Living Room

Would you believe that a roughly 100 sq.ft. space can be divided into five rooms? Well, that's the way I think about my Sportsmobile (SMB) design. To me, there's a distinct living room, kitchen, bedroom with a closet, bathroom, and a basement. Would you believe that I intend to devote an entire post to each of them? If you've read my previous, occasionally obsessive, posts, that's probably not hard to believe at all. But I do have a reason - or rationalization - for this attention to detail. The time is approaching to submit my final design to SMB. Writing these posts will give me a chance to review everything one last time. It will also give anyone who cares to read, a (very) thorough tour of my motorhome, and a chance to chime in if they wish. Let's start with the living room.

The living room is where I'll entertain visitors and spend most of my waking time inside the motorhome. I should make clear from the start that my intention is to spend as much time as possible outside the motorhome. It will have a nice awning that can be extended on the passenger side, and I envision many hours spent there in a comfortable camp chair reading, visiting, and using my laptop computer. Nor do I expect to just sit most of the time. I won't count a day as a success unless I've spent at least a couple hours out hiking around, exploring the countryside and enjoying nature. But when it's too cool or hot or windy, I'll retreat inside to the living room.

The living room consists of the two cab seats, swiveled around, and a 6' couch that seats three. The "couch" is actually what SMB calls a dinette, and for consistency, that's what I'll call it from here on. One of the things I learned on my trip to the Fresno factory was that they can make a dinette that transforms into a bed of any width. There's also a "gaucho", but when you fold that out into bed, the back cushion mechanism does a fascinating somersault up and over the bottom cushion, but can't simply be removed to create a twin size bed.) The dinette not only seats three, but has three seat belts for safety during travel. Here's a view of the living room area from approximately the position of the side entry door.

The table shown can be moved to wherever it's useful, even outside; or it can be quickly disassembled and stowed away. The dinette can be used as a twin size bed by removing the rear cushion, or extends out to a 44" wide bed for two:

A bed 44" wide is tight for two adults, but many RV companies use that size as a double. 

The seats and dinette are covered in what the industry calls Ultraleather. Needless to say, it's never had any association with a cow. It's a high end type of naugahyde. To my uncultured eyes and fingers it looks and feels like the nicest automotive leather. Seriously, it's almost worth a trip to a RV dealership just to run your hand across it. It's supposed to be longer-wearing than leather and stain-proof, too. With all the woodgrain around, I'm going for a western lodge feel for the interior. SMB offers two-tone upholstery as an option, and I liked it the first time I saw it:

I think my combination of brown and off-white will look even better.  Two pillows come with any dinette, so to add a touch of color I'll have mine done in burgundy fabric. The wood finish mimics cherry wood, and looks lighter in person than the images above. The flooring throughout the coach will be a durable and waterproof marine vinyl in a mottled white and brown texture that reminds me of sand. 

In the living room aisle, I'll probably have a throw rug anyway.

With all the attention to detail I've given to my design, you may be surprised that I don't know precisely where the couch will be positioned. My instructions to the installers is "Position as far aft as possible without interfering with opening the refrigerator door." You can see the issue in the diagram below:

The refrigerator is in cabinet S7 and the door opens toward the rear. With the dinette positioned properly, the door should just miss its corner. Obviously, when the dinette is folded out into a bed, the refrigerator is blocked, but I can live with that. If the dinette is used as a twin bed, there's no problem. The seat backs of the cab seats recline, and I'm hoping the spacing and heights work out so that I can put my stocking feet up on the dinette to have the comfort of an easy chair.

The space beneath the dinette is useful, too:

The items represented as brown and yellow are the furnace and the hot water heater, respectively. The white box is the inverter that converts 12 VDC to 110 VAC. I'll have more to say about these in a future post on utilities. The point of the image above is that there's a lot of storage space available for other things. I'll store bedding for when the couch is made up for sleeping, and small appliances for cooking such as a crockpot, a food processor, and a breadmaker.

Speaking of storage, the living room includes a couple overhead cabinets, too. Like most of the other upper cabinets, the one over the couch is 15" high and 12" deep. This is where I'll store my computer and electronics. There'll be a charging station for my portable electronics, with an electrical outlet inside the cabinet. 

The fore end of this cabinet is where various controls for the RV will be located.

The largest black rectangle is the fusebox. If the lights go out, I prefer to have it accessible rather than digging into the back of a cabinet somewhere. The other two black rectangles are a monitor for charging the coach batteries, and a controller specific to charging from solar panels. Though I won't initially have solar panels, I want to get the wiring for them in case I change my mind. The round gauge above monitors the pressure in the propane tank, and the white rectangle is a carbon monoxide alarm. There may be a couple other controls needed, but hopefully they'll all fit in the space I've allotted.

The other cabinet is over the cab seats:

It's in a good location to store caps, gloves, and other things I want to grab as I'm headed out the door. I've got a more ambitious use for it, too, that I'll describe below. At the right end I've got hooks for jackets. I'm a big fan of the Command brand hooks and wall-mounted caddies. They can be adhered to a surface and later removed with no holes or damage. Along the bottom of the cabinet is a track for a curtain. This curtain will give a quick way to screen the living area from the cab windows for some privacy. It can also help the cab to warm or cool more quickly with air from the dash. 

When reviewing other RVs in previous posts, I was a stickler for having plenty of large windows. I think you can see in the image below how the windows on the right and left make this rather compact space feel open and airy.

The window behind the dinette tilts open for ventilation. I also plan to have a screen that can be pulled across the side door opening (just forward of the galley cabinet) for a wide open feel without letting the bugs in. Of course, there are shades for all windows when more privacy is desired. 

No living room would be complete without a TV (some may disagree), and you can see it on the right in the image above. It's on a swing out arm so it can be centered in the aisleway for easier viewing from the couch, or even swiveled around for viewing from the back of the van. I may not have an actual TV, but a high resolution computer monitor screen used in conjunction with a usb TV tuner for my computer. In either case, I don't plan to get a satellite TV receiver - at least not right away. But I will have a rooftop antenna to pick up local stations. Mostly, I'll use the TV to view internet streaming video or shows I've recorded.

The largest TV that will fit in the space shown without blocking the aisle is 24" diagonal. I'm afraid that's going to seem really puny, but I've got a backup plan. By spanning the entire cabin width at that location with a roll up screen, I could have a 50" or 60" diagonal image. Then I could use a video projector located in the cabinet over the cab seats; it would sit behind the swing up door. That, combined with the premium sound system I intend to install, should make for quite a home theater. I could even move the projector and screen outside to have a movie night for the RV park.

All lighting for the RV will be LED for the best power efficiency possible. For the living room, there'll be three ceiling fixtures: one over the entry, and two centered in the aisle near the back and front ends of the dinette, all controlled by a single switch near the entry. The boxy fixtures you see in the images above are task lights, each with an individual switch, that can be swiveled around in any direction they're needed.

That completes our tour of the living room. Get ready for a hike: we're trekking to the galley next.