Glendale Royal Classics are not well-known rigs. Had I not stumbled on Miranda’s for sale ad, I would have gladly bought a 28′ class C with a comparable layout and not known that I was missing out on something incredible: a dressing room.

Miranda’s dressing room is roughly amidships, between the study and the kitchen, and it leads to the toilet room:

the dressing room is highlighted in green and the cloth dresser is added in brown

When I purchased Miranda, the space had a lot of potential, but needed some tweaking to improve the incredible amount of storage it offers.

The room didn’t need much cosmetic work, just a bit of paint and some pictures, but adding a dresser, changing the wardrobe doors, and putting a pocket organizer on the toilet-side of the door made this space much more functional.

Some highlights of the dressing room are:

The shower and cloth dresser

shower, before, with space beside it

The shower is too large a space not to be a closet when I’m not in there. It now holds my Wonderwash, laundry basket, and laundry supplies:

taking these two things out every night is not onerous in the least

I still plan to change the showerhead one day.

notice the hooks over the door; I have a bunch of them for hanging wet things

The cloth dresser fits almost perfectly in the space next to the shower:

one of those ‘it’ll do for that space’ kind of projects

The vanity:

the very sterile vanity before (notice the super ugly towel holder)

vanity with a bit of colour injected into it

I’ve had this print I bought years ago on this wall since I bought Miranda. You would think I’d picked the wall colour to match it!

lots of space under the sink for cleaning products

The wardrobe:

old wardrobe doors

new wardrobe doors

new wardrobe doors and the picture of a raven I put up first thing after buying Miranda

The toilet room door:

I put two over-door hooks to hang my towel and bathmat

This room is now incredibly functional and is actually one of the largest bathrooms I’ve ever had! There is still some tweaking to be done as to clothes organization and the floor trim isn’t finished, but otherwise I consider this room to be done!

I put the first coat of paint on the dressing room this morning. The colour is beyond perfect; unbelievable for found oops paint! It’s more terra cotta than pink. I don’t really like pink all that much, so the orangey base to the shade turns it from meh to wow! The colour also exactly matches the print I have up on the wall by the vanity and the fabric of the toilet room and study curtains. The orange in it will also work for what I’m planning in the library. What a great find!

I definitely need to do a second coat, and at the rate the room’s drying I’ll probably be able to do that tonight. Then this room will be ready for a before and after post, trim and dithering on painting the oak cabinetry and solid doors notwithstanding.

I’m always slow to start on projects because they tend to be so overwhelming. Such was the case with the dressing room; there were just so many small, nitpicky details to deal with. But once they were done and the room was ready for priming, why wait?! The climate here is so dry that the primer will be ready for a coat of paint in the morning and then I should have the dressing room back online Monday. I really didn’t want such a crucial room unavailable for any great length of time.

Before I started on the priming, I decided I might as well get the kitchen lintel defabricated, too, and polish up the side of the overfridge cabinet that’s visible from the dressing room. I wouldn’t be painting it since it’s part of the oak cabinetry, but why not just get it done?

before

Since I stupidly built the cabinet around the lintel, I didn’t think I’d be able to get it out, but, fortunately, the screws were all located at the edge of the cabinet, so I was able to get it out with a minimum of fuss. I then used two pieces of the trim I found to finish the cabinet side since two pieces width-wise fit the space exactly, they were of the perfect thickness, and I had one piece that fit vertically. So, it was just a matter of making one cut. It was one of those jobs that turned out to be super easy once I got to work on it.

from the front

from the side

The paint job in the toilet room wasn’t great because I’d never used Kilz primer before. It’s tricky stuff since it goes on thick but then sort of separates and drips. I wound up with waves of primer in the toilet room. The job there is fine for what the room is, but since the dressing room is so visible I wanted a smoother job. So, I spent a couple of hours tonight laying on primer with a brush, rolling it out, then brushing it again. It’s so hot and dry that the primer almost dried as I put it on, making it even fussier to work with. Again, I’m not thrilled with the result, but it’s better than the job I did in the toilet room.

It wasn’t until after I started priming that I realised I should have double-checked the colour first. But then I remembered that a little can of paint like that costs ten bucks so, worse case scenario, I’ll go pick up something I like better.

So, not a bad evening’s work… and I even made that chocolate cake! 😀

Today’s big project is to get the dressing room ready for painting. I had some decisions to make and chose to not paint, in addition to all the ‘oak’-style cabinetry:

-the trim since I’m not happy with it (weird angles, remember?);

-the door into the toilet room and the pocket door;

-the wardrobe doors.

First off was to remove the last super ugly towel holder as well as a hook that has not been useful since I installed the cloth dresser:

the white things underneath are Command hanging strips that held up a picture that will be going right back in that spot.

At some point in the last two years, a piece of wall trim covering a corner was broken. I removed the whole thing and debated how to fix it. The obvious solution was to get a piece of 90 degree wooden trim, but the rough edge that needed to be covered didn’t seem that bad. I decided to try filling it with wall repair compound. I have a small bucket of it, more than I’ll ever get through before it goes dry, so it’s a cheap experiment.

in progress

after

Finally, it was time to do away with the hideous cloth-covered pocket door lintel:

*shudder*

That\’s it?! I\’ve been living with this eyesore for two years and all it was hiding was a few screw holes?!

When I last examined the lintel, I thought it was glued on. Turns out, fabric was glued to a piece of cardboard that was screwed to the lintel. Don’t ask me why; the non-cloth covered version would have looked a million times nicer! Unfortunately, the lintel is made of a cardboard-type material, so the screws created protrusions that are impossible to sand flat. I did the best I could, then filled the holes with wall compound.

Once the wall compound dries and I can sand it, I’ll wash the walls with TSP, then start taping. I should be able to prime tomorrow and then paint on Monday, provided the paint looks as good on the wall as it does on the can.

Before anyone asks, how am I going to paint the wall to which I secured the cloth dresser?

Remove drawers, then lift and clamp: