Many of our recreational vehicles and vessels have a dinette that provides a comfortable place to sit for meals. Most of these dinettes are also designed so they can be made down into beds. Space in RVs, campers, and boats is usually limited so you have to take advantage of every bit of it you can. Typically, the table is dropped down so it rests between the facing seats and the back rests are brought down to fill in between the seat cushions to make it into a bed. Dinettes made down into beds are usually about the size of a twin bed (36" wide) but may be as large a full size bed (54" wide). Lengths may be a few inches shorter than equivalent household mattresses. Many dinettes are intended for use by children although smaller adults may also find them acceptable. I am about 5'7", my wife about 5'4", and we've always fit comfortably on dinettes made down into beds in our RVs and campers. The dinette in cab over truck campers and Class C motorhomes is often more accessible and less confining than the low ceiling of the large cab over bed. At least you can sit up without bumping your head! The dinette in our sailboat has a lot more headroom and our feet are less confined than in the "captain's" V-berth (which is only 9" wide!), but we usually use the V-berth anyway.
Dinettes usually include storage beneath the seats. Sometimes there are doors or drawers on the aisle side of the seat, but some only have access by lifting the panels beneath the seat cushions. Either way it makes a good place to store items you don't use frequently. Since the space is usually undivided it is often a good place to store bulky items that don't fit in regular cabinets. . If you have to lift the seat to gain access there is usually a finger hole in the plywood base under the cushion you can use to lift the lid. In one RV I found room under the dinette seat to install an ice chest. It was a good place to carry extra cold drinks for summer trips. If you choose to do something like this, make sure you can still get the ice chest in and out easily enough to drain it after each trip. Or plan on sucking up the water from the melted ice and drying it out after each outing to avoid a nasty mildewed mess. Oh and don't forget to empty it when you winterize your RV! Frozen soda cans crack open and made a real mess!
About the only disadvantage to dinettes as beds is having to set them up each night and take them down again each morning so you can use the dinette for seating and eating during the day. If you use them often you may develop practices and techniques to make setup and take down more efficient. Using sleeping bags instead of regular bedding may make things a little easier.
A memory foam mattress topper can make dinette bed more comfortable but you have to have someplace to store it when the dinette isn't being used as a bed and installing it each night and putting it away each morning takes a little extra time. However, the additional comfort might be worth it. In addition to extra padding it covers the seams between cushions for a smoother bed.
Dinette upholstery is usually made of rather sturdy materials that will last a long time. That makes it sturdy, but not always comfortable to lay or sit on. Dinette upholstery often lasts for decades if it is not abused. It often comes from the factory with a Scothgard treatment on fabric seats to reduce staining and make it easier to clean If yours is not Scotchgard protected you can purchase Scotchgard in an aerosol can and spray your seats for extra protection. Some Scotchgard products help protect the fabric against sun damage as well as water or stains. Vinyl seats don't need Scotchgard. If the upholstery is getting worn or is out dated or you just don't like the way it looks you can have it reupholstered or recover the cushions yourself. Since the cushions are easily removable you can usually just take them out for re-upholstery (unlike sofas, part of which usually can't be removed). Reupholstering cushions in your boat, camper, or RV is a fairly inexpensive improvement that increases comfort and enjoyment, may extend the usable lifetime of a unit, and might even increase resale value. If you are at all handy using a sewing machine you might even be able to handle the job yourself! Sometimes the durable upholstery may be kind of coarse, making it uncomfortable to sleep on. In such cases you can usually use a mattress pad or even just an extra blanket between your bottom sheet and the cushion. Lying directly on the coarse fabric can be uncomfortable.
Since dinettes are used for dining, they often get soiled by spilled or dropped food and drinks. Scotchgard is a good way to minimize the impact of such accidents. However, if you get a spill before you protect the upholstery with Scothgard or if the spill soaks in or stains the fabric, you will want to clean up the spill as soon as possible, then deep clean it to remove as much of the offending substance as possible. Greasy foods and things that leave stains can be a challenge. I usually keep a can of carpet spot cleaner in my RV and boat that I can use for cleaning upholstery as well as floors. First, wipe up as much of the spill as you can without spreading it around and making the stained area bigger. Then spray on a generous amount -- but not too much -- of carpet cleaner and let is stand according to the directions on the can, usually about 10-20 minutes. Then scrub the stain with a stiff brush, wipe it down with damp cloth to remove residual cleaner and removed dirt, then dry it with a soft dry cloth. Really bad stains may take several tries to get things really looking good again. One word of caution: pay attention to how hard and how long you scrub and stop scrubbing before you cause additional damage to the fibers! A discoloration isn't nearly as bad has having a badly worn spot! And worn spots are usually more susceptible to getting dirty. You will always want to make sure the cushions are clean before you turn the dinette into a bed. Sleeping on spilled food is certainly no picnic!
