RV Renovation on a Budget

DIY RV Renovation of a 1987 Lazy Daze! Before, After, Tips and Tricks to Renovation!

My partner, Austin, and I have never owned an RV before. We got the inspiration from staying in an #airbnb in #SanDiego #California on the beach in a #camper #van. It was remodeled adorably and just the perfect romantic evening. We thought, hey we could buy a van and remodel it and create a vacation destination short term rental! Well, when we actually started looking for vans, we started finding RV's and thought it would be cool to have an RV to travel with as well.

We had about $10,000 total in our budget saved. We got the RV for $7,000 and after registration, tags and everything else, we spent about $2,000 on the renovation materials and supplies. We had NO idea how to renovate a space. Neither of us had ever done construction before, but we had a vision and we believed we could transform this RV. We ended up buying a 1987 Lazy Daze RV with only 70,000 miles on it.

Here are the before pictures when we first got it. Definitely straight from the 80's!

The RV had brown carpet throughout...even in the bathroom! But first thing we did, was paint the entire interior white. We painted the walls, the cabinets, everything white except for two accent walls we painted a light blue. Both paints we got on amazon. We also replaced all of the knobs on the cabinets. All materials we ordered on Amazon. The backsplash for the kitchen was a stick-on backsplash that looks like subway tile found here. The countertops were this light pink color. We ended up trying the countertop wrap, you can see the grey in the pictures that is the wrap. We ended up finding it really hard to make look nice and professional without creases and it pealing. Instead we decided to paint the countertops with a white boat paint which is water resistant.

We took out the boat chairs and added modern white chairs instead found here. The couch, we bought a couch cover and kept the original cushioning since it really hadn't been used.

Now for the flooring which was the biggest project of all....

First, we tore up the carpet in the bathroom and the living space which wasn't too hard we mainly used a crow bar and a hammer to pull the carpet up. Then came removing the laminate in the kitchen...The kitchen was slightly raised so we really had to use some muscle and a crowbar to remove the top layer and even out the floor all the way to the base. Once we evened the floor out, which took a couple days of work, we started laying down the new wood laminate and had it run long and continuous through the space to make it look bigger and more cohesive. Here are the materials we used. Sometimes you may need to add an underlayment, but for our RV we tried and it just didn't stick as well and seemed to slide around. We also used some nails in some tricky areas to make sure the laminate was secured.

Once the renovation was done it was time to decorate! My favorite part is creating the space. I wanted this RV to feel light, bright, airy and beachy. To add privacy, I bought shades from Walmart for all of the windows and then made handmade curtains for the bunk bed. The large curtain was a tapestry from Urban Outfitters that I felt like fit the space and the colors perfectly. Keeping the colors light and neutral, the pop of color came from the accent wall, plants, and the tapestry.

This renovation took us about 2 months to complete. It took some work, but was extremely simple and fairly cost effective with the materials we decided to use! We wanted to keep the front cab the same to keep it's vintage charm.