Cool, we are a homeschooling family too, and we travel quite a bit. In our old Class C, we spent something like 120 nights in the RV the first year.
So far we haven't gotten to do quite as much with this one, but we hope to remedy that in the coming spring and summer.
Our trip: We're currently in New Orleans, moving on to Tyler State Park in Texas tomorrow. We're on the final leg of a trip that went like this:
Slow travel (for us, as we usually do minimum 12-14 hour days if we have a distant destination) to WDW via Dallas, Tx, and Biloxi, MS. Biloxi was beautiful, enjoyed that more than we expected.
then 12 days in WDW at Fort Wilderness, camping with my wife's sister and brother and their families. They each have 5 kids too. So our three sites were pretty busy.
Then we moved on to Key Largo for 3 nights.
One night at Silver Springs State Park, FL
One night near Wakulla Springs State Park, FL
2 nights here in NO (walked and rode the trolley all over creation today)
Tomorrow night in Tyler, TX
Friday night we'll be at some other state park 6 hours down the road (forget what my wife said it was)
Saturday home to Rio Rancho, NM.
the custom mattress is a great idea. We have our two oldest girls and one younger girl sleep on the Queen mattress, sideways but I know they'd appreciate a larger mattress!
My wife commented that some small shelves would fit nicely behind the living room chairs about 30 seconds before I read your post.
some bookshelves would come in handy.
Today I took the TV across from the fridge down as we've never used it and don't foresee doing so, and my wife is thrilled with the little bit of extra counter space.
I purchased taller, more standard RV table legs for the dinette, so now it isn't so difficult to get in and out. tabletop is almost too tall now, but makes it feel roomier as it's easier to get in and out of. The table is marginally less wobbly now too.
I made a plywood insert so I could turn the dinette into a bed, and that's worked OK. put it behind the couch for storage. Still can't understand why Newmar or the original owners put in such a bad dinette. The cushions don't fit properly at all. the side bench cushions are too long. the corner wedge shaped cushions are so large that you can't really sit in the corners without feeling like you're sliding off the bench.
On the precision temp, you mentioned having lots of headaches with that. We've had major issues on the short trips we've taken before this big one, and I pushed so the dealership replaced our problematic precision temp unit with a brand new unit, and that's been working fantastic this trip so far, both for hot water and furnace heat. which is nice.
two remaining headaches we've come across on this trip are a dead NAV unit and an ice maker that is now deciding to gradually flood the freezer, seems to develop a slow drip when making ice. Will try to get those figured out when we get home and I have more opportunity to focus.
Oh, I know of a question I have - do you have the bunk DVD players with IR headphones? Is there some trick to making the headphones work with the DVD players? We've got 3 sets of earphones, and I can't get any of them to work.... can't find any paperwork on them either with the manuals.
sorry for the excessively long post, just excited to talk to another 4159 owner who also has a travelling homeschool family!