Interior upgrade

[Jerry Winchester]

Press Release from the Marathon Website

06/18/2009

If you’re considering a coach remodel, Marathon is here to help. Unlike a remodeling project in your residential home, in which you must work with several companies and people—one business for flooring, another for countertops, yet another for tile, and so on—Marathon’s Oregon facility offers full service interior design, exterior paint, and service departments, all under one roof.


For more information about the many remodeling services we have to offer, contact the service department at any Marathon location.

[jelmore]

Hmmm. Maybe they'll take my calls. Thanks.

[phorner]

Hi Jim,

If Liberty isn't taking your calls, you might want to put Parliament Coach in Clearwater Florida, on your list.

They also do bus remodelling and I'll bet they'll be happy to listen to you!

[jelmore]

If we were near Florida, I'd certainly get with them. We're in the north for the summer, trying to find some cool weather. So far, it's not happening.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

We haven't been through a refreshing of our interior on this coach yet, but we did our first, and we did it in pieces. We did the work sequentially, and from start to finish it took place over about 3 months.

We switched out the furniture and had Villa custom make new furniture. Lost time was one evening removing the old furniture and replacing it with the new Villa furniture. We measured and created drawings and they did exactly what we wanted and it couldn't have been easier.

Then we redid the soft goods. Pillows, drapes, bed spread, and even a custom made dog bed to match the rest of the stuff. I just stripped the old stuff from the coach and delivered the items to be used as patterns for two women that previously worked for an Indiana RV manufacturer. They had previously sent samples that we selected from and in a few weeks we had our new items and in one evening those were in place. It made the coach look new when put in place alongside the new Villa furniture.

The floors we wanted changed. We wanted carpeting removed. We wanted some areas to be tile, some new carpeting, we wanted new treatment for the entry steps, so we found a small converter. We left the coach and two weeks later picked it up.

These are 15 year old dollars, but I bet the relationship hasn't changed.

Our quotes from the large converters were in the $20,000 range. By doing the interior piecemeal and dealing direct we accomplished more than we orginally planned, we had put our own touch on the materials, fabrics, colors and furnishings so the coach was now "ours" and the total cost was $7,000. At the time it was a lot of money, but compared to what we would have been charged if we turned it over to a converter it was a bargain. We used full leather for the furniture, the best wool carpeting, very good tile, and the fabrics wore like iron and still looked good when we sold the coach ten years after it was redone.

We lost the use of the coach for 2 weeks for the carpeting, tile and entryway work which was not bad considering the entire coach interior had a new appearance.