I have a question for you. Do you REALLY need the dinette?
I ask this because we are "eat on your laps while watching TV" people. Lots of folks are. There was a lengthy thread on this a few months back on Escapees. Basically it boiled down to the folks who always ate at a table in their homes, tended to use their dinettes and could not conceive of not eating at a table. Then there were the folks who ate outside whenever possible at the picnic table (or brought their own... some campgrounds either do not have a table because they grow legs and move to another site or they are so trashed/nasty that you wish they would grow legs and move to another site) or ate sitting watching TV during bad weather. Then you have the other folks (like us) who discovered that the dinette tended to be buried under a pile of stuff and wasn't ever usable so we tended to eat watching TV.
We have two separate chairs with an end table between the seats. We set our drinks on the table and I bought a little picnic caddy that holds the 4 wicker paper plate holders (we also use them to hold the hot plates), bottles of ketchup & mustard (plus misc stuff like David's pill dispensers, a couple paperback books pens/pencils). The caddy keeps the clutter down a bit. I also have a couple of those
folding metal tables you get at Wal-Mart. We like ours and bought them (3) several years ago to set our table top grill on. We paid under $12 for each of ours, they cost a lot more now. Sometimes David will use one like a TV dinner table. I tend to cut my food up at the kitchen counter, David likes to cut his up while he eats.
Under NORMAL conditions we would eat outside as often as we can. But here in NM, several things prevent that... wind, dust storms, a fiberglass picnic table (I sat at it once in a pair of blue jeans, then I had to take the jeans off and wash them due to the tiny slivers of fiberglass in the backs of my legs... ouch!) plus we tend to eat late out here and the roaches like outside lights. I believe there are more roaches in NM than in FL! I have a slight phobia about roaches. After fulltiming in the Class C (which started out with a dinette) from 2006 to 2011... we decided we did not need to take up space with a dinette. If we want to play a game of Scrabble (I have a small travel version), my "board" will fit nicely on the end table between our swiveling chairs. Ditto for cards. Plus we do have the folding aluminum tables. I'm down to two since I left the "grill table" with Stacey. I plan on buying one of those little
4 ft folding tables they have at Sam's Club along with one of these
folding tables for the grill. I need to measure the leg base on our current grill. We want our own "picnic" table for outside due to the condition of the tables we have been running into for the past few years. The "fold in half" table linked to above takes up little room and gives us the option of placing our freestanding folding chairs where we want them unlike the
folding picnic tables that I see some RVers hauling around. As for holiday meals... we eat those either in a restaurant (if with the kids) or if by ourselves, we eat just like any other meal. I much prefer eating out. Less work for me. But I now make the "special" holiday dishes thru out the year. I have learned to scale them down to smaller batches except for the idiot turkey but I strip the carcase and freeze most of the meat as soon as it cools, so David can have turkey (in the electric roaster) more than once a year if he wants. I have bought "pre-cooked" smoked turkey breasts in the store and that makes David happy as well (I don't care for turkey all that much... once a year is plenty).
Just asking. Sometimes you end up adding stuff in that you really don't need even though you thought you might or because it seems strange to leave it out. Before you lock down your floor plans THINK about how you will be using your conversion. I mean really sit down and discuss HOW you will be using it both now and later. If you will be putting it into campgrounds, then go visit some. Check out the facilities (hookups, where located in relation to the campsite, condition of the bathhouses). Most campgrounds will let you in to look. Some won't for various reasons. We always said (when we we up against a locked or manned gate), "We are thinking of camping here in a couple of months, could we check out your campground to see where our RV will fit and look at the bathhouses?" Now if you don't camp much you may think the bathhouse thing is odd. If you do camp fairly often (with women &/or children) then the bathhouse thing is perfectly normal thing to ask. We have only been refused at two public campgrounds. Both places had a problem with theft/vandalism in the recent past. Picnicking in the "off-season" campgrounds is a favourite past time for us. We like to carry a notebook and list the good/bad spots as we walk or drive thru the campground.
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