Greetings All

We have been thinking about a front dinette mod from the time we first began work on our scamp about nine months ago. We read and examined posts and albums here and on Yahoo Scampers with interest. Projects by Woody and Francis among others showed that we were only limited by our imaginations.

Our first decision was on the type of seating we wished to use. We decided we wanted swivel seats of some kind. We looked at dozens of office chair options and dozens of boat seat options. Key factors were size, cost and comfort. First and foremost they had to fit. If they fit, they had to be comfortable. If they fit and were comfortable we could negotiate price with ourselves. We finally found a small comfortable boat seat at Kmart for aboth $25 US including the swivel plate.

Once we had the seats we could design the dinette around them.

The project began last summer with basic floor repairs. Years of minor but steady leaking had compromised the OSB floor in several areas in the front of the Scamp. The affected areas were removed and replaced with resin-sealed new wood. The sources of the leaks were also identified and corrected. This was all essential work even if we simply retuned the front bench to it's rightful place.

Front dinette: continued

Once the structural repairs were complete and the seats selected we began working on the details of how to actually do it. We considered cutting the bench off at the center hole and using the two sides for the bases of the seats as one Mod. poster did. We decided to keep the bench in tact in case we wanted to convert back for some reason. We set up a temporary box to support the seats at different heights to see how high we wanted the seats to be. We considered several ways of providing access to the storage areas under the seats; how we thought we would use them etc. We also decided we wanted to have the option of using the front dinette area as a bed if needed. After a lot of talking, planning, sketching and "building in our heads", we had a sense of the features we wanted and Dave got the go ahead to start work and make it happen.

The seats were to be supported by a "box" on each side of the leg hole between. The seats were to be several inches higher than the original bench. The seats needed to be easily removable to provide easy access to the storage area and easy conversion to a bed. The top should be covered with some material that went with Rat Fur. The boxes should be oak grain to go with the oak cabinet doors. (we like wood) 3/4 oak veneer plywood was chosen as the material for basic construction. A damaged sheet of said plywood was found and an acceptable discount negotiated.

After further thinking and procrastination, templates were made from cardboard to match the sides of the box to the curve of the trailer. this required repeated marking & cutting,
untill a suitable fit was achieved. separate templates had to be made for each place where the trailer wall was to be met by a box side. See pictures below.

The side pieces were cut out trimmed to fit and glued together with a permanent corner reinforcing brace and a temporary cross brace. the box bases were set inpalce and templates for the tops were made.

(To be continued ............)

Pictures show:

The front dinette area "before" note new vinyl floor has been installed.

The side templates being marked

One of the boxes glued up

Box top template being marked

Top template being trimmed


The side pieces were cut out trimmed to fit and glued together with a permanent corner reinforcing brace and a temporary cross brace. A cleat of oak was attached along the inside top edge to support the top.

Amazing.

Looking forward to seeing the completed trailer.

Me too. Looking good.

Continued,as promised:

I have talked about templates. Turns out Scamps have enough individuality that each piece; sides and tops, need their own template to insure a snug fit. Only a couple pictures are shown.

Using the templates, the tops were marked and cut out of the plywood. The respective tops were temporarily screwed to mounting cleates in the bases. The bases with tops were dry fitted in the trailer. The seats were placed on the tops and the placement we liked best was measured and selected.

An aside is in order. A crude seat support box was made early on and various seat positions were tried. Quite by accident we discovered that the seat and swivel mounted on a board could slide fore and aft on the box quite easily allowing one to sit close to the future table or slide back and lean comfortably against the corner of the Scamp. this feature was included high on the wish list. A picture of the temporary box is shown without the seat attached.

A rectangular hole, large enough to allow for the desired sliding movement of the seat and access to the storage space below was cut in each top. The piece removed became the solid lid for the bed configuration. The removal of such a large piece required the reinforcement of the underside of the tops. Reinforcing was combined with the seat slide rails. Shorter pieces of plywood were cut for mounting the seats and their swivel bases. Pictures shown below. Ok, I probably over reinforced things.....hey, I don't want to do it again.

We are using the original bench mounting ribs for the backside support. As the new seat boxes are several inches higher than the original benches, there was a space between the backside top and the bench mounting rib below. This space was filled with thichnesses of plywood to make a solid support all around. This is kind of fussy, but, IMHO very important.

Things were reassembled and dry fit once more. Doing a lot of double checking and dry fitting is directly proportional to the number of screw ups on past projects.

I hope you can figure out which picture goes with which description.

WOW! Talk about energetic! Some interresting ideas. Looking forward to more.

This will be the last installment of new work for a few weeks.

An inexpensive indoor outdoor carpet in the same general color family as rat fur was found at Menards (Midwest big box building supply). This carpet was glued on the top with the plywood inset lid in place. With the glue set, the inset was cut free and removed.
The whole box was stained the finished with Minwax Wipe on Poly. Various trim and moulding strips were cut and finished. Three angle brackets were attached inside each box to serve as floor anchors. The front swivel seats for the Front Dinette are done and in place. I must say this wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be.


I just keep thinking we've forgotton something...........THE TABLE! ARGH!!!

Ok, I didnt' forget. We just have not built it yet. And, we have not completely decided on the mounting method yet either. More thinking. We're leaning toward attaching a table mounting board to the front wall......... I' take pictures showing how we do it.

Pictures show the finished seat boxes, seat boxes in the scamp, and close ups of the seat slides.

More to come in a few weeks. In the mean time we're open to questions and suggestions.

First rate job!

Are you going to put cupboard doors on for additional storage under the seats?

Can't wait to see pics of the table mod too

Donna,Myron, Bob, and James.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Donna, side entry cabinet doors were considered in a variety of configurations. For now, we decided to settle for "finished" as opposed to more whistlles and bells. The seat boxes are designed to allow top access thru a fairly large openings. Inconvienent perhaps, but there are just the two of us. The boxes will be fairly easy to remove, and I did take the possibility of the future addition of side access doors into account in the design. We will finish the project this way, add the table, and try it out. If we want more doors, we will add them for next season. They will be pretty easy.

Dave and Diane

Diane:

Nice job! I'm also thinking of doing the same (mounting swivel chairs) to our Burro, but it would have to be over the existing fiberglass cabinets/pedestals. My wife has shorter legs than I and the concern is whether her feet would be dangling above the floor.

Can you give me the dimensions on how tall your plywood support box is (above the floor)?

Per, thanks we're very pleased with the results.

We are both on the tallish side, 6' and 5'10". So we built the box taller than the original Scamp front bench. We get a bit more storage height that way.

Original Scamp fiberglas bench top ~15 inches from floor add ~3.5" for the cushion.

Our box ~ 17.25" from the floor plus ~3.5" to seat top.

Have you considered a foot rest / riser for your wife?

I'm not familiar with the Boler construction so you are on your own on that one. Good luck and have fun creating your Mod, Keep us posted on your progress. Maybe other Boler people can help you out.

Dave, of Dave and Diane

Wow. Just wow.

This gives me encouragement in case I decide to transform my Freedom Deluxe into a Spirit Deluxe. As I've said before, we decided on the Freedom because our son told us he was tired of camping and did not want to go anymore. But of course as soon as we bought the Casita and started planning trips...he suddenly decides he likes camping again. (He's graduating high school in a few weeks...I guess this kind of stuff is to be expected.)

So we've been putting him in a tent. But I feel bad about that, so we've been thinking of taking out the captain's chairs and changing the model to a Spirit Deluxe. Since I'm not a handyman type, the prospect of doing something like that basically scared me. But seeing what you and so many others on this forum have done...well, I think I might tackle the job.

The projects are fun and entertainment for both of us. One plus is every project provides an excuse for another neat tool. Another big bonus is that we can buy each other tools for those "special" occasions without fear of unpleasant repercussions.

Don't know much about Casita but we will answer any questions you want to ask. and will gladly cheer fron the sidelines.

Careful about making the trailer too comfortable. The idea is to attain a suscessful orbit.
If the launch pad is too cushy, the rocket may just settle back down.

Good luck

Dave & Diane

Diane,
I found the rest of your post and really like what you did with the swivel seats - a great idea. Thanks for your post.
Louise

We're back to the front dinette after a detour to put shelves in the closet, build a new dinette table and fit trim mouldings.

We decided to attach the table to the front wall by means of an aluminum quick release interlocking bracket. To do this, we have to fiberglass an osb mounting board to the front bulkhead. The leg support is still in the palnning stage but may be a curbed thingy that will be out of "knees" way. We are hoping that this weekend will be warm enough to fiberglass. Making the incission in perfectly good rat fur was hard but had to be done.

Will add more pictures as work progresses.

Dave and Diane

Today was warm enough to fiberglass towards the end of the afternoon, so that is what we did. We sealed the bottom of the new dinette table with resin, restripped the exposed belly band, fg reinforced the upper bunk hinge board, glassed in the front dinette mounting board, and glassed in the filler block between the existing bench mounting ribs.
The space between the ribs was filled just in case we needed to anchor something for the table leg support. We used Bondo resin and fiberglass mat cut into 4-6 inch wide strips. The results of the afternoon's labors are below.

Dave and Diane