DIY motorhome: interior space

Throughout most of the motorhome build, so far, it was H doing a lot of it while I sourced supplies or held or helped lift things. But when it came to the interior design of the cupboards I finally got to 'have a go'. 

First I drew up my ideas and then once we'd agreed on them we taped out the design on the floor to see how it felt for space, and tweaked the design a bit more. Then we had my brother draw up the passenger (left)  side design on a CAD programme and sent them and some more PVC foam panels to a joining firm to cut them. 

 

 

While they were being drawn and cut we were able to work on a few other jobs: H built the shower and we managed a trip to Melbourne. 

 

A really comfy RV for travel and living

We've built this motorhome for comfort and living. The roads in Australia are generally quite spacious and free camps are readily available so having a bigger RV set up to be self sufficient seems like a good way to go.

It can be said that in Australia having a lifestyle that involves an RV (Caravan, Camper trailer, motorhome) is very common. Mostly recreational vehicle owners do seem to have caravans (usually behind a comfortable newish 4 wheel drive), and although they might do a bit in their earlier years, long term travel in an RV is mostly done by retirees, who we affectionately call "grey nomads" (amongst many other names). It's said* that there are over half a million registered RV's in Australia, not insignificant in a country with a population of about 24 million.

Australia is the 6th largest country in the world (behind Russia, Canada, USA, China, Brazil) and so there is plenty of reasons to take your time seeing the great southern land.

To make this motorhome as comfortable as possible, H first selected a bus that had 2 metres of headroom and a fibreglass outer to work with. He then stripped it down and replaced the non opening bus windows with walls and RV windows. We've put as many solar panels as we could fit onto the roof: that's 13 of 100 amp flexible panels. We've fully insulated it (really insulated it, I'm still surprised how cool it is inside while parked in the sun), put rotating chairs in and a bench seat, built and installed an eutectic fridge/freezer, installed a big 600amp lithium battery to suit those solar panels, and installed a washing machine. Even our mattress is a comfy 203cm tall by 145cm wide!

This mobile home is built to live in. It's our home and so we aren't paying expenses on another home base at the same time. Considered this way, it's worth putting the extra touches into making it a nice place to live in.


*http://www.unsealed4x4.com.au/just-big-rv-industry-australia/ 

Our motorhome interior: Kitchen, dining, and the large chest in the left corner is the fridge. Note, we also have a door to the bedroom-bathroom.

Shower, toilet and laundry in our RV/ Motorhome.

The front of the Motorhome bus: rotating chairs.