Quote:
Originally Posted by doc73
He's probably got his notebook.. With Cowracer's post printed out inside racking those sale people over the coals!!! HAHa   |
If I was in the buying mood, I definitely would have! That post was AWESOME.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seasonal
How'd your tour go? Any thoughts?
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Just remember, you asked for this.
This is documentation mostly for me to remember back as we kick this around.
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SHORT-ISH VERSION
Overall I like it. However, there are a few things that may make this a non-purchase for us.
What I liked:
- the garage + blank slate with which to make a bedroom for the kids
- the kitchen had more storage than I expected
- the living room with the L-shape is great and I think I can sneak a sleeper sofa in where a pair of recliners are (for sleeping space for the in-laws)
What I didn't like:
- the bathroom shower is smaller than mine currently and it's too short for me to stand and wash my hair
- the bed wouldn't be comfortable for sitting up in to watch some television
- MyRV tablet for lights, slides, awning, etc. with no hard-switches
- hydraulic slides in the living room aren't separately switched
- I have to move a portion of the L-shape sofa to bring the slides in
- basement storage is anemic; like really tiny - I almost feel like under chassis storage boxes would be required
Other comments:
- I see fixing this up to be "home" as a lot of customization work
- building the garage into a bedroom is going to be a fair amount of work
- I'd want to install a bunch of cabinets that aren't there now in the 1/2 bath and garage
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SUPER LONG NOVEL VERSION
I spent a good 60-90 minutes in the camper today. It started as me, my daughter, my cousin, and my cousin's daughter. I can only imagine the Larry's (sales man) thoughts as the first thing I did was sit down at the dining room table and made all 4 of us sit with me. First thoughts on it: it's a smaller table than we have now. It's pretty tight between the seat and the underside of the table. Larry showed that it pulls away from the wall for a little more space- but it's still pretty cozy. I'd likely consider a change to something with a leaf so that we could expand it and seat more people more comfortably. It's not unusual for us to have my in-laws and want to seat 6.
From there, I moved to the garage. I've been looking at some of my fellow Fulltime Families acquaintances and how they've remodeled garages. I initially thought we would forego the HappiJack bed but now I'm pretty sure that we would keep it as a very expensive base for a loft bed. We would extend the bed up there to have 2 twin beds run "with" the length of the camper. Both of my kids would sleep up there. That would free the garage below for storage/toys/or maybe a sofa for hanging out back there.
We would likely add cabinets (above the toilet and maybe a medicine cabinet) to the 1/2 bathroom and then to the rear of the loft. Though, I have had visions of cutting a hole in the rear of the loft with a door to get to that area more easily.
The loft in the living room would generally be "attic"-like storage. See above for an idea of how I might make it more accessible-- i.e. basically making it into a super deep cabinet.
I loved the rear door becoming a patio with railing and all. It all folds up on itself and closes with the door. Though listening to Larry need my daughter spotting it on the inside showed me it likely isn't as simple as he made it out to be.
The washer/dryer hookups are in the garage. This is nice because we could turn laundry into my daughter's job. This is not nice because we often start the last load of the night when my wife and I go to bed- this means we have to go back there and possibly intrude on their sleep. Honestly, it should be a non-issue, but just thoughts I've had.
There is no storage in the slope of the toy hauler garage to the ramp. In other campers, I've seen storage boxes put there.
I do like the living room. I think we would replace a pair of recliners with a sleeper sofa. This would mostly block the door to the garage, so it would be annoying for the kids. I don't mind as my in-laws usually go to bed after the kids. In the mornings, they'd just have to make do. I did verify that the bed could open without running into the fireplace below the TV.
I like that the L-shaped couch faces the TV. I saw what might be some possible storage under the corner; it's not currently accessible and it was too dark to really see under. But, I can see cutting a hole in the base and framing it out. BUT, with running the slides in- the "L" portion that sticks out has to be moved every time. This would majorly annoy me. Plus, Larry and I didn't see a real good place where it would go. (Frustrating as I asked 2 different dealer sales people and someone from Grand Design if it had to be moved and all assured me that it didn't- well, they was wrong.)
The kitchen storage wasn't quite as bad as I expected. The "pantry" is comically shallow- like 5.5". In fact, all of the cabinets seemed fairly shallow. I think our Instant Pots would fit under the front-side of the peninsula, but I'd have to measure the pots. Honestly, I didn't see a great place for them and having 2- this could be a problem.
The double-door 2-way fridge was glorious from a size perspective. However, it's 100% inaccessible with the driver's side slide closed as it hits the sink peninsula. I also think it's inaccessible with the passenger/door side slide closed as you can't get around the peninsula (certainly my fat derriere isn't, maybe a kid's will).
Speaking of slides, these in the living room are hydraulic (yay) but aren't separately controllable (boo). As we played with the slides a little bit, it seemed like they may extend at the same time which could be OK in that I might not have to fully extend either of them in order to get to the fridge. But, I really dislike the idea of not being able to independently control them.
