Eagle-eyed reader Vicki noticed some plywood behind the arm chair in the living room.

Colour me crazy, but while I love living in an RV, I don’t love having a steering wheel in my living room. I also don’t love that my Tabitha decided to relieve herself on a seat in the cab. I cleaned that up, but once a cat has marked its territory, only blocking the access can guarantee there won’t be a repeat performance. Add to this that I’d like more insulation between the cab and the living area of the rig and that I like to have privacy from the windshield that is controllable from inside rather than relying on the windshield cover. Finally, even an RVer loves having a dark hole to stash a bin of stuff when impromptu visitors are incoming!

In the last four years, I experimented with curtains and paneling to block the cab from the rig, but still keep it accessible. I concluded that a proper wall would be the only way to achieve the desired division.

So my mother had me buy a sheet of plywood that we had cut by BMR (a québécois chain of home stores) into three panels. The two of the panels on the ends would be fixed and the middle one would be a door, like so:

There’s still work to be done, obviously. We will be putting some trim around the door to close the gaps as well as handles on both sides to make it easier to move. And I will, of course, be painting the whole thing yellow, like the rest of the room.

I need to move some of that to the basement. 🙂 The greenish yellow garbage bin is a shoe storage container that will live between the cab seats from now on.

The door was originally going to be on hinges, but having it be a removable panel gives it a slimmer profile.

This project was bigger than it seemed at first glance because of the limited amount of room we had to manoeuvre behind the seats. The driver’s side panel was particularly tricky. We had to remove the ladder and bookcase and then reattach them. My prototype ladder was sawed in half and thrown out. I know the area looks much better now, but I’m a little sad to lose all that hard work. 🙂

It is darker in the rig with the cab blocked off, but I have the option of leaving the door open during the day. The benefits of the wall definitely outweigh the negatives!

I had hoped to close off the back of the ladder and turn it into a vacuum closet, but the space is just a little too narrow. I think that is for the best as the open space looks nice and airy. And besides, the new shelving allowed me to repurpose the over fridge cabinet into storage space for the shop vac!