Great to hear from you. I haven't seen much information about customizing an A/S on this list. Since Gwen and I are deep in the process of our project right now, I can't wait for you to post the details on your interior to the list. I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell us a bit about your plans. We're having a great time putting ideas on paper and within a week or so, I will start building the interior. We are still at the stage where we can be flexible, so we are very interested in what others are doing/have done and getting feedback on our plans.
This is what we are planning for the 1977 Tradewind. It would probably be easier to describe by posting a floor plan, but I don't have a way to do that.
We are going to leave the bathroom more or less alone. We will be resurfacing the yellowed fiberglass with epoxy paint and removing the peeling contact paper and refinishing. We will probably put shelving to in the corner, inside the closet, to the right of the door.
Just in front of the bathroom partition, we will have two 54" wide couches that will convert to 54" wide X 90" long sleeping surface. The 90" dimension being the full width of the coach.
On the door side, we are going to locate the refrigerator in the same position as before because of the venting system. Between the refrigerator and the couch/bed, we will have a pantry with slide-out plastic bins and a clothes closet.
At the front, we are going to build a "U" shaped dinette that will convert to a 56" (or so) wide bed.
On the side opposite the door, we will have a straight countertop with a cooktop and double sink. Realistically, we know that we are not going to use an oven, or go any elaborate cooking so we are replacing the 4-burner Magic Chef with a 2 burner cooktop. We will probably fill the remaining space between the kitchen and the rear couch/bed with sliding wire basket storage.
Most of the interior wood will be birch (with some small exotic accent woods), with a clear finish. After lots of indecision, we are going to carpet the floor because we just like the cozy feeling on bare feet and we'll just deal with the vacuuming. Due to the yellowing and heavy scarring inflicted by previous owners, we will be painting the interior shell.
At this point, we ar not going to replace the overhead compartments. IMHO, they are ugly and pretty flimsy and one day they will go, but I am trying to limit (somewhat) the scope of the project.
As I write, we have completely gutted the interior (with the exceptions noted) and sealed the plywood floor with penetrating epoxy. We are now driving ourselves crazy with color/texture choices for the carpet, laminate, paint and curtains. We are also busy making full size cardboard mock ups of the interior so we can get a better idea about functionality.
We are trying to do all this as weight consciously as possible. We may end up a couple of hundred pounds heavier than the original.
Good luck with your project, and please tell us more.
Lincoln Soule