Simple RV Upgrades & DIY Repairs We Did

Hey everyone, we got home from our first winter south with a trailer in need of a little TLC. So we want to show you some of the repairs and upgrades that we've done over the summer to get our condo on wheels ready for our next big adventure. Let's talk about the four easy upgrades we did this summer and then also why we chose to do them, the difficulty level of them, and after using them for a few months if we're still happy with it. Starting with number one, we replaced the window in our door and the reason why we did that is because the old window was just a frosted kind of glass thing going on. The lighting wasn't great and first thing in the morning when it was really bright out we were getting light like shining right through. So we installed a tinted glass with a shade and then that way we can have a blackout blind at night which will keep it nice and dark or extra light during the day with the tinted glass. The difficulty level on this was, well, we're calling it a three out of five. The reason for that is because the old caulking that used to be around the outside of this window was pretty tough to get off until of course we reached out through our Instagram stories and learned, thank you very much June, that denatured alcohol will take caulking right off and not ruin the finish of your fiberglass door. So we did that, once we did that the rest came off, we installed the new window very easily and that's that. Three months later, after using it on a couple of trips this summer, we are still very happy with it. Although we do have to mention the kind of slight inconvenience of having to open and close the shade from outside of the trailer. And the reason being that, well, our screen door blocks it otherwise. A little bit of a design flaw but hey, we just work around it by opening it first thing in the morning when we open the door and then closing the shade again on our way back into the trailer at night. So another little upgrade we did was built-in cat scratchers. So why was that? Well, we used to have to bring one in from the house and we would forget it and it was like sitting right here and like in the middle of everything in the way. So now we have these really nice built-in ones. This one over here, this one over here. It's a pretty easy job. We're giving it a 2 out of 5. Mel built this one for I think about $15 and then we were just able to slot it over there. This one was an Amazon order and very easy to install. But I will say, so far, Benny has only used this one. He loves it. This one he won't touch. Why? Cats are so strange. So hopefully on this trip down south, we're going to get him used to that one. So another little upgrade we did was motion lights. So I can just come over to this little cupboard over here, boom, let there be light. So why did we need this? This cupboard used to be really dark before and you'd have to root around and find stuff. So much nicer with the light. We also put one here in Benny's under the bed litter, which again used to be really difficult to see when it was dark, especially at night. Now it lights up like it's the middle of the day. These are a super easy 1 out of 5 difficulty again. Amazon order, you just peel and stick. Although these sticky ones that come with it are not that great. So we may upgrade to some better tape. And are we still happy with these? Yeah, they're great. We're putting up more. We also got some solar powered exterior motion sensor lights. They have a couple different modes too. You can either turn them completely off, have them completely on or have them respond only when there's motion or have them dim until there's motion and then go really bright. Something else that is new in the trailer this season is our new carpet. We wanted to introduce some new color, something a little more coordinating with the cushions that I made the other year. The other reason we've got this carpet, though, is to hide some cables that run from our laptops to our plugs. And of course that crosses the walkway and we wanted the carpet to be able to prevent that tripping hazard. The difficulty level, of course, is about 1 out of 5. We literally ordered it on Amazon and it arrived within a few days. We absolutely love this rug. So we are very happy with it three months in and we love that we can put it in the machine, in the machine, in the washing machine. We can fold it, we can roll it. It takes up much less space than typical other runners that we've had and it just adds a beautiful pop of color. If any of these upgrades interest you for your rig, we'll include the links for those items in the description below. Now let me show you some of the repairs that we've done. First up on the list was replacing the caulking all around the kitchen sink. You can see around the edge here, the caulking is starting to peel up. So I'm going to be removing that today and replacing it with this stuff. This is a marine grade silicone caulk. So I'm going to come put it in to the corner at an angle, squeeze, and drag this along in the same speed. Wet your finger and just very gently... Ta-da! Then I needed to re-glue in some of this trim that had come loose. Of course, traveling down the roads, it's like your little trailer is going through an earthquake every time, so things are bound to come loose, and this was one of them. Okay, so I've run to the hardware store and I found this. No more clamp, wood glue, instant vertical hold. A nice little strip in here. It does say press firmly for 10 seconds. 10, 9, 8, 2, 1. Hey, it's holding. Okay, I'm happy with this product so far. This is great. All right, so there we have it. The baseboard is fixed. Now I'm going to hand you over to Jay, who took on some of the more challenging repairs. So both of our tires here on the left side were showing some pretty serious wear, and it was actually uneven wear such that I was worried that our axle might be bent. I took it to a local guy here in town and he had a look at it, but the very first thing he said was, you're going to be changing those tires, right? So it turned out the axle was fine, but he mentioned again, make sure you replace those tires, which thankfully that was my next appointment of the day. We took it to Cal Tire here in town, which I have to say, they're always great. They gave us two brand new tires, so we are ready to go again. So the next problem we had was with our waste valves. So they were leaking and they were also very difficult to pull out and push back in again. So I had to replace them both. This turned out to be a little bit trickier job than I thought as well. I looked at a lot of videos and the part where you put the seals in, they had cut that out in most videos, and I really understand why. There was probably just too much swearing going on for them to use it at all. It's tricky. I watched a video by a professional RV repair guy, and even he was struggling. So I felt a little bit better about that. Anyways, finally got it all done. We went on a trip to Kelowna and tested to make sure that they didn't leak. It was all good. So then I taped it up and used some waterproof spray foam, which is exactly what they did at the factory. Looks pretty ugly, but it works. Another thing that broke on our trip last year was our converter. It started sparking. So I just flipped the breaker and disabled it, which was fine because we had our solar, so we didn't really need it. But it's still a good thing to have, just in case for whatever reason we couldn't get enough solar or our solar broke and somehow we needed to either charge from shore power or from our generator. So we got a new one, and I've got a whole video about installing that. So check that out here. So this one should have been really simple, but it just wasn't. Our door hinge here broke, and I learned that it's very hard to get off steel rivets. So luckily I found a website and it explained how to do it. What you need is a metal punch, a cobalt drill bit, a cold chisel, a steady hand, and lots of patience. I can confirm that is all true. But once I finally got the old one off, installing the new one was a breeze. So that sums up our easy and not so easy repairs and upgrades. So now we are all ready for our snowboarding trip to Baja, Mexico. Stay tuned for those adventures coming soon. And be sure to check out our video where we replaced the entire roof on the trailer this past spring. Thankfully we had the professionals doing that one for us. Bye! Hey everyone, we got home when... when? So we installed this wonderful tinted one. Great. That didn't go to plan, did it? We'll include the descriptions in the... the descriptions. In the link below. What you need is... I forget. What you need is a metal punch, a cobalt steel bit... steel bit? No. For example, inside our cupboard here... Open it up. Still nothing. Why? Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.