Our PUP Remodel
Hi there! This is my first attempt at a blog, so bear with me. It's funny how one can be a talker, but when it comes to typing out thoughts... that's another story.
Some of my fondest childhood memories have outside a tent, fishing with my dad, hiking with my mom, exploring the mountains and oceans, among many others. It's been my goal, as a now mom myself, to bring create these same memories with my own children. Weekends away where we unplug as a family while flickering light from a campfire illumine our faces rather than lights from our TVs, iPads and iPhones.
And so our quest for our first camper began. In our excitement, we quickly purchased a 1999 Jayco Qwest pop up camper (PUP) for $1500. In retrospect, we probably should have shopped around a little longer because this camper turned out to be a piece of work! I've followed The Pop Up Princess on Facebook for quite awhile now and instantly knew we would remodel whatever we found.
When we purchased the PUP, we knew we were going to need to replace a counter top, some paneling and a stabilizer jack underneath. Little did we know, this thing had major water damage and worse, lots of mold.
We instantly knew that killing mold and replacing water damaged panels would be our first project. Unfortunately, we also had to repair an entire wall at one of the bunk ends. I'm still shocked at how much water damage this PUP had sustained... and the fact that we bought it in such bad shape without knowing. So many lessons learned with this project!
We bought all our new paneling at Menards. It cost just under $100 for 3-4 sheets. Unfortunately, in order to replace the paneling, it meant ripping out all the cabinets and ultimately, the electrical stuff, as well. This wasn't part of our plan, but thankfully, Chuck enjoyed the demolition part!
Our next project was to repaint all the cabinets. It actually helped having the cabinets out of the PUP for this. Being middle of winter, we plugged in some space heaters and repainted them in the garage. We bought a gallon of Dutchboy outdoor, white latex paint and went to work. We also sprayed the cabinet tops and hardware with Rust-Oleum All Surface spray paint in Hammered Dark Bronze. We used this to spray the table top as well.
Before we could reinstall the cabinets, we laid down new wood printed laminate floor on top of the existing laminate. We also bought this at Menards (this job could be a poster board for Menards!) for another $100. Sure seems like everything comes with a $100 price tag with this project.
While hubby worked on the floor and cabinet installation, I got to work on cleaning and repairing our canvas. I had previously read on the Pop Up Princess that Bass Pro Shop has an amazing mold and mildew remover for canvas and that did just the trick (thank you, father-in-law for that snag!).
I also stayed warm inside making new curtains. I pulled all the old C-clips out of the old curtains and sewed them right back into the new curtains. For curtains, I bought curtains from Target and just cut them to length and added the C-clips at the top. This was just under another $100, of course.
Once the curtains were finished, my mom helped me sew together cushion covers for the seats. It took an entire night, but it's my absolute favorite part of the entire camper. The fabric I chose set the color scheme for the inside. For the cushion backs, I bought two shower curtains from Target and for the cushion seats, two orange curtains also from Target. The idea was to sew cushion covers that can be easily removed for washing, but something that didn't involve sewing zippers (because ewww- that's a whole other beast).
Isn't that gorgeous?! I just love the colors and the floral... I could eat a campfire breakfast there every morning while listening to birds sing and kids play. Our very last project was replacing the ice box with a refrigerator. This took some real searching because everything we found was too big. One last look at Menards and we found just what we needed... for just under another $100. Ha!
We still have some work to do on this fun, little camper, but already, we've created so many awesome memories with it from the remodel to camping trips. Here's a peek at our finished product!
Some of my fondest childhood memories have outside a tent, fishing with my dad, hiking with my mom, exploring the mountains and oceans, among many others. It's been my goal, as a now mom myself, to bring create these same memories with my own children. Weekends away where we unplug as a family while flickering light from a campfire illumine our faces rather than lights from our TVs, iPads and iPhones.
And so our quest for our first camper began. In our excitement, we quickly purchased a 1999 Jayco Qwest pop up camper (PUP) for $1500. In retrospect, we probably should have shopped around a little longer because this camper turned out to be a piece of work! I've followed The Pop Up Princess on Facebook for quite awhile now and instantly knew we would remodel whatever we found.
When we purchased the PUP, we knew we were going to need to replace a counter top, some paneling and a stabilizer jack underneath. Little did we know, this thing had major water damage and worse, lots of mold.
We instantly knew that killing mold and replacing water damaged panels would be our first project. Unfortunately, we also had to repair an entire wall at one of the bunk ends. I'm still shocked at how much water damage this PUP had sustained... and the fact that we bought it in such bad shape without knowing. So many lessons learned with this project!
We bought all our new paneling at Menards. It cost just under $100 for 3-4 sheets. Unfortunately, in order to replace the paneling, it meant ripping out all the cabinets and ultimately, the electrical stuff, as well. This wasn't part of our plan, but thankfully, Chuck enjoyed the demolition part!
Our next project was to repaint all the cabinets. It actually helped having the cabinets out of the PUP for this. Being middle of winter, we plugged in some space heaters and repainted them in the garage. We bought a gallon of Dutchboy outdoor, white latex paint and went to work. We also sprayed the cabinet tops and hardware with Rust-Oleum All Surface spray paint in Hammered Dark Bronze. We used this to spray the table top as well.
Before we could reinstall the cabinets, we laid down new wood printed laminate floor on top of the existing laminate. We also bought this at Menards (this job could be a poster board for Menards!) for another $100. Sure seems like everything comes with a $100 price tag with this project.
While hubby worked on the floor and cabinet installation, I got to work on cleaning and repairing our canvas. I had previously read on the Pop Up Princess that Bass Pro Shop has an amazing mold and mildew remover for canvas and that did just the trick (thank you, father-in-law for that snag!).
I also stayed warm inside making new curtains. I pulled all the old C-clips out of the old curtains and sewed them right back into the new curtains. For curtains, I bought curtains from Target and just cut them to length and added the C-clips at the top. This was just under another $100, of course.
Once the curtains were finished, my mom helped me sew together cushion covers for the seats. It took an entire night, but it's my absolute favorite part of the entire camper. The fabric I chose set the color scheme for the inside. For the cushion backs, I bought two shower curtains from Target and for the cushion seats, two orange curtains also from Target. The idea was to sew cushion covers that can be easily removed for washing, but something that didn't involve sewing zippers (because ewww- that's a whole other beast).
Isn't that gorgeous?! I just love the colors and the floral... I could eat a campfire breakfast there every morning while listening to birds sing and kids play. Our very last project was replacing the ice box with a refrigerator. This took some real searching because everything we found was too big. One last look at Menards and we found just what we needed... for just under another $100. Ha!
We still have some work to do on this fun, little camper, but already, we've created so many awesome memories with it from the remodel to camping trips. Here's a peek at our finished product!
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