RV Furniture Upgrade: Finding Out What Fits

If you're looking to upgrade the furniture in your RV, you have a lot of options. We started with this 2002 Winnebago Brave and it had the standard Flexsteel style furniture in it. It had the basic recliner, which was a cloth recliner and it had the sofa. Now the sofa was a little bit of an upgrade, it was electric sofa that did fold out into a little bit of a larger bed, but wasn't quite big enough, so, the variety of components out there, you can even use some residential stuff. Thing you gotta remember about some of the residential furniture that you might get at some of the stores is that this is gonna put... Your RV is gonna be put through some pretty grueling road vibrations, banging around, getting into campgrounds, so, the very inexpensive residential furniture's not gonna hold up. Most manufacturers are gonna use Flexsteel, Lippert Components Incorporated, LCI, those type. Now we went with Brad and Hall and the reason we did is they have quite a variety of different products that are available, they understand the RV industry, they do a lot of renovations, in fact they physically did their own renovations for many years, so the guys that are on the phone knew, some of the challenges that we have in here. So the first thing we had to look at is we took the old furniture out, we looked at the space we had and this one happens to have a slide room in it, so we're kinda limited into the size of the sofa, the dinette, so somewhere we're gonna have to compromise. We went with a larger sofa in this one, That is the one.... It's a vinyl, but it's a leather like vinyl so it's a lot softer, it's not gonna get as hard when it gets cold when you got this in storage. It does have an air mattress with it and it's a bigger, it's a bigger mattress but it's a bigger sofa. So we're gonna have to compromise our dinette. Now this originally came with a dinette that had the booth and the tables. They didn't like that. They tore the table out, put their own makeshift table in it. Weren't real happy with that either. So now what we're gonna do is, we're gonna have to customize a dinette, that's gonna be a table and two chairs. They don't use it that much, so they're going to put a little bit of a storage cabinet underneath it and bring it down a little bit because that's sofa is gonna be wider. Now what we had to look at with this sofa that we put in here, not only the width that we were going to take up in the slide room, but the depth of that, you can't go out past your platform and have the legs sit out on the floor, 'cause it won't slide in and out. We also needed to look at how that room came back when it was extended and drop. If does it drop down to flush floor. This one didn't, so we didn't have to worry about that. We went with a smaller or a lower front on the sofa 'cause it's gonna help hide that front lip of the slide platform. Then one other thing we had to look at is that mattress coming out, when that unfolds, how far do we need that depth from the slide room wall to our interior cabinet of our kitchen area, to be able to have that open up, some of them were too far out. So it kinda limited us to a couple different models or brands that we could use. This one does come out, gives us about two inches from the cabinet. So you will not be able to get in and out but that wasn't as much of a concern as having a larger queen size mattress. This one also runs on 120 volt power. So we're gonna have to get that power to the sofa because the old one ran on 12 volt. So we have a 12 volt nest sitting down there that's not gonna help us, we're gonna have to actually connect that to the distribution center with its own circuit. Same thing with the lounge chair that we're gonna put right on the inside here, we needed to find out how far that back or recliner went. This one is more of a push out and it reclines. So it doesn't just go straight back, otherwise we'd have to have it clear out in the middle of the, of the room. Now, some of the options that you see people are putting in they've got a loop base it's called. So when you're traveling, you've got this round base at the bottom with a pretty much a lockdown wing net that goes over the top of it. And then when you get to the campground you undo that and you can pull it out anywhere you want. So it's kinda moveable and it gives you a little bit of flexibility. But we're gonna need to put 120 volt power to this as well, so we can connect the two of them. So if you're looking to upgrade make sure you do your measurements, talk to somebody that can help you with their furniture, their specifications, how it's going to recline, what kind of power it needs, depth, all that stuff. Before you run into an issue.