Prepping to Sell & Decorating Our Prairie RV Home for Fall

Have you noticed that the light is changing? Summer’s light has changed to that ethereal light of fall which I love so much! Mr. Ethereal and I have been prepping our RV, our Heartland Charleston Landmark 365 fifth-wheel travel trailer, getting it ready to sell… But while getting it cleaned and prepped, I had a little fun decorating it for early fall photographs… 😉

Playing while cleaning…

I was up on a Wednesday doing some cleaning, wiping down the slides, and remembering our time in this lovely Prairie Home. We have been going up all summer long. Charles has repainted the entire roof, replaced exterior slide seals on all five slides, and we went up again this past weekend to do more work.

I started out vacuuming up dead critters, and washing windows inside and out. I sprayed and wiped down all of the interior seals with a rubber conditioner and cleaned the slide sides. That will have to be done again just before we list this big guy.

But while we were up there… 😉

***Sorry this didn’t post out on Thursday! It was all scheduled but it didn’t go… Hopefully it posts up here on Saturday morning. Thanks for understanding!

I thought it’d be fun to set a pretty table! Of course, I had to practice at home so I wouldn’t forget anything. Nothing was left in the drawers or cabinets there in the fifth-wheel when we moved to our Texas Home, so everything had to be to brought…

It was fun to set up a fall tea table as I took a break from cleaning! I brought our friendly little squirrel with and he ate an acorn while I munched on a muffin and sipped ice tea. It was pretty hot still while I photographed this, but I’m glad I kept this post until now. 🙂

More fun to publish when it really IS fall! 😀

Getting to work…

After a few days cleaning inside and cleaning underneath the rig, we assessed the sofas’ conditions. Unfortunately, time and humidity haven’t been kind to the them… They are peeling away! So, I looked online for sofa covers which hopefully will match (or close enough) to place over each sofa.

I ordered several to try and kept the two with the best fit. We still need to unlatch the sofas so I can secure the covers underneath, but Mr. E must help with that. 😉

Both sofas aren’t identical in style, regardless; but they were covered with the same “leatherette” fabric, which made them kind of the same. I have since learned that this particular year for production of our RV wasn’t good for wear and tear on the sofa fabrics (wonderful!…).

A dealer I spoke with said that they were finding that this a common problem for this leather-type material.

I just hope its not a deal breaker with a potential buyer as I CANNOT afford to have these recovered or replaced.

$150 in sofa covers will just have to do. 🙂 And the sofas are still very comfortable. We have taken breaks on these sofas pretty much every workday.

The sofa underneath the back window contains a hide-a-bed which our daughter slept on several times while visiting. She said it was pretty comfortable.

Here is one of the sofas recovered! The slipcovers are made of an ivory velvet and should be a close match to the existing leatherette sofas. Hubby and I usually sat in these two recliners to watch t.v. or to work on our computers.

Do you remember when this type of fabric was called naugahyde??

Remember the old joke: How many naugas were killed to make this sofa? Ha ha!

My parents had several naugahyde sofas back in the late 1960s/1970’s and even into the 1980’s. At some point, they decided to buy new furniture and a real leather sofa, which, oddly enough, the cats used as a cat-scratcher and it was subsequently ruined. It’s a bummer that things just don’t last.

It’s life. 🙂

Prepping to sell

We also bought a new door lock to replace the original mechanism with one which is wireless and has a keyless entry. These keys are specific to this lock, so hopefully that will make this RV more attractive to a buyer.

The same lubricant I used on the slides also worked for making the RV’s jacks function smoother.

Charles has weed-whacked under and around the fifth-wheel, has washed down the sides of the RV and waxed them (since the photograph above). He has replaced slide seals, and scrubbed clean the roof and has repainted it with a white, rubberized coating meant for RV.

Now he is working on the roof edges (October holiday weekend) cleaning those and prepping them for their coating of white rubber paint. He hopes to get that done over the next weekend barring rain. 🙂

Decorating while we were there…

Of course I HAVE to decorate while I am up there… I was thinking about that early on in this cleaning process.

We need to have one last tea… Squirrel approved!

This photograph was from when we were living in our Prairie Home full-time ~ Valentine’s Day 2017-2019. I really loved living in our RV except during storms when it rocked in the heavy winds (made me ill sometimes, like being on a ship). Yoda didn’t feel so good, either. He would refuse to eat because of all of the rocking.

Using the washer and dryer wasn’t always fun, either. I literally threw up from motion sickness a couple of times after we moved in. Never had that problem in our first travel trailer, but it was lower and didn’t have a washer in it. 😉

But I still love the RV life! We enjoyed meeting other RV neighbors and parking in the different campgrounds. Each had their own beauty.

We are still thinking of selling our RV. A bit sad but it is time… Since fall is finally here, I thought it’d be fun to set a pretty fall table for you! I brought up some china, one of our autumnal tablecloths, and a few pieces of decor…

Little Mr. Squirrel Nutkin decided to hop into my box as I was readying to go… He ended up in the “Summer” box last year when I put away all of the 4th of July decor. I am glad that he was in there! 🙂

Setting the table

After laying this fall tablecloth down on its French-toile side, I set down two rust Sarah’s Garden Wedgwood dinner plates along with white silverware and two creamware mugs.

What to put in the window? The lovely purple-blue painted plate was my original inspiration and then I thought maybe the large creamware plate might work. Simple but lovely together…

We then just needed something to eat! And something to eat those poppyseed muffins on…

I found this ruffle-edged set of Limoges dessert plates with pink roses on them at a thrift shop not long after we moved to Texas. They have just a hint of orange in those pink roses which pair beautifully with the Wedgwood “chargers.”

And that is our early fall tea party at our Prairie Home… It was nice to open up the trailer, give it a good clean and lube the slides and their seals (that was me working on the inside seals). We also cleaned (Mr. Ethereal did) the trailer’s jacks and lubed them with dry lube (I sprayed them with a light lubricating spray made for that purpose).

This weekend was warm but not unbearable inside the RV with the windows open and a light breeze and the fan going inside. Quite comfortable with the awnings out. 🙂

I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey back to our RV life days! We are prepping it to try and sell, and maybe this time it will.

But, for now, we will enjoy playing in the trailer while we can. 💜 

.

Happy day, dear friends,