One of the things that I have wanted to do since going fulltime 2 years ago, has been to decorate the RV. Now, I’m really not opposed to the neutral color scheme that each of our RVs has come with, but to leave them totally unaltered has seemed somewhat impersonal for our ‘home’. I know lots of other families on the road that have been brave enough to paint their RVs, and while I have loved every color scheme that I have watched unfold on their blogs, it just has never given me enough courage to take the plunge and pick up the brush. I love the trendy colors that I have been seeing, and even having the process laid out for me in pictures hasn’t overcome the fear that I will regret starting the never-ending ‘updating’ painting in our rig.
So, being a timid interior decorator when it comes to our RV, we have gone the safe route… and have loved every bit of it! When it comes to decorating that goes a bit beyond the towels and rug that set the tone for the bathroom, or the throw pillows on the couch to add a touch of color, but ends short of complete and un-reversible painting, we have found that vinyl clings or wall decals are our choice for adding a bit of personality to our toy hauler.
The most recent project was actually my 15 y.o. daughters undertaking! Our RV (or what used to be our RV – it appears to be totaled due to frame failure, but that is an entirely different post, forthcoming, in which I share our experiences with Lippert and Gulf Stream customer service…unlike Bethy’s loft, it is not a pleasant picture!), anyway, our RV is a 40′ toy hauler in which this daughter claims the loft as her ‘room’. The blah white walls just weren’t her style, so she headed out to Target where she picked up a beautiful bedspread and shams, matching sheets and pillowcases, cork tiles with pink pushpins and matching ribbon to edge the corkboard with. Then, back home, she hopped online and visited Lot 26 Studio – our favorite source for wall stickers! She had already picked out the decals that she wanted, but had purchased the bedding first to make sure that she could get both to match. After placing her order (with a few of my own additions ;), she set to work getting everything else in place while she waited for her decals to arrive. They showed up that same week so she didn’t have long to wait; and the same afternoon they arrived found her crawling around in the loft figuring out just how she wanted her newly decorated walls to look.
After she wiped down her walls with a Clorox wipe to make sure they were clean, she set right to work laying out her decals. We put up a strip of blue painters tape to give a straight line to help her get her letters straight (we didn’t want to have to try to erase pencil lines later), and she applied her letter stickers first. After she had the words up, she simply picked and chose where, how big, and the design of her flower branches. At first Beth looked at the pictures on the packaging, but soon she was just placing them where she felt that they would look best, and as they best fit the area that she wanted to cover. The entire design didn’t take her more than half an hour to complete! We are very pleased with the Lot 26 Studio decals, and months later, they are still holding up fantastically – they are still stuck fast to the wall, but can be peeled off at any time without leaving a residue. That makes for some easy REdecorating down the road! When (if) there comes a time when Beth would like to redo her color scheme, she can simply peel off the wall decals and apply a different design!
She is pretty tickled with her decorating, and I’m pretty tickled that it didn’t take me out of my comfort zone of permanently altering the color scheme of the rv! Beth’s room wasn’t our first wall of decal decorating, and it surely won’t be our last! I love this temporarily-permanent 😉 decorating that adds so much personality to our rig – oh, and one of the best parts is that it doesn’t add to your GVW!!! So, look around in your home away from home, (or your home sweet home for you full timers!) and envision what wall clings could do for you!