The RV That Changed Everything

I didn't set out to become an RV inspector. Honestly, I didn't set out to become anything RV related. It just kind of happened, one weekend at a time, starting with a favor for my grandmother.

Pulling it out of storage

Back in January 2022, I went and pulled my late grandfather's RV out of storage. It was a 2001 Coachmen Santara, a 29 foot Class C sitting on a Ford E450 chassis with about 36,000 miles on it. My grandmother wanted to sell it, and I offered to help clean it up so it would show a little better.

It was rough. Oak cabinets everywhere, brass fixtures, carpet that had seen better decades. But underneath all that dated everything, the bones felt solid. I mentioned to my grandmother that dealerships weren't offering much for it, maybe a small trade in credit at best, and that I might actually be interested in buying it myself.

The moment it became mine

A few weeks later I was visiting her, and she brought it up again. She said she'd been thinking about it and wanted me to have it. Just like that.

I told her I wanted to take it home, clean it up, and really test everything first. My deal with myself was simple: if it turned out to be something I could actually use without a mountain of repairs, I'd keep it. If not, I'd help her sell it and make sure she got the money from it either way.

So the evaluation began. New tires, an oil change, a trip through the car wash. Then I started testing systems one by one. AC, furnace, fridge, generator. I filled the fresh tank to check the plumbing, ran the slide out, tested the leveling system. Everything actually worked. That was the moment I started thinking this rig had real potential.

Two years of weekends

What I didn't fully appreciate at the time was what I was signing up for. What started as a cleanup turned into a full two year, weekend warrior renovation project.

I gutted the whole thing. Dinette, sofa, kitchen, bedroom, shower, bathroom, all of it came out. The only things I kept were the cabinetry boxes and the refrigerator. Everything else was a blank slate, which was both exciting and a little terrifying.

Before I touched a single tool, I mocked up what I wanted it to look like using Photoshop, picking colors and layouts on my computer screen first (something AI could probably do in about four seconds now, but back then it was just me, a lot of trial and error, and way more patience than I usually have).

I wanted a natural, tree house kind of feel inside, so I went with cedar for all the new construction. I moved the water tank and rerouted plumbing to make room for a bigger shower and a king size bed. I built a Murphy bed frame with lifters so I'd still have storage underneath and easy access to the water system. I built a custom cedar shower with tongue and groove boards, a butcher block kitchen counter, a cabinet for an electric fireplace, and swapped every brass light fixture for LED. I even ditched the gas oven for a toaster oven and hot plate, mostly because it freed up counter space I actually wanted more.

There were a lot of stretches that looked more like a construction site than an RV. New framing, new plumbing runs, wires hanging everywhere waiting to be tucked in and terminated. It's not a glamorous phase, but it's the one that actually determines whether everything works right once the walls go back together.

Then came the roof. I stripped off all the old sealant, put down fresh sealant, and while I was up there decided to just replace the AC unit entirely for peace of mind. That led to a new digital thermostat too, since I was already in there. Last step was coating the whole EPDM roof with a Dicor acrylic coating, which is genuinely one of the best decisions I made on this whole project. It's supposed to hold up for another 10 to 15 years, and every time I climb up there it still looks great.

You can see the whole two year build, start to finish, in the renovation gallery. There's something satisfying about scrolling through it start to finish and remembering just how far it came.

Finally hitting the road

After two years of nights and weekends in the driveway, there's nothing quite like finally pulling out of it for real. We pointed the rig toward Yellowstone and just went.

Standing at an overlook like that after two years of nights and weekends spent under cabinets and inside walls puts everything in perspective. That was the whole point, and it was worth every bit of it.

I won't pretend every mile was perfect. That's kind of the point of shaking down a rig you just spent two years building. But rolling into camp each night in something I'd built with my own hands hit different than any RV I could have just bought off a lot. Every cabinet, every light switch, every inch of that cedar shower had a story behind it, and now it had a road behind it too.

You can see the trip in the road trip gallery, including one of my favorite shots of the rig tucked into the trees like it had always belonged there.

Where it led

Here's the part I never saw coming. Tearing that RV apart down to the studs and rebuilding every system in it taught me more about how these rigs actually work than I ever expected to learn. It turned into a genuine interest, then a habit of digging deeper into RV systems, service, and maintenance.

That curiosity is the entire reason I'm now an NRVIA Certified RV Inspector and an RVTAA Registered RV Technician. It's the reason OZ RVS exists at all. A two year weekend project on my grandfather's old Class C somehow turned into a career built around helping other people understand exactly what's going on with theirs.

That's the fuller version of my story, the one with the sawdust and the sealant fumes and the two years of Saturdays.

If you're thinking about your own project

If you've got an old rig sitting in storage somewhere, or you're staring down a renovation and wondering if it's worth it, I get it. It's a lot of work. It's also one of the best things I've ever done, and it changed the direction of my life in ways I never expected.

Whatever your RV story looks like, I hope you get to Enjoy RV Life too. And if you ever want a second set of eyes on a rig before you buy, sell, or head out on your own big trip, that's exactly what we're here for. Get in touch any time.