Victorian RV – Bedroom Redecorated

I've never been completely satisfied with the Captain's cabin of my bus. The original ceiling in this section was finished with perforated steel sound absorbing panels that did a good job making it quiet but collected soot and dirt and were virtually uncleanable. My solution to this problem was to cover them with cloth. At the same time I decided to cover the rearmost windows with insulation and to do some decorative wood working using the carcas of an old pump organ that was found in the trash by the roadside.

Click through for more pictures of the finished bedroom.

The Captain's cabin before the renovation.

I used 3M Super 77 to attach the cloth to the ceiling. I also tried 3M Super 90 High Strength, but found it much harder to work with.

The "headboard" is made front the left and right sides of a discarded pump organ which have been cut off just above the keyboard. I removed the cloth grill from the escutcheon below the keyboard and cut oblong pieces of window glass to turn these into picture frames. The photos are of the Seattle waterfront at the turn of the last century and  an aerial of the mills of Lawerence, Massachusttes.

A friend found the pump organ sitting curbside and was kind enough to alert me, then it sat in my garage for nearly six months. My original plan was to restore it but I discovered that similar organs in much better condition routinely sold for about $300 so this did not seem like a good use of my time. The next idea was to turn it into a desk but no one in the family was interested and I had no room for it anywhere else.  That's when I started to deconstruct it in my head to see where the pieces might go.

While the keys and action were very worn and didn't function well, the reed board itself seemed to be in fine shape so I hope to attach a row of solenoids to it and make it a midi accessory. There is just enough space to house it under the bed in the Capitan's cabin. I can hear Bach's Toccata in D minor drifting through the bus now!

The sconce lights on either side of the headboard were constructed from part of a pair of colonial chandeliers from our town dump.

I insulated the back windows with 3" of Styrofoam insulation then I covered that with 1/2" plywood. The plywood was painted black and a pair of 2' x 4' beveled edge mirrors, also from our dump, finished the back wall. The area above the headboard was also mirrored with pieces cut from the reflector salvaged from a 52" SONY rear projection television set.

A view of the whole space.

You'll be able to tour my bus and see the nearly completed Steampunk Roadster at: