Catch up on our vintage trailer.

Alright. Alright. Alright ( in my best Matthew McConaughey voice)

Its been a while, I know, and I have a lot to catch up on. My computer died on me and until recently didn’t have a computer to keep update on our trailer. So much has happened since last summer and we are SO close to getting it finished. IT WILL BE ON THE ROAD THIS SUMMER.

 

OK. lets rewind back to the end of last summer….

 

Most of summer of 2014 was spent getting all the paint off the trailer to get it ready for a new coat of paint. MAN! What a job! It took F.O.R.E.V.E.R

We ended getting off about 90% of the paint, which I call an accomplishment. Sanded and washed it down. Then, began with the primer.

One side without primer. The other side with. You can see the huge difference even just the primer made. Looks a million times better.

While we were in the process of getting the paint off and prime the camper, I pulled off the gutters above all the windows and door. Some needed to be straightened out and cleaned. To make them all match and give them a little bit of shine, I primed and painted them as well with a metallic spray paint.

 

We made a summer trip back east to Indiana and Michigan to visit some family. My sisters’ sister in law does some metal work and made this really sweet sign for our camper. We plan to post at our campsite when we go camping, if you see us, swing over and say “hi” . 🙂 Oh, and if you want one made for yourself, I am sure I could get you connected with the right person. Now I just need to get the handsome husband to weld a post onto the sign. Just one more thing to add to his ” honey do” list.

 

Ok, so the camper is all primed and has received its new coat of off white paint, which is to be the main color. I believe we used rust-oleum in glossy almond. I did thin down the paint at the recommendation of others with vintage camper blogs to get a smoother finish. I thinned my paint to about 1/3 cup of mineral spirits per quart of paint.

 

Now our little camper is starting to look like the one in our dreams! Once we got most of the almond color on, I started taping off for the bottom half. As far as chosing the color for the bottom half, we( by ” we” , I mean ” I”) went back and forth. What can I say, we are an indecisive couple. Heck! we are still trying to make up our minds on the backsplash for the kitchenette. First it was RED. Like a dark retro red. Then I thought, maybe that would be too much, so I turned my sights on hunter green. While I thought that would be a good choice and look nice, I got to thinking about my favorite color in all the world – navy blue. Finding the RIGHT navy blue was a bit of a hunt, because a lot of oil based enamel colors come pre mixed and not a HUGE selection of color. sigh. I soon prevailed at my local Ace Hardware store. YAY for Ace! The blue of my dreams is called ” international blue”.

 

Upon buying the trailer, we found an old Livingston MT felt pendent in the camper and displayed it proudly in the trailer ( far left cabinet door). The handsome husband found a Seattle’s Worlds Fair one at an antique store and scooped it up ( far right cabinet) and then…….he found a Great Falls MT pendent for me to find a spot for in our trailer! Keep them coming, honey! 🙂

 

 

Lately, my children have been using the camper as their own personal play house. I keep saying, ” its not a camper, its just an expensive playhouse for the kids.”

In the mean time, the hubby decided the table for the dinette needed to be altered. Because it was a rectangle shape, it made it somewhat difficult to squeeze into the bench seat closest to the stove( unless you are an ultra skinny super model). So, as you can see from the pics above, he removed the table and it was under construction…

 

And….. here we go! the new paint job revealed! Now I must confess – at this point ( sometime in Sept. 2014) I only had three sides of the trailer painted. This early spring when the weather started getting nice, I thought, ” I really want to get on the road. We could TOTALLY drive it and go camping somewhere with only three sides painted, right?”

Then, I got ” the look” from the husband. He said we are not driving that thing down the road till all four sides are painted. Fast forward to April 2015. The weather was nice for a straight week. I went and bought some more paint and finished up the fourth side. 🙂

Oh! by the way. A list of the paint that was used on the camper:

*For the gutters and doorstop, I used rust-oleum metallic brilliant metal finish.

*For the trailer primer, Rust-oleum Gray Primer latex aluminum primer. For trailer color, rust-oleum protective enamel in gloss almond, thinned with mineral spirits. Along with, Ace machine & implement rust stop oil based enamel in gloss International Blue, again, thinned with mineral spirits.

* For the tires-primed with rust-oleum automobile primer spray, and rust-oleum gloss protective enamel spray in black.

 

With the exterior paint done, I put the gutters back on the windows, and resealed them with a gray putty like substance(purchased at a camper supply store) so that the outside elements don’t find their way in and around my windows. Out of all the gutters, we only had to completely replace one on the front window.

Alright. On to the tires! At first, we thought we were going to have to get new tires for the camper, but after pulling them off and really looking them over, there is still some life in them, so we just cleaned them up a bit. Sanded off as much old paint as we could, primed and painted. Mr Handy Man also cleaned and repacked the wheel bearings. What a great guy! 🙂

 

 

With some left over paint, we put it to good use. The tongue in the front of the trailer didn’t look bad, but it didn’t look great either. Out came the sander and the rest of the spray primer and paint. Details matter, people!

As we come to a close on updating everyone one on the progress of our camper, the new altered dinette table gets back in the with corner taken off and a new coat of paint across the top to match the kitchen cabinet doors. With all this painting going on, I just couldn’t stop myself, I repainted/updated my boys’ bedroom as well and took their stuffed ram’s head. I felt it would be more at home in the camper. What do you think?

In the last picture, I tried to show you one of my DIY projects I came up with. One of the curtains in the back over the bed – I took a plain white curtain, found an image on the internet that I felt fit the feel of our camper. It’s a vintage picture of an old cowboy sitting on his mule, overlooking the Grand Canyon. A sense of adventure!

And there you have it! Honestly, all that’s left to do to just get this sucker on the road is some current tabs and a little extra wiring so that the lights can be hooked up to the truck. We will get him on the road this summer ( fingers crossed)

Until next time… happy trailers…. I mean, trails. 🙂

http://vintagetravelpostcards.blogspot.com/2012/07/grand-canyon-national-park-arizona.html