Be Gone Ugly Accordion Dividers

Life on the road isn’t always full of fun and splendor.  Case in point … a few days ago, one of the accordion privacy dividers in the trailer busted, resulting in it hanging limp and pathetic.  Coincidently, I hated the dividers as equipped by Airstream so I was happy to have an excuse to explore a different solution.

The dragging divider on the floor

For the uninitiated, our coach is equipped with two dividers, each hanging from a ceiling track.  Chiefly, these curtains provide privacy as needed when we find ourselves frolicking about in the nude, but not wanting to display our nakedness in full glory to any passerby onlookers.

(And yes … technically we have window curtains, but the dividers are employed when curtains are not pulled closed)

My beef with the dividers is that they are ugly as shit.  I’m not being dramatic – they are not good-looking whatsoever.  Once the failure occurred, I needed apply only minor arm-twisting to convince Kelly that the only good solution would be to remove the dividers and replace with something better looking.  Henceforth, the search for replacement material commenced.

Once fabric was secured (a fancy looking shower curtain to be specific), we needed to find new track glides.  As fate would have it, Sun City West happens to be home to plenty of RV service and sales businesses, and without any delay we quickly collected the necessary track hardware.

The final step in the planning process was to determine a method of affixing the curtains to the track glides.  Up for the challenge, I went to JoAnn Fabrics (a first for me) and bought a couple of curtain rod slides which, with a little modification, I figured would work nicely.

Hardware purchased for the modification

Close-up of the new ceiling track slides

My plan was to deconstruct the aluminum thingamajig hangers and use one piece to connect into the plastic slide, the other to the curtain fabric.  The idea worked like a charm and I quickly had all the modified pieces completed.

The newly constructed thingamajig

As purchased, the curtains had a slit which was fished through the open end of the metal hook above.  And with that, I had my solution ready to go.  Easy peasy.   From here, I unscrewed the entire ceiling track assembly and removed the accordion divider.  Once that was done, I threaded the thingamajig into the track and re-installed back to the ceiling.  Then, just like that – bam – I was back in business.

Two accordion dividers retired and replaced with a set that offer a bit less boring and more pop.  So, without any further adieu … I offer the first look at our new divider curtains.