Living in a vehicle

Sounds odd, but living in an RV is really living in a vehicle, despite all the comforts of home. While looking towards the front of the coach you see seats with seat belts, a steering wheel, and a typical vehicle dashboard.

Not the living room décor / theme most people would choose, not to mention difficult to keep clean with all of those dial, knobs and gages.

I have met many women who have commented that they live in a 5th wheel, mainly because they don’t like the look of living in a vehicle no matter how convenient it is to travel in an RV. Well neither do I. So I’m on a journey to erase the “vehicle” from my living room. Now, all of this has evolved over time and I’m still working towards my end goal.

The first project I tackled was the steering wheel. I had seen many RV’s with “steering wheel tables”. These are plastic table tops with special attachments that keep the table level when mounted. As it turned out, the commercially sold tables were too wide, and interfered when I tried to turn the driver seat.

Off to Lowes! It is one of my favorite stores, by the way… I found a stool seat just the right size, bought some blocks, pipe clamps and some rubber-melty stuff. Using a level I figured out how many blocks I need to level the table, glued them together, screwed the legs to the table, screwed the pipe clamps on, used the melty stuff on the clamps to protect the steering wheel and instant table!!

I then put a round tablecloth over the whole assembly, crocheted a table topper for the “fancy factor”, added a lamp and some plants. Presto!

Next I needed to cover the dashboard. That required a bit more skill in a certain area (sewing) that I did not have. So this next part waited until I arrived back home in PA where I enlisted the help of my mother, a master seamstress.

She calculated I would need about 3 yards of material. In addition to the material she had me buy something called Pellon that we would use to make into a pattern.

Basically we laid the Pellon over what was to be covered, marked where to cut, and then cut out the pieces. I labeled each piece (hard to see in the picture), pinned each piece to the fabric and cut it out.

With my Singer Pixie Craft sewing machine (don’t laugh, it fits in my small space), I sewed all of the pieces together. I don’t know how other RV dashboards are but we have features on ours that we sometimes need to access. So for the front, I made several panels for easy access.

To hold the cover on the dashboard I bought some anti-slip material used for carpets and laid that down then the cover.

At first I thought this would be fine, but after extended use it has become clear that I will need to sew Velcro along the top and sticky the other part to the black rubber along the window.

I added a few plants for that homey feel and it feels A LOT less like a vehicle and more like a living room to us. Next I want to make slip covers for the front seats to hide the seatbelts, swivel arms and seat adjustment hardware.

BEFORE