Interior Services for RVs and Working Vehicles
Written by Refinish Department Lead, Paint and Refinish Lead, OCRV Center. Reviewed by RV Systems Lead
In shortOne service, one enclosed finish shop with extraction at every tool. Cabinets, floors, panels, upholstery and countertops post at $210 per hour, and moisture readings come first.
What is covered by interior services?
Interior services cover the inside of the unit: cabinets, subfloors and finish floors, wall and ceiling panels, upholstery, countertops and interior lighting. Rancho Santa Margarita owners get that work from the enclosed finish shop at our Yorba Linda facility, billed at the body and paint rate.
- Moisture readings are taken before any cabinet is removed
- Cabinet edges are banded to match, not covered with trim
- Flooring is cut around fixed casework rather than through it
- Lighting circuits move to the electrical rate instead
- Services in this group
- 1Interior remodeling and repair, with seven sub-services beneath it
- Department rate
- $210 per hourInterior lighting circuits move to $260 per hour
- Moisture instruments
- Delmhorst BD-2100 pin meterRecorded readings before any subfloor decision
- Cabinet work
- Edge bander and SawStop panel sawSheet goods cut and edged in house
- Upholstery
- Industrial sewing and foam cutting stationDinette, seating and headboard work in house
- Written estimate
- $150Credited in full against an authorized repair
Last verified
Interior damage is nearly always a symptom. A cabinet does not swell on its own, a floor does not go soft in the middle of a dry coach, and a headliner panel does not stain from the inside. Something arrived from somewhere else, and the interior is where it became visible. That shapes how this department works more than any tool in it does.
So the first thing that happens is measurement of moisture rather than removal of joinery, and the second is a decision about where the water came from. Only then does the finish work start, which is what most of this page is about: the room it happens in, the sequence it follows and what it bills at.
Schedule of work
Why interior work gets its own enclosed room
Cutting sheet goods, banding edges, sewing upholstery and fitting flooring all generate fine dust and all require a controlled surface to work on. Doing that alongside grinding, welding or spraying contaminates both sides of the building. The finish shop is therefore enclosed, with Festool extraction at every cutting tool and a SawStop panel saw for sheet material.
It also lets us keep parts of a customer's interior in one place for weeks without them being moved around a busy body shop. On a full remodel there can be forty pieces of trim and casework off a single coach, each of which has exactly one correct location, and losing one of them costs far more than the piece is worth.
- Enclosed shop with extraction at each cutting tool
- SawStop panel saw and an edge bander for cabinet work
- Track saw and oscillating tools for flooring around fixed casework
- Industrial sewing and foam cutting for upholstery
Moisture readings before any cabinet comes out
A Delmhorst BD-2100 pin meter comes out at intake on any interior job with water in its history, and the readings get recorded on a grid rather than described. That grid is what tells us how far a wet area has actually spread, and it is very often twice the size of the stain that prompted the call.
It also settles the sequence question. If a subfloor reads wet, replacing flooring first is money spent on something that has to come up again, so the leak path gets found and closed before any finish material is ordered. Owners sometimes want the visible fix first. We will say plainly why that is the expensive order.
Before you proceed
Finish material laid over a wet subfloor traps the moisture instead of ending the problem. If the meter reads wet, the source gets closed before anything new goes down.
Matching a factory interior rather than replacing it
Most interior calls are for one damaged element in a coach where everything else is intact, which makes matching the entire job. An edge bander lets us finish a new cabinet edge the way the factory did instead of hiding a cut with applied trim, and cutting sheet goods in house means a replacement panel can be made to the profile in front of us rather than to a catalogue size.
Where a material is genuinely discontinued we say so early and offer the two honest options: match the room by changing more than the damaged piece, or accept a close but visible difference in a low visibility location. What we will not do is quietly fit something that does not match and let you discover it at delivery.
What sits inside this group
One service carries the whole department: interior remodeling and repair. Underneath it sit the seven jobs owners actually ask for, which are full interior remodels, cabinet repair and refacing, flooring and subfloor work, wall and ceiling panels, upholstery, countertops and interior lighting.