Moving upstairs, the bathroom shower is definitely smaller than what we have now. Standing sideways, I didn't go far to touch the wall and shower door. I couldn't bathe with my son, though we don't often do that any longer. I think that's manageable and it's still bigger than a corner shower. But it's smaller than we have now. The bigger issue is that it's not as tall as my current shower and short of rigging the shower head to be in the skylight, I'd have to stoop to rinse my hair. Y'all know my long luscious mane.
In the bedroom, the bed is in the front cap of the fifth wheel and the closet/wardrobe is in a slide on the driver's side. There are a nice amount of cabinets and nice end tables on either side of the bed. The slide wardrobe is likely equal or close in size to what we have now. The bad is that it's a Lippert Schwintek (which I *loathe*).
I'm fairly certain that I can turn 1/2 of the wardrobe into my desk area and sit at the bottom of the bed. The good of this is that I can hide the mess of my desk behind a door. I hate that our dresser/bedroom are messy because of my workspace now. The bad is that I may need to reconfigure the door of the cabinet to work better from a space perspective. I'd need an adjustable arm mount and to build a new keyboard try/laptop holder. I'd still have to move my chair to get out of the bedroom and I'd still be in the way of my wife's side of the bed and her getting dressed in the morning. But with the washer/dryer being in the garage, I'd no longer be in the way of my wife/whoever doing laundry.
I don't know where we'd keep a laundry basket in the bedroom. Maybe under the bed?
But the real issue is the bed itself. The headboard has a jut-out about 6-7" just below my shoulder level. Then it raises up and I can sit under it. I feel like that upper part is slightly taller than our bed in our current camper. The jut out is really awkward- to sit in bed and watch a little television, you'd have to pad that area out a bunch with pillows and I wouldn't easily be able to lean my head back comfortably.
The storage under the bed is HUGE. Full depth of the bed. I could hide a body down there.
There is only 1 window in the bedroom. We would have preferred having windows on either side of the head of the bed.
Back to the main living area- everything is controlled with the Lippert MyRV tablet. There are not hard-switches for lights, the slides, the generator, the awning. It has 3 awnings and I didn't see any obvious way of how to control each one individually. The MyRV crap isn't an "if" it breaks, but when. Where are the manual overrides? I know there's a thread on that here on FRF and that person's situation quickly turned into a hot mess.
Now, outside... the basement storage really sucks. I'm fairly positive that my oversize (aka fat guy-size) zero gravity chairs wouldn't fit down there. My folding 6' table likely wouldn't fit down there (3' square). We would have to do some serious reconsideration OR plan for the garage layout to include storage of these things. I am curious what's behind the wall to the underneath the steps/hallway/bathroom- we currently have a Christmas tree stuffed down there.
I would very likely consider a few of those expensive
Lippert double bin under chassis storage things or something like it. $500 a pop seems crazy expensive for what it is, though. But that kind of idea- to move kids toys and tools down there.
But clearly, I'd have to seriously downsize what's carried in the basement. Some stuff could go up to the bedroom if we organized under the bed better.
The front compartment would have a generator. I'd almost definitely opt for that. It was a nice box with the battery compartment beside of it. I'd also likely opt for 4-6 6V batteries to prepare for boondocking. And it's solar ready with some Furrion plug in. (Like Lippert, I don't know how I feel about the Furrion brand.)
The utilities aren't bad, though the water hookup/fill seemed super confusing. There were 4 diagrams, y'all. Flipping switches and the such.
The camper has 2 sewer connections. 2 of the valve pulls (for the master bath) are in the water bay. There's 1 valve pull under the slide near the tires. There's 1 valve pull under the rear/side of the camper. The one under the slide isn't any worse than the 2 handles I have under my rear bunkhouse slide now.
The 50amp plug to the camper is up near the front. This would be useful at quite a few sites. I assume it would be a hindrance at some, but I think overall it's better up there than the rear corner where mine is now. That's TBD and I have been meaning to make/buy an extension cord for a year+ now.
It has the fuel station with 2x30 gallon tanks in the rear. Clearly we wouldn't have any toys, but the one is for the generator.
It had frameless windows. I didn't open any (I meant to), but I've heard that they don't open nearly as much or as nicely as non-frameless windows. Double-pane windows are an option.
I like that 3 A/Cs are an option (that I'd opt for). It definitely has higher/better insulation than what I have now.
It has 4,500 lbs. of cargo carrying capacity. This is ideal as that's about what we carry (4,000 lbs-ish). However, if I happen to overload this trailer at 20k GVWR, I'll be overloading my B&W Companion hitch (20k).
Dry pin weight is 3,150 lbs. My camper's current loaded pin weight is 3,000 lbs. My truck is currently at GVWR with pin weight. So... I'd have some soul searching there.
All told, the basement storage, the smaller shower, the terrible bed/above headboard design, and the amount of customization that we'd have to do to make it "home"... I'm not entirely sold. I want my wife to walk through it and see what she thinks. We'll probably stop by on Saturday for her to.
Youroo!!
I don't think Id ever consider a TH as you be spending lot of bucksd to make what you want. Later RJD
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