Before & After: Making the Most of 188 sq ft of Tiny Living
Mandy and Kevin are living the good life in a 188 sq ft remodeled camper. Just so happens they installed a gorgeous Rosa copper drop-in sink during their kitchen remodel and happily documented the before and after for us. Sharing the good, bad and definitely funny of traveling with four pets in a remodeled camper, you can see their daily adventures at 188sqft.com or follow them on Instagram as they continue to share their travels and remodeling skills.
When we first decided to hit the road we knew that we wanted to renovate our new camper home. We had zero experience with renovating anything but decided that we wanted our first official “home” to be comfortable, our taste, and we wanted it to feel open. We noticed after looking at our options, even buying a brand new camper we wouldn’t get the aesthetic we were looking for. Therefore we went for one that we would have to renovate but it had an amazing layout we wouldn’t have to change. Its low price didn’t hurt either. Watching youtube videos, getting advice from handy friends, and just some trial and error we renovated this blue floral disaster into our home.
Most of the work happened in a two-week time span. The biggest project we did was paint the interior white with a spray gun. This wasn’t the easiest feat, ventilation and light were two big issues we had. We wore masks but it was still hard to keep the fumes contained. If we were to do it again we would try to find a way to ventilate the camper somehow and hook up some sort of lighting or use a white thin construction paper that light can seep through. But time wise, you cannot beat a spray gun. If it weren’t for the time you need to wait for paint to dry it would have taken us a day to finish the painting, but with proper waiting times, we did it over the course of 3 days.
The second biggest project we had was to coat the countertops with concrete. This was an oddly satisfying project. We highly recommend this to anyone who wants the industrial look of concrete and a minimal cost way to change your counters! We followed the tutorial by our friends Young House Love, and highly recommend you look them up for a great tutorial on how to do it. A big note though, if you are going to do this in your camper cover your floors! Concrete will fall off the counters while you are applying. We luckily hadn’t put our new flooring in yet, so it wasn’t a big deal. But I could see how it would not be fun.
The third biggest project we had was putting in the flooring. We used a linoleum flooring that has held up very nicely over the years. Only negative is it gets scratched on occasion from our slide. We use these things called “slide out slickers” but we still get rocks lodged into our slide on occasion.
After that, it was just little projects we did here and there. Those were the main things we did before we moved in, which we also highly recommend doing those things before moving in. Living in a small space with wet paint is NO FUN, as it would be in any size space, but small is way worse. ?
Once we moved in we were able to add things as we traveled. We added our built in dog kennel, our plant shelf, our re-covered couch, and our Rosa copper sink with Pfister faucet.
I am a budding metalsmith so when I saw that copper sinks existed I got WAY too excited. We chose the Rosa Drop-In sink, and haven’t looked back. I love watching as our Rosa copper sink ages as we use it. Also, I love caring for our copper drop-in sink, it is oddly therapeutic. I think living small we pay a lot more attention to the details around us because there aren’t many of them. So when you have a piece as beautiful as our copper kitchen sink you want to keep it nice. We chose this particular sink because after measuring our space it would fit perfectly, and we prefer a single bowl sink for doing dishes. We have no dishwasher so having ample amount of room in our sink for our dirty dishes is pretty much a necessity.
xoxoxo Mandy
