Step 5: Make it the prettiest!

This is where we started to have some fun! With our theme being 60’s grandma’s house, we chose a floral for the curtains and funky pea green and rust colored fabrics for the cushions. We knew we needed our color pallet to match well with the one thing we weren’t willing to spend money to change: the dookie brown countertops…

Recovering the cushions was a piece of cake.

Ha! Not. I was able to reuse the foam inserts and the vinyl backing from the bottom cushions, which did make things quicker. You can look up a million videos on how to make a box cushion, but the best way I’ve found to get a tight fit is to use the existing panels as patterns in situations where you can reuse your foam. Tear down the seat cover with a seam ripper, place each panel on your fabric and cut around the panel. Because you are using the original panel, you can cut your new panels to the exact size as the old one - no need to add margins for the seams, they are already there.

If you don’t have an old seat to go on, you will need to refer YouTube to whip one up from scratch.

Stuff the cushions into the covers and give them a few karate chops to get them positioned properly in the covers. Now, you’ve got to find a way to close your covers. Do you want to be able to remove them and clean them? Do you mind losing your religion while attempting to sew in zippers or hand stitches? In the end, my answers to these questions were respectively, yes and no.

Velcro!

I had already spent way too much time sewing a “blind” stitch into my bottom cushions to close them off, and sewing zippers is maddening, so velcro became my hero. The original panels had zippers, and by using them as patterns, I had plenty of fabric to finish the seams and stitch velcro tape down the opening.

Once I had a set of finished cushions in my hands, the curtains really were a piece of cake. So much so, that I’m not even going to talk about it.

Lastly, these campers come with a terrible hard plastic sink cover and a standard, low-profile RV faucet. Change it! I purchased a half sheet of red oak plywood, and with a router, sanding sponges, a butane torch and some epoxy resin, you too can have a fancy sink cover. As for the faucet, it is critical that you get a low-profile, or folding faucet if you have a pop-up like ours. Otherwise, go ham on your faucet style.