Blogs

It has been a pleasure to get used to our 2021 Bounder 33C as we began to use it during the Fall of 2020. For various health and safety reasons we have decided to winterize and store it, rather than cross the (currently closed) border and travel to our sunny southern destinations. Since we only travelled a limited amount during the fall, we did make a considerable effort to personalize it. 

What follows are some simple improvements that we made to address issues we noticed with our coach. Some are changes of convenience, others address design items, while others add features we really wanted to have in our RV. You can look at them and decide if they make sense for you and your RV. 

Where possible, photo(s) are included to illustrate the change along with a brief explanation of the thinking behind the improvement. 

Since the countertop in our coach is limited when the sink and stovetop covers are removed and there is only one overhead power outlet for a coffee maker, we wanted to move items off the countertop and not obstruct the counter wide window behind. By adding a paper towel holder that clipped over the rear counter backsplash, paper towel is readily available both in the kitchen and near the door should some be needed outside.  Adding a towel rack under the gas stove top, replacing the one that was affixed to the stovetop, solved the issue of towels being caught in the top drawer each time it was opened. By adding a drawer front rack on the drawer, the towels hang down lower, while still leaving the drawer handle accessible. While the towels may still get caught in the drawer below, that drawer is accessed far less often than the cutlery drawer.

 

In the bedroom there are narrow shelves on either side of the king mattress with barely enough room for a pair of glasses. We needed a place for books and magazines, together with any other small items needed while in bed. Selecting a hanging wall mounted pocket unit placed between the two pillows at the head of the bed worked well. A similar unit fits nicely on the inside of the narrow, tall closet door.  A 3M Command hook placed at the top of the door holds this unit and another just below it to holds a shirt or shorts that would be worn again the next day. The hooks are highlighted by the yellow arrows.

The closet was very dark, corrected by adding a single strip light on the ceiling of the closet. Each of the two doors can control the light when opened and closed. One door uses a magnetic switch, while the other required a pin switch, since the two magnet switches interfered with each other at times because they were too close to each other. The power for this light was drawn from the TV booster panel, mounted on the rear wall in the adjacent TV compartment. The wiring was fished behind the panel and brought into the ceiling area of the closet. (shown exposed for the purposes of the photo).

 

 

 

The bathroom was the area where the vast majority of the changes were made. The first was a ‘vanity’ light over the mirror followed by a night light as part of the GFCI receptacle. Usually a small plug-in night light would have been sufficient, however the receptacle was mounted on a raised plastic panel,  which appears to have been installed to cover a larger than needed mounting hole. Regardless, with this extension the lower door of the vanity could not be opened enough to access the items below the sink with the light plugged in. The solution was to replace the GFCI with one that has an integral night light such as the one shown in the photo. 

 

 

 

The vanity needed a light over the sink under the medicine cabinet. A touch dimmable LED strip was installed with power supplied from the light switch on the left side of the fireplace cabinet which controls the TV’s back mounted LED.

 

 

 

Adding a new wall mounted mirror to the left of the medicine cabinet, allows ample arm movement when doing hairstyling. The mirror on the medicine cabinet is offset towards the outer wall of the RV  and to see in the mirror to style hair resulted in standing too close to the outer wall. Using a curling iron meant that your arm would continually hit the wall. This new mirror eliminates the issue and the new ceiling mounted ‘vanity’ light which is controlled by the ceiling light switch provides the needed light whether shaving, washing one’s face or styling hair.  

 

Another improvement was adding an extension which replaced the tap’s aerator. With such a small sink bowl combined with the bathroom faucet mounted over 5 cm (2”) back from the edge of the sink, handwashing (which in COVID-19 times is a very frequent activity) resulted in water always landing on the counter between the tap and the sink. While we mounted a towel rod for some small towels on the bottom of the medicine cabinet which meant we had a towel nearby to wipe up the water, the issue was the distance of the tap to the sink combined with the shallow bowl depth near its edge. Handwashing meant that your hands were over the vanity area not the sink. Extending the tap by means of an adapter corrected the issue.  One would think that in production the tap could be moved closer to the sink or a tap selected with a longer reach. At this point the extended aerator is an effective solution.

Speaking of water splashing in this room,  we found that the small sink bowl often resulted in splashes coming out towards the front and landing on the leading front edge of the vanity or on the top edges of the lower cabinet doors. Water eventually rolled down the doors and made its way to the wood trim or the floor. This issue was dealt with in a simple manor: Installing a vinyl strip on the leading edge of the vanity which covered the exposed door tops. (See Yellow Arrows in photo to the left). The water either stays on the strip and evaporates or is easily wiped off with the aforementioned towels. The wood doors will look much better, as time passes, with this solution. The proper production solution is to with make the top 3 cm (1.25”) wider to cover the door fronts or make the lower cabinet the same size smaller allowing the existing vanity top to properly cover the doors. 

In our opinion, the number of towel racks in the bathroom are inadequate. We found that Lowes Home Improvement Stores had a selection of rods that matched those already installed, so we purchased our new ones there. We added one on the bathroom wall over the toilet near the shower, one below the medicine cabinet above the sink and vanity and two more matching rods on the upper portion of the inside of the bathroom door.               

 

 

 

 

In the front of the Bounder, we added some 3M Command Hooks inside the cabinet over the drivers seat to provide storage for extra keys (such as for the tow car, name tags on straps and a number of small items that were conveniently stored on hooks. At the ends of both of the cabinets over the driver and passenger seat we placed similar larger clear plastic  hooks to hang light jackets or sweat shirts needed when going outside. (To Be Continued)