Another option for worn out cushions is to replace them with used cushions from another vehicle or vessel. Cushions from the same make, model, and year will be most likely to fit properly but often you can simply measure your cushions and find others that will fit close enough, giving you far more options. Some good online places to look are ebay.com and craigslist.org. You might even find some at garage sales, thrift stores, or junkyards that handle RVs.
In a worst case scenario you can make new cushions or have them made. You just need to get the proper measurements. Many times you can use the old cushions as a pattern but if they are gone or too badly damaged, measure where they go and purchase foam pads to fit and then cover them or have them covered. If the old cushions weren't thick enough you can sometimes make new ones using thicker foam, but make sure everything will still fit. When choosing new fabric for your cushions, look for sturdy material that will hold up in regular use. If it doesn't come with a fabric protector, spray it with Scotchgard before every using it to reduce soiling and make it easier to clean. You may want to color match the new fabric to coordinate with other furniture or you might want to change the color just for fun. If you can't get an exact match you might consider using a complimentary color or fabric. When choosing a new material you might want to consider vinyl if you have small children. It doesn't absorb spills and is easy to clean. For a more comfortable bed, or just seating without the sweat vinyl can induce, go for a nice, sturdy, coarse weave fabric. While some heavy canvas and nylon materials may be suitable you will usually get the best results using fabric designed for upholstery use. If you are doing cushions for a boat where you may use them outside in the cockpit, using a UV protected and water resistant fabric is advised.
Sometimes you can borrow the cushions from your dinette and use them on benches outside to make sitting outdoors more comfortable. If you choose to do this, take care to keep them out of the dirt and away from campfires and make sure they get back where they belong when you are finished. You might be able to use cushions from your boat cabin in the cockpit, but often they will not have the same water resistant covering as cushions designed for cockpit use so they might be more easily saturated. Indoor cushions may also be damaged if left in direct sunlight too long. Outdoor cushions should be made of UV resistant material.
Not all factory dinettes are designed to be made into beds. However, if you need the extra sleeping space you can often adapt your existing dinette. Typically you will need a shelf of some sort to fill the gap between the seats facing each other. If you are lucky, the table might be used for the shelf. For an even surface beneath the cushions install a cleat on the front of each seat so hold your added shelf even with the top of the bench the cushions sit on. You can probably use 1/2" plywood or OSB. If the gap between the seats is so long 1/2" shelves sag, use 3'4" shelving. The thinner plywood will save weight in your rig and be lighter and easier to handle. Very often the existing cushions can be re-positioned to make the mattress. If not you can buy or make additional cushions or even use pillows to fill in any gaps to fit better. For even more comfort add a memory foam mattress pad to cover the whole bed.
Many dinette tables include cup holders. They are particularly helpful when the vehicle or vessel is in motion. If your table does not have cup holders they can usually be added fairly easily. First make sure there aren't extra structural supports where you want to put your cup holders. You can buy cup holders to install in your table just about anywhere RV parts are sold. You will need to cut a hole in the table the size of the cup holder. It is best to use a hole saw to do this as cutting out a hole with a jig saw doesn't always make a perfect circle. You want the hole to be just big enough for the cup holder to fit into, a tight fit is best. Most people glue the cup holders in place but if you have any reason to remove them you could leave out the gluing. One reason you might need to remove them is if they interfere with the way the table fits when the dinette is made down into a bed. I have seen cup holders in white, black, and dark brown and they usually come in at least two different depths. Some come with drain holes, some without. You may or may not want drain holes. Cup holders without drain holes will keep some spills from dripping onto the floor but they may be a little harder to clean. I made sure I got cup holders without holes when I installed them beside the cockpit on my boat so they wouldn't leak into the cabin below. They fill up with rain but it is pretty easy to empty them out for use. If you can only find solid cupholders but want drains you can always drill a few holes in the bottom.
Dinettes in cab-over campers and Class C motorhomes may offer more comfortable temperatures than the cab-over beds. They are usually near large windows, not so close to the ceiling, and generally have better air flow, giving them more stable and controllable environments than the small, enclosed, dead end cab-over spaces that can be too warm in summer and too cold in winter. Some older truck campers have convection furnaces with no fans and getting heat up into the cab-over bed can be spotty. Sometimes the rising heat makes it too warm, sometimes the heat from the furnace in the far end of the camper never seems to reach all they way up there. In such cases using the dinette for sleeping space is often way more comfortable. Many of the problems with cab-over beds are also found in the V-berths on boats, making sleeping on the dinette an attractive option.
Sit this one out!
No comments:
Post a Comment