Camper Rehab: Small Steps and What I've Learned So Far

Step one of any project, get giant iced teas from QuikTrip

Getting the little man involved.  He was very interested and thought of himself as a HUGE help

I will say, there have been 5,398 screws taken out of this beast and he's been the collector to bring them all to our little bin we have going.  It's been a big help, he never tires of bringing screw by screw by screw over to the bucket. Toddlers love to help

MORE ants.  We are in the tearing down phase, but when we start the building up, we are going to use as little organic materials as possible to avoid just this.  

Pulling the flashing

The rear comes off.  

Charlie plays with art supplies, and I fall over and faint that the kid is actually creating! (lasted for about 10 minutes)

Things I've learned:

#1 - If you live in a stuffy neighborhood with an 'association', this will not work.  It's messy, messy, ugly work.
#2 - Talk to your neighbors when they get nosy.  If you bring them in on the project and tell them what you are doing, they are much more likely to be cool, and ALL the neighbors have stuck their head out the window driving by