Our 1994 Class C Motorhome Renovation (for under $500!)

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If you can remember buying your first RV, you’ll understand the joy (and fear) we felt when we bought our 1994 Coachmen Leprechaun motorhome. We also instantly knew that the RV that was as old as us would need a major motorhome renovation to be road-worthy.

We knew we couldn’t afford a fancy, new motorhome. And the ready-to-drive used rigs at dealerships were out of our price range. Our only choice was a pre-owned fixer-upper from Craigslist. But we knew if we bought a used camper, we’d need to do a major motorhome renovation to make the rig feel like our first home together.

Before:

After:

Grand Plans for An RV Honeymoon

Newly married and ready to set out on our honeymoon, our goal was to hit all forty-eight contiguous states, film our adventure, and even write a book about our travels.

We did yet know that this RV would become our home for nearly two years, or that we would love it so much that we would become full-timers. But we did know that our motorhome would be our first home together, and we wanted it to be as comfortable as possible.

Our 20-year-old Class C would serve as a home, workspace, storage unit, and film studio. Using DoItYourselfRV.com, we scoured every article on class C motorhome renovations to spark some ideas for our remodel.

With a 29-foot rig and no slide-outs, we needed to choose colors and updates to make the motor home feel more spacious and homey.

We loved this Jayco redesign and used nearly all of their ideas – except for the lime green everywhere. That seemed like a little much to me. We wanted something a little more mellow.

Before this remodel, Heath had never painted a wall. But he was overly confident he could manage this whole remodel independently.

In the middle of wedding planning, mapping out our honeymoon road trip, and working, we gave ourselves exactly one week to complete our renovation. (You probably think that’s way too crazy, and we’d now agree with you!)

Here was our grand plan for the Coachmen Leprechaun:

• Remove table, chairs, couch, and mattress
• Remove, prime, and repaint cabinet doors
• Prime the interior of the RV
• Paint all interior walls Olympic paint “Aqua Chiffon” (Or as I call it, Tiffany Blue)
• Paint overhead loft (My husband did this WITHOUT my permission)
• Remove all the carpet and replace it with laminate wood floors “Shaw Resilient – Hickory”
• Prime, paint, and seal kitchen table
• Spray paint all handles and hinges silver
• Re-install all removed cabinet doors, furniture, etc.
• Replace couch cover
• Sew curtains for windows

A $500 Budget

We found all of our painting and flooring supplies easily at Lowe’s. Altogether, we spent about $500 to complete the motorhome renovation ourselves. The most expensive part was replacing the floors, but the old linoleum and dark blue carpet had to go!

Our other ideas included replacing all of our lights with LED bulbs and mounting a television, but then we looked at pricing and gave up on those dreams. $20 a lightbulb? No thanks.

If we had the budget, I would’ve replaced our drawer pulls and handles with something more modern, but we quickly and easily spray painted them with a silver finish.

Removing all of the furniture and cabinet doors was simple enough with the right power drills, but it took nearly a whole day.

As we primed, I threw out the idea of leaving the entire camper white. I loved how bright it looked! Heath fought me on it and won. (“We already bought the blue paint!”) Looking back, I still love the all-white look!!

Priming the RV took the two of us two full days. 🥵  
Look at all that white! The little spindles on what would become our spice shelf took forever! You don’t realize how many nooks and crannies are in your RV until you take a paintbrush to them.

The aqua chiffon blue brightened our new mobile home even better than we could’ve imagined. Contrasted with the white cabinets, our tiny living area felt much bigger and happier, or as my husband says, “It feels like a traveling beach house.”

We quickly found that the small details of the motorhome renovation were the most important. Spray-painting all of the hinges and all of the handles in silver wasn’t high on our priority list until we saw what 1994 shiny gold looked like…horrible.

After we finished painting all of the walls and cabinets, I needed to return to work, so I left the construction to my husband (in retrospect, obviously a bad idea).

All he needed to do was paint the table, put the cabinet doors back on, and lay the new laminate floor. I’d installed laminate before, so I knew it was easy enough for him to handle. We had already ripped out the carpet and planned to lay the boards directly over the linoleum that was in our living area.

While I worked, he continued to renovate. He found shower curtains that perfectly matched our walls. His mother lined and sewed them into curtains for our living area windows. She also found a tan slipcover to cover our hideous couch perfectly.

My husband decided to grand reveal the finished RV to me for dramatic effect. I didn’t mind—that meant I didn’t have to help finish the construction!

When I walked in, I noticed our previously white overhead loft was suddenly dark grey.

We had argued endlessly about whether or not to paint the loft, and finally had agreed NOT to – but he painted it anyway! This is what I get for leaving Heath alone with our house.

We kept our remodel simple. We were careful when picking an RV with no major system fixes. Just a little cosmetic lift, and our new home felt much bigger and more comfortable than when we picked it up! Simply painting the walls and replacing the floors made a difference. Our 20-year-old model, affectionately known as “Franklin the Turtle” for his speed, looks at least a decade younger.