :( But if the deal fell through, he'd give me a call!

That following Tuesday, he called. The last guy couldn't come up with the cash, and if we wanted it, it was ours! SWEET!! 

We headed out to their house that night and came home with our Popup!! 

Our boys were SOOOO excited that night--already asking when our first camping trip would be! And honestly, Adam and I could not WAIT to take it out either!