Vintage Dutch Girl

Monday, June 25, 2012

Travel Trailer Makeover, Part 6: New Dinette! Recover those cushions!

OK yes, this travel trailer factory direct diamond pattern fabric has GOT to go. I decided to attack the entire dinette cushion recovering in one day. Because that's how I do things. Nothing for a loooooong time then a huge flurry of activity. Remind you of my blogging schedule!? :)

So yes, these cushions:

From this dinette:

Five cushions to recover, including two rather oddly shaped triangular corner cushions. Hoo boy. This is gonna be a big job.

First off I took off the old covers and measured every single bit of them to draw up my cushion patterns. Then I cut out the flat panel patterns from the chevron fabric.....taking pains to make sure the colors and zig-zags lined up appropriately with the other cushions. And making sure the fabric wasn't upside down.

Because if it IS upside down you may waste a good yard or so of fabric. {Ahem}

I had to seriously muscle the foam into some of these covers but wanted to make sure they were a snug fit. I bought a cover button pack and covered them in parts of the chevron fabric. I used a long, upholstery size needle (see pic) to thread the button strings through the thick foam. Once again, lots of muscle used! My forearms were super sore the next day!

And now, confession time: I did NOT want to struggle with putting fancy, neat zippers on these five cushions so instead I closed up the openings with safety pins :) Once again, saved a ton of time, and they are all hidden inside the dinette frame anyways!

All in all I was very pleased with how these came out. MUCH more fresh and fun. Here you go, the finished dinette makeover:

And the before/after side by side shot:

Quite a difference, right!?

Next up: the dreaded COUCH project. OY.

Amanda - Vintage Dutch Girl

Check out all the posts from this Travel Trailer Makeover Series!

Part 1: A sassified Shower Curtain

Travel Trailer Makeover, Part 5: Recovering Window Cornice Thingys!

For this part I will heretofore refer to the top of the window covering cornice thingymajigs as Cornici. I'm certain that it the correct pluralization of the word cornice, yes? Ok, maybe not, but I think it's fun. Cornici. Rhymes with Octopi. Sort of.

I decided to recover the curved Cornici in our new trailer (Lumi :) with Premier Prints Topeka Solid Chocolate brown fabric that I purchased from Fabric.com, my fave online fabric store. well, all the regular windows cornici. I did have one flat cornice over the kitchen window that I used the chevron print to recover.

In the interest of saving my wrists and hands from days of aches and pains after tearing out hundreds of staples I decided to leave the previous fabric and just put the new fabric right on top of it. Ah yes, much more simple. And made the project quick quick quick. Well, as quick as you can get with a three and five year old around.

Another benefit from leaving the old fabric intact? It was super handy to see where the previous Cornici coverer had cut the fabric to help it stay tight and unwrinkled on all the corners and curves:

But hey, we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit. First off, I had to remove the industrial strength velcro strips that hold the side curtains on. Then i tried to get a rough measurement of the amount of fabric I'd need per cornice:

The comes the fun.When you are recovering just about anything you first center the cornici or chair seat board or whatever on your fabric. You then wrap the fabric around from opposite sides, pull tight and staple from the centers out. Here's a wimpy diagram:

The key is to not create any lumps, bumps or folds on the visible side so keep turning your piece (or cornici) over and checking to make sure everything is smooth.

Last up, the corners. I'm not going to lie, they are not always easy. Just keep folding and pulling and stapling until they lie flat or look as good as you want them to. Once again, I was glad to have left the old fabric on so I had a folding template for the corners.

After I was all done, this is what the inside cornici looked like:

I reattached the velcro strips on the inside (for the side curtains) and then had my hubby help me hold the cornici in place to reattach to the trailer walls.

Less diamond pattern, more sassiness!

And the before n after of the kitchen cornice:

This made SUCH a huge difference in the cheerfulness of our trailer! In fact, the next week or so my Mom also decided to recover her faded cornici with some fresh newer fabric. It make such a huge difference! I dare you to try it :)

Amanda - Vintage Dutch Girl

Check out all the posts from this Travel Trailer Makeover Series!

Part 1: A sassified Shower Curtain

Friday, June 8, 2012

Travel Trailer Makover, Part 4: Wallpaper Removal, a Dismantled Trailer and New Side Curtains...

Oh yes. the diamond wallpaper border. I was extremely nervous about this but had decided that if I was going to eliminate all of the other diamond/check gray/green/beige fabric I should also try to remove the wallpaper border:

I had tried to find out online if anyone knew what kind of wallpaper this was and how to best remove it. I found only one lady on an RV forum who said her new trailer had the peel n stick kind of wallpaper boarder and to just peel it off slowly. So, after the hubby's enthusiastic approval ("Sure, whatever you want Hon") I tried to peel back a small part of the border in a hidden spot to see if it would work.

AND IT DID! I sent this crazy face text to him:

Hee hee :) I was kinda excited. The pink arrow is pointing to the place where I had just removed the wallpaper! I found that as long as I peeled back sssuuuuuupppppeeerrrr slowly it did not leave much gunk behind.

However....

There IS a significant amount of sticky glue gunk left behind.

I tried MULTIPLE methods at removing this gunk. The very best method to remove the leftover peel and stick wallpaper gunk is spraying Goo Gone on it and leaving it set for a few hours. Then, come back with a plastic putty scraper (I wouldn't recommend a metal one - it might damage your wall!) and scrape like crazy.

Lather Rinse Repeat. Took about three sessions of spay, soak and scrape on each section. LOTS of elbow grease.

But hey, by the end you end up with a pile of yucky wallpaper and smooth, unsticky walls:

And apparently a daughter who is proficient at angry birds.

Next I took all the curtains, window valance thingys, queen headboard, venetian blinds and cell shades down. Fully dismantled and ready to be sassified:

The original, straight from the manufacturer look to the dismantled, oh-boy-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into look:

And you might notice on the taken apart photo, I had already begun to sew the new side curtain panels:

First I laid all the original panels on the new fabric to get measurements....and to take before/after photos :) Then I serged and finished the edges. On the bottom I left a pocket so they could slide over the wall mounted curtain end holders:

The tops had to be gathered and then velcro sewn on. Yup, these hang from the cornice thingys by industrial strength VELCRO. I love it! It means whenever my kiddos pull on them (because you know they will) and rip them down, nothing is damaged. It's just velcro. No problem!

Hoo boy, this post is getting too long! Next up: recovering the window cornice thingys.

Amanda - Vintage Dutch Girl

Check out all the posts from this Travel Trailer Makeover Series!

Part 1: A sassified Shower Curtain