Cool Mods - Thread restored 10/18/2012

Yak Fishin Fool wrote:

StuartW wrote:

stugpanzer wrote:
Ok.....I just talked to a rep from Forest river and yes.....all the cabinets that I want to remove are just screwed in place and are not structural! And.....as long as I don't tear things up, I will not void my warranty! Once I get going on this....I will post photos!

I just did a similar mod last winter in the front bedroom of our Holiday Rambler 26RKS ... except we re-installed full-length 30x80 'half-queen' mattresses, one down either side of the rig, and created a center walkway. Not quite as romantic as a regular queen, but I'm 6'1" and my wife is 5'10" so anything less than a full-length mattress gets old fast. We had custom mattresses made with firm support and pillow tops - worth every penny based on our trips so far this year.

You'd be amazed how little structure was actually in the old pedestal. I removed a few long wood screws, pulled out a few staples, and it was history. My new twin support frames are built *much* better and each will have a large drawer on heavy-weight full-extension drawer glides so the under-bed storage is just about doubled.

Here's the modified floorplan :

The only real trick was moving the slider door for the bathroom to the opposite side of the partition, which meant moving the vanity about 3" closer to the shower - fortunately there was room to do this and no plumbing changes were required.

Note: Moderator edit to re-size picture to forum limit of 640px maximum.

Where did you get half queens from? I love this set up. Lot's more room. Scott

Hi Scott,

Sorry for the delay in reply ... I must not have subscribed for notifications on this post. Anyway, we got the mattresses at a local outfit called The Original Mattress Factory. They'll make you any size you want in any firmness you want with or without pillow tops. There was about a 2 week lead time.

The new mattresses are working out great and we really appreciate the extra length plus the room to walk between the beds. Note that the pass-through storage between what is now the foot of each bed acts like a bench for putting your shoes on, etc ... will have to ask the DW to make a custom cushion to go there!

Right now I've just ordered some unfinished cabinet doors and drawer fronts so that I can finish up the new storage drawers (one under each bed) and the revised overhead cabinets across the front of the coach. I've found via other projects in this rig that red oak with a single coat of MinWax Golden Pecan stain plus three coats of spray semi-gloss polyurethane matches the factory wood very closely ...

The storage drawers are 12Hx36Wx24D and are on heavy duty 100# full extension glides. They should hold quite a bit in terms of hiking boots, etc.

The overhead cabinets in the nose had to be shortened a bit (9") on either side (where the useless shirt closets used to be) for more footroom. These are now nice cabinets with two fixed shelves so they're good for sweatshirts, folded jeans, and all other 'real world' camping stuff that never gets put on hangers anyway! I'll post photos when it's all done.

Cheers ...