Building up the toyhauler floor (and our first YouTube video)

We have a toyhauler, which we bought for the purpose of modifying into an office.  We didn't want to have our desks hanging out in the living room.

We posted a YouTube video on building up the floor of the garage.  It's our first-EVER YouTube video, and it looks like it.  :(  But it does describe how we did it, and we hope it can help someone else who wants to do the same.

Modifications and customizations

So we have a fifth wheel parked in our back yard, and we want to move in.  However, we want some changes before we do.  Most of the long list of items will have to be done as we're living in it, and we want to get started with that, even though we will be living in it in our own back yard while we get the house ready for sale.

Some of the modifications we've already done are trivial - we drilled holes in the rollup-shades so we could hang a string from them so we could get to them.  When they roll all the way up, we have to stand on the upholstered couch to reach them - now we can reach the strings much more easily to pull them back down.  And, of course, we've started putting 3M Command Hooks up - to hold a trash bag, keys, etc.  We've put up a couple curtains for warmth, although that didn't really modify the RV.

A slightly bigger modification was to create blackout curtains in the garage/office/guest room.  We don't like being blasted by light in the morning, and we want to honor any guests we may have by allowing them the same darkness.  It was a fairly minor modification, just involving a few screws into the valances, and hooking the vinyl curtains over them.

And we have plans to install 360 Siphon vent covers on the roof in place of the stock vent covers.  I guess it's odd that we're worrying about tank odors when we haven't even used our tanks, but so many people talked so highly of them that we decided to have them from the beginning.

We're also planning how we can enhance our closet space.

The big modification we're working on is the conversion from garage to office.  We're making good progress - we've built up the floor, but haven't carpeted or moved anything in.

It's getting exciting!

Our poor fence

Our RV lives in our back yard for now.  We have a corner lot, and take down three fence panels to back it in (we aren't very good yet, or we'd be able to do it with two fence panels down).  The fence is 20 years old, and already starting to show its age.  It does NOT appreciate the panels coming up and down to bring it in the first time, to adjust the parking when we realized that the RV had too much of a slope in our sloped back yard, to take it back to the dealership for warranty repairs, to bring it back after warranty repairs...

And we intend to keep doing this for a few months, when we get solar at a minimum, and possibly for other reasons.  We don't want to actually FIX the fence, with new concrete settings for the posts, yet.  So we've got the posts held up with bracing for now, and will fix it properly after we move the RV out of the back yard for good.

Convert toyhauler garage to Office - Part 1 (planning)

We bought a toy hauler so we could make an office out of it.  So many people use the dining room table, or laptops on laps.  We each have two monitors, and use our computers a lot.  Besides, Cindy will probably work as a programmer from the RV at times.

So we have 8 feet 1 inch width, 13 feet length, of uninsulated garage, with a Happijac bed system.  We will use it as a guest room in the rare event that we have an overnight guest, but for the most part, the bed will be smushed against the ceiling and it will be an office (and, of course, a few other functions).

But we need to figure out the best way to convert a garage into a decent mobile office for two.

Easiest - put desks right on the garage floor as-is.  The problems with this are that it's cold, the floor looks like a garage floor, it's slippery, and the back 20 inches are unusable because they're the top part of the ramp for bringing toys like ATVs into the trailer.

Hardest - Build up the floor in the ramp area to reclaim those 20 inches, put insulating foam board on top of that, then plywood, then carpet.  The problem with this is that it's a lot of work, and also, since we are going to bolt the desks down, a lot of work in the future when we want to replace the carpet.  It possibly also voids the structural warranty, but Grand Design told us in an email that the warranty wouldn't be voided unless our changes are deemed to be the cause, and this seems unlikely.

Since we're going to be living in the RV, and we want it to be livable, we're going to do the harder, more complete option.  Our feet will thank us later.

Driving Lessons

We haven't had RVs before, except for a popup decades ago.  The popup was so small that Cindy could shove it around to help Brad park it.  A crew-cab, long-bed dually F350 with a 39 foot trailer is an entirely different issue.  So we took driving lessons.

Although we purchased the RV a couple weeks ago, it's been sitting at the dealership getting its little imperfections fixed/adjusted/replaced, and waiting for us to collect it and get driving lessons.  We've also been waiting for the weather to be good.  Several weeks, we thought the weather would be acceptable, but it changed and we couldn't get our lessons.  Now we finally got our chance.  We drove a couple hours to the lessons without having lessons.  Then we spent 11 hours driving, making left turns, right turns, backing up, and driving on easyish mountain roads.

We highly recommend lessons.

Job loss

Whoops, Cindy's company laid off about 15% of the workforce, including Cindy.  Bummer!!  Now it's time to get a new job, keeping travel plans in mind.

More stuff to get - Truck bed Covers

With the new year, I spent some time looking at the different bed covers for the Ford.
I really like the hard cover that rolls up into a hidden box, but not too sure about the cost. I'll have to think about it for a while.