Because it is a single service, the routing question is simpler here than in the other groups. If the problem is on the inside of the vehicle and it is not a system, this is the page it belongs to. Systems inside the vehicle, meaning water, gas, appliances and power, are a different department at a different rate.
Sequencing interior work around exterior work
On a combined job the interior comes out first and goes back last, and that is not a preference. Reaching the inside face of a body panel, a roof deck or a slide opening usually means removing the casework in front of it, and the finish shop is the department that removes it, stores it and reinstalls it.
That is why access appears as its own line on estimates from this department. On a Class B or a fitted out van the galley removal and reinstall can be a substantial share of a body repair, and breaking it out separately is what lets an owner or an adjuster see that the hours are access rather than repair.
Rates, supplies and the lighting exception
Interior work posts at $210 per hour, the same rate as body and paint, because it is finish work performed by the same skill grade. Body supplies apply at $5 per body hour where relevant, parts follow the standard markup policy, and sales tax applies to parts and materials with no tax on labor.
The one exception inside the group is lighting. Interior lighting circuits are electrical work and they bill at $260 per hour, because the person tracing a switched circuit behind a panel is the systems technician rather than the joiner. We flag that on the estimate rather than blending two rates into one line.
What this department sends elsewhere
Water arriving from above goes to the roof department, and water arriving from a fitting goes to plumbing, because closing the source is not interior work even when all the damage is. Appliances stay with the systems side. Structural distortion behind a wall panel goes to the structural bays first, since a panel fitted to a body that is about to be pulled will not fit afterward.
We coordinate rather than hand the vehicle back and forth. One estimate, several departments, and a sequence written down at authorization so the interior is not reinstalled a week before somebody needs to reach behind it again.
The department this runs in
Interior work happens in the enclosed finish shop: Festool extraction at every cutting tool, a SawStop panel saw for sheet goods, an edge bander so cabinet edges are matched rather than trimmed, a track saw for cutting flooring around fixed cabinetry, and an industrial sewing and foam station for upholstery. It posts at $210 per hour, and a Delmhorst pin meter comes out before any subfloor or wall panel decision is made.
Appendix: questions and answers
- Why is interior work done in a separate enclosed shop?
- Because joinery, flooring and upholstery need clean air and a controlled surface, and grinding or spraying next to them ruins both. The enclosed finish shop has extraction at every cutting tool. It also gives us somewhere to store forty pieces of a customer's trim safely for weeks during a remodel.
- Do you take moisture readings before removing our cabinetry?
- Yes, on any interior job with water in its history. A pin meter grid gets recorded at intake, and it very often shows a wet area twice the size of the stain that prompted the call. That grid decides both the extent of the repair and whether the source has to be closed first.
- Can factory cabinet edges actually be matched on a repair?
- In most cases yes, because we band edges in house rather than covering a cut with applied trim. Sheet goods are also cut here, so a replacement panel is made to the profile in front of us. Where a material is genuinely discontinued we say so early and give you two honest options.
- Should interior work happen before or after exterior repair?
- The interior comes out first and goes back last. Reaching the inside face of a body panel, a roof deck or a slide opening means removing the casework in front of it, and reinstalling it before another department needs that access wastes the removal entirely. The sequence is written down at authorization.
- Does interior work include the wiring behind a panel?
- It includes exposing it, protecting it and putting it back, and it includes lighting circuits at the electrical rate of $260 per hour rather than the interior rate. Anything beyond lighting, meaning a house circuit fault or a distribution panel, belongs to the systems department and is written as its own line.
- Do you build interiors from scratch or only repair them?
- Both. The same shop that replaces one water damaged panel also does full remodels, which is why the service beneath this group covers everything from a single countertop to a whole coach interior. A complete remodel is scheduled as a project with staged deposits rather than as a repair order.
Open a file on this repair
Tell us the vehicle, what happened and whether a claim is open. We will tell you what the scope looks like and what it takes to get you back on the road.
Or call (949) 799-3387