Make Your Own RV Awning Room: A Comprehensive Guide!

To get closer to nature, ventilation, and privacy, you can always install an extra awning room in your RV. Although you can buy a full setup and have it installed by professionals, that could be a bit expensive.

However, with some regular accessories such as tarps, nets, PVC or aluminum poles, ropes, and adhesives, you can make your own RV awning room. This gives you the full liberty to design and improvise your awning according to your desires and requirements. 

Go through the article till the very end for a complete walkthrough on how to make your own RV awning room.

How to Make Your Own RV Awning Room?

Buying an RV awning setup can cost you about $500 to over $800, depending on the design and material. But provided you have the mindset to build your own awning room, you can get it done for under $100. Here’s a complete walkthrough for making your awning.

Required Tools for Setup

Before getting into the project, you must collect and buy all the required tools that you might need. Here’s a list of some commonly used tools for making a homemade awning for an RV.

• Measuring Tape
• Scissors or sharp blade
• Grommet kit
• Sewing kits (sewing machine, needles, thread, etc)
• Portable drill
• Hammer and pliers (if required)

Read Also: RV Awning Mosquito Net Solutions: Keeping Bugs at Bay

Required Materials

Next, come the required materials you’ll need to make a sophisticated and effective awning room for your RV. Be advised that the quality and amount of materials required are completely dependent on the user’s demand and need to improvise.

• Tarps and high-quality fabrics
• Mesh or nets for sidewalls and ventilation
• Zippers and velcro strap
• PVC or metallic poles
• Nylon cords or ropes
• Grommets

Designing & Planning

First of all, the space where you want to install the awning room in your RV should be measured properly. You must take into account the desired length, breadth, and height of your desired room.

Calculate the amount of fabric, /tarp, and other supplies you’ll need using these measurements, and get them ready by cutting and sewing the edges.

Tarps are better for a secured top, especially if you’ll be camping in adverse weather. On the other hand, fabrics are a better choice for aesthetics, lighting, and ventilation.

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Preparing and Assembling the Top, Sidewalls Front End of the Room

For the top, you must measure the side length of your RV top, which will act as the width of the room. In general, RV owners use 8-9 ft width in their awning. Use the measuring tape and determine the length in front as well.

Most campers prefer 7 feet of length for the room. Hence, prepare a 9 ft by 7ft tarp for the top of your awning room by measuring and cutting the desired tarp or fabric.

Similarly, prepare the side walls and front end of the room. To add windows and entrances, you can use mesh fabrics or mosquito nets by adding them to the fabric using velcro straps or sewing them permanently.

For the edges of the walls, it is better to use zippers so that you can easily reassemble them while not in use.

Installing Grommets and Clips

Grommets strengthen the tarp’s or fabric’s connection places. Using grommets, you can ensure a robust and reliable connection between your awning room tarps/fabrics, the poles, and the ground.

It would be beneficial and less time-consuming if you used a grommet installation kit to add grommets to the top, sidewalls, and bottom of your fabric panels.

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Setting Up the Awning Room Frame

This is one of the most crucial and sensitive steps in making your own RV awning room. For the frame, you can use metallic extendable poles or PVC poles.

The metallic poles give you a solid framework for the side walls to hold the room in place, whereas PVC poles are cheap. Thus, you can use the metallic poles for the walls on each side and the PVC pole for rolling the top and securing the tarp when not in use.

It is important to measure each side of the frame for better stability and leveling with RV. You can drill holes in each end to secure them better with the RV.

Attaching the Awning Screen

Once you have installed the frame, it’s time to attach the fabrics on the sides. Start with attaching the tops of the awning room. Insert a PVC pole on the extended side of the top so that you can roll it back to secure it to the RV.

You can use small sections of velcro straps to keep the trop steadily attached to each side wall. Similarly, add fabrics to other sections, measuring properly. Once all the fabrics have been attached to the frame, use the zippers attached to the edges to completely close the room.

Final Preview and Ground Stakes

Lastly, extend your awning room and inspect it visually for any additional touches. If you are camping in a wide, open space with a lot of wind, you can add heavy ground stakes to each corner of the room through the grommets. This will hold your awning room firmly in place with the RV.

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Things to Consider Before Planning to Make an RV Awning Room

Since adding an awning room to your RV is a big step, it is better to consider the following things beforehand.

Budget for the Awning Room

If your budget is lower, you can build an awning room with only a top. It only requires a tarp and a few poles. On the other hand, if your budget is not a big deal, you should be making an awning room with walls and entrances on all sides.

This setup would be aesthetically pleasing, provide more privacy, and secure other interactions. Perhaps you can even spend the night in your newly made RV awning room.

Ease of Storage

A full setup of an awning room takes up much space in your RV. Hence you must consider the available space and compatibility of your RV before planning to make one.

Ventilation and Airflow

An all-sided open awning room is good for ventilation and airflow. But if you are fond of a covered awning room, you need to add windows and doors for proper ventilation and airflow from all sides.

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Is It Better to Make Your Own RV Awning Room Than Buy It From a Store?

Making an awning room can be tedious, time-consuming, and imperfect. But to make your own RV awning room, you have to spend a lot less. Besides, you can design and improvise the room independently.

On the other hand, prebuilt awning rooms from the marketplace are aesthetically pleasing, strong, and perfect. However, you need to spend a lot to buy it and set it up in your RV.

FAQs.

The following answered questions from RV awning experts can come in handy to make your own at home.

How much does it cost to make an RV awning room?

To make a standard and workable RV awning room, you need to spend $150 at best. However, you can also do it much cheaper, which depends on your requirements and demand.

Are delf-made RV awning rooms effective and durable?

Self-made awning rooms can be as effective and durable as prebuilt ones. It depends on the quality of the materials you used and how securely you set up the awning of your RV.

What color RV awnings are best?

The RV awning rooms should have light, pastel-colored shades for a pleasant and aesthetic-looking outlook. Light-colored solids or stripes are the best-suited patterns for RV awning rooms.

Final Words

Rather than spending too much money on automated, fancy RV awning rooms, it is recommended to make your own. 

This way, you can get your favorite designed and planned awning room at a very cheap price. Although it requires some labor and time, the outcome will surely make you happy.

Read Also: 6 Reasons Why an Awning Window Won’t Close All The Way