New class C partial remodel

[Dairyman_John]

I don’t post very often, but I sure spend a lot of time reading here. Sort of like cheap romance novels I guess;)
DW and I have a new Thor Four Winds or something like that about 22 feet long. They say it’s an entry level Motor Coach. For us in the cow milking business its an awesome way to escape every once in a while to places that don’t have cows. This summer we are planning a mother in law farewell tour. Not really like it sounds, but almost. My mother lives near us in Utah. Our plan is to take her cross country to Connecticut, put her on a plane, ship her home then pick up my mother in law and work our way back west on a different track to go places she would like to go. Both are in their mid eighties and in relatively good health.
Our challenge is that Thor has a dinette set that is okay to sit at and eat but is also the passenger seating which for any length of time to sit at sucks. Even for me or my DW’s mother in law. We would even like them to be comfortable and enjoy this trip.
I checked out double recliners, went to work with the tape and was happy. Until I pulled the dinette apart and the water tank, pump inverter reared their ugly heads. Having that stuff mostly inside is probably good in the cold weather, but makes fitting other furniture in there more of a challenge than working Holstein cows all day in a mud puddle.
First I have been trying to find out at the shop4seats place what the dimensions are underneath said recliner to see if some sort of build out is possible. Failing that I thought maybe a couple euro recliners away from that stuff and build some sort of storage around the other stuff might work.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the first knot head to encounter this challenge. What ideas or experiences have some of you better informed run across for solutions?
I thought about posting on some other forums but the handles look quite similar as far as active OP’s go.
Tomorrow i will post a few pictures. Thank you in advance good people. John

[Dairyman_John]

Party of Five, i like your comment about depreciation. All my life it has been about return on investment , finding ways to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear etc. I could see getting into this that it never will pay or cash flow. I gues we just accept that , move on and hopefully have a good time before we get too old. Thanks for the comment.........

[Dairyman_John]

Thanks for the replies. Off Pavement, I really like the concept and what you have looks really good. As Bumpy says, where do your feet go or do you have an ottoman or something for your feet to rest on? Rolin, I think the water tank is up about twelve inches. My plan was to get pictures and dimensions up here today but the cows decided differently.
We’ve been working on a corral drainage project . Turns out cows if given the opportunity love to take a small mud hole and tromp around in them until they become like tank traps that can swallow up a $200,000 loader before the operator has any idea what happened. This project has involved about a half mile of three inch minus gravel in a twenty foot wide strip a foot deep on top of some geo textile cloth set in with a laser beam as we are only dealing with a half percent of slope.
Anyhow we are almost done so hopefully tomorrow can be a goof off day and I can put pictures and dimensions here for your perusal. We could probably lower or move or split up the water tank if need be, just I was hoping to not create a huge project.
We’ve also been tackling the underside with tying up poorly routed wires, putting paint there that never was and doing some undercoating after five star , bilstein, Banks, etc. Don’t want the mother’s in law to get used to too leisurely pace. Thanks for the good info today. Ill be back tomorrow.

[Rolin]

Just need long legs to reach the floor. Maybe the items stored underneath, between the seats are platforms to put your feet on.

Dairyman, I am concerned about loosing storage as well. On our installation it appears that we will only loose 30% of the storage we had. The wider the couch the more storage under it.

How high is your water tank? The van jackknife couch has about 13in of clearance, not as comfortable as the regular jackknife couch which has 9in of clearance.

[Bumpyroad]

Off Pavement wrote:

I did see this setup and wondered if something like it might work for you too...

with the seats back from the edge, seems awfully uncomfortable to me.
bumpy

[PartyOf_Five]

I have no wisdom, but wanted to thank you all for the smile this light reading brought! My principle is to do as little as possible since they depreciate faster than split milk!

[Off_Pavement]

Dairyman John wrote:
...makes fitting other furniture in there more of a challenge than working Holstein cows all day in a mud puddle.

I dunno about that John, I've lived in farm country and saw what ranchers/farmers have to do with those cows! At least the furniture doesn't kick without provocation!

I removed our U-dinette and replace with two non-swivel, 0 clearance recliners bolted to the floor. Very comfy!

Moving the converter/inverter should be doable, but the water may be really challenging. Could you move the tank to a storage area though it would be exposed to cold, and insulating it? How about the possibility of splitting the tank into two smaller separated tanks that would fit where you have room?

I dunno what to tell you about lost storage space other than to carry less stuff. DW and I never used the under seat area for anything in our class C, so I've never felt like we lost anything, and gained seating as comfortable as we have in our home.

I did see this setup and wondered if something like it might work for you too...

[Rolin]

Hi Dairyman,
We are in process of doing exactly what you are thinking of. We found that our U shaped dinette was visually pleasing to look at but not comfortable to relax in or watch a movie from.

We contacted Shop4Seats and had a great conversation with a knowledgeable person. Found that the couch we wanted required a 9in clearance. The exterior storage area under our dinette was 13in high. Shop4Seats could put a spacer under the couch to raise it to fit 13in but we found that would make the couch seat too high for my wife, her feet would dangle over the edge. So we are removing the exterior storage area and reworking it.

My plan is to place the couch about 5in away from the wall so we can have a small shelf along the back to place electronic devices on while they charge from the nearby outlet and perhaps install some cup holders.

I would be interested others experiences when replacing a dinette.
Rolin