Renovations in Progress

[Peter and Connie Bradish]

We are working on renovations on our coach this winter at our home base in Brevard County, Florida.

1. We had the coach painted completely on the outside. The paint pattern is the same as the original paint job. A local young man (the Ding Doctor) did the work. It was the first time he totally painted a coach as he usually does fiberglass repairs and then paints a section of the coach.

2. We had the bathroom floor re-tiled. A local man recommended by Dan O'Brien, a past BAC president, did the job.

3. We had the arms of our Euro loungers replaced with upholstery cow hides I found for sale in Orlando. A local furniture upholster did the arms.

4. We had the driver's and passenger's chair reupholstered. Again I bought the hides in Orlando and a local auto/marine upholsterer did the job.

5. We removed the furniture (which had been put in to replace the two couches we removed) from the front of the coach and had new furniture built in. Craig from the Wood Shop in Cocoa, Florida did the job.

6. Now we are working on getting the carpet replaced in the front of the coach. This should happen Feb 19th. Again a local RV carpet man recommend by Dan is doing the job.

This will be the last upgrade for this year. Next year we have more to do. But there is only so much time and money each year for such upgrades. See https://picasaweb.google.com/bradish.c/BeaverRenovation# to see pictures of our ongoing renovation.

                                                                                                              Connie B.

[Edward Buker]

Connie,

Very nice work. That is a great coach and worth the time and effort. This is one of those cases when you say they do not make them like they used to it is really true. Thanks for sharing.

We had an 89 Contessa that we still lovingly refer to as "Old Betsy". This was a good sized project but rewarding. We never liked the TV down low so I built in a 32inch LCD up top and migrated all the stereo equipment down below into a pull out cabinet where the TV was. Worked great. These shots might give you some added ideas.

later Ed

[Peter and Connie Bradish]

Things we have done in the past to our beloved coach called "CC."

1. We had fabric window boxes. We had the fabric boxes removed and replaced with wood window boxes. This stops the cat from using the frabic window boxes as a scratching post.

2. We had wooden blinds installed on the front three windows instead of the plastic blinds. We had day/night shades installed in the bedroom window boxes. The shades have the metal foil between the inside and outside layers. This came in handy on the Canales Alaska Beaver Rally. We do not have dual pane windows. The wooden blinds act as excellent insulators during cool/cold weather and hot weather.

3. We removed our round wooden Beaver table and 2 chairs. We replaced that with a Euro Lounger for me and and a built in cabinet with a fold up shelf. Also in the bottom of the cabinet we had put in a sliding shelf. There is a hole in the door. This is where we put our cat litter box.
   I now use the wooden table and 2 chairs in our dining room at our home base.  There were only 4 big screws, one holding each leg of the table down. We put wooden buttons in the top holes on the table legs and stained them with golden oak stain. ANYONE HAVE TWO BEAVER CHAIRS LIKE MINE THEY WANT TO GIVE OR SELL TO ME? I love that table and chairs. There are quality pieces of furniture.

I added photos to my Picasa Web Album on Beaver Renovation. See https://picasaweb.google.com/bradish.c/BeaverRenovation#
Look towards the end of the pictures.

                            Connie B.

PS Ed, thanks for the TV info. We, too, had the small TV between the driver's and passenger's chairs. Peter has bought a flat screen larger TV. He is working on mounting it above the new cabinet we had built behind the driver's chair. At least that's the present plan. Stay tuned for developments.

[Peter and Connie Bradish]

Continuing developments in the renovation of our 1993 Contessa. We now have new carpet. It is a dark blue color picked out by Peter. Yes, it will probably show white stuff but it will certainly tell us when to run the sweeper. I put in a small shop vac to replace our small vacuum which has been unsatisfactory. The small shop vac will work much better.

Peter had a very successful day today (Feb 23rd) with the coach. This morning he took it in and had a LOF. Then in the afternoon Peter took the coach to the wood guy. Craig put in Marquis style fronts on our refrigerator and ice maker. The Contessa fronts were just flat pieces of wood. The Marquis style fronts are similar to the fronts of the cabinets. He built us a cabinet to house our propane catalytic heater which he put next to the big cabinet behind the driver's seat. And he made a very nice magazine type rack/holder next to the passenger seat for our maps and fuel and repair/maintenance folders.  

See http://picasaweb.google.com/bradish.c/BeaverRenovation#

We have to leave here Feb 28 for the St Augustine rally as we are now rally masters. So we are in the final stages of packing and finishing all the myriad of items we need to do to get on the road. We won't do any more renovations this year as we are out of time.

See you down the road. Beaver Hugs, Connie B.