Stair storage, bedroom floor, basement enlargement

Late this winter and early spring I started a modification inspired by an earlier post.

(1) I removed the stairs from Heartland. I took 3/4" oak plywood and built a frame, then 1" red oak for the treads, hinged them with a panio hinge, stained with Golden Pecan, close as I could match the orginal color in our BH. This also involved moving the kitchen register from under the stairs to under the left side of the refrigator and doing away with the inlet for the vac system. We very seldom used it. This led to a project Brenda has been wanting to do.

(2) Replace the carpet in our bedroom. There is not any way to keep from getting it wet when you get out of the shower in our floorplan and when ever the grandson removed his swim suit we had a wet spot. We looked at different materials for the floor, frist laminate planks, they don't like water, then vinyl stick down but the reviews I read and the manufacture's statement that the tempature needed to be kept between 50 & 80 degrees took this option away. After attending an early RV show where we saw a new Greystone with wood embosed sheet vinyl flooring we knew what would work. I removed everything but the shower and sink cabnet from the bedroom, took by Multi functional saw with a knief blade and cut the carpet from along the closet wall and hallway since since the interiors walls are built over the flooring. Then removed the small amount of vinyl from the toliet room and in front of the shower. We purchased a 12' x 12' sheet, made a pattern of the floor area from stiff cardboard, layed this over the sheet and cut to fit so that we do not have any seams in the bedroom floor. This did pose one problem, how to trim out around the hole in the floor. After much thought we decided to close it up. It was of little use to us since you could only open it standing in the kitchen with the bedroom door open. The best part of this lead to my next project of opening more space in the basement.

(3) After removing all the panels in the basement walls and the box under the hole in the floor i stared looking for how I could get the most space possible. First was the water line going to the black water tank flush. i have already had experience with this, the third month we had our BH we were in San Antiono and flood the wall and areas under the toliet. This also shorted out the converter. I fould the trim on the right side wall of the coat closet and removed to fine the chech vale the had blown its top so when we got home called my dealer and had him ship me the check vale and a new convertor, sent him the old one for warranty. So I was glad to move this to the area under the shower. Next came the water lines from the hot water heater sticking straight out like a sore thumb. i changed the straight fitting with a 90 and moved the whole thing fluse to the back of the water heater. I used the same tools as Allen and others have talked about in recent post to re route water lines as needed. The next thing in the way was the water pump, after looking around I noticed there is a lot of space above the water heater so I put a shelf there and mounted the water pump there. It is much quiter there and works well. The last thing in the way was the cables to the grey & black tank valves. I routed those under the basement floor through a hole I cut, then above the grey tank so they are laying in the same position only out of the way. I had to remove the under belly material to unhook the cables to reroute them so while there I rerouted the fresh water fill and vent lines, used plumber straping to attache them to the underside of the floor. When I went to reattach them to the UDC I had to cut about 6" off. This added about 8 sq feet to the basement area.
 

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wdk450

Well-known member
Great set of Mods. Heartland designers take note!!!

Wouldn't it be great if Heartland had an annual best modification ideas contest with maybe $1000 merchandise credit prize? Merchandise like new tires, centerpoint suspension mod., new microwave, etc.??? The Heartland designers could then be free to improve their products with these ideas from on-the-road owners.
 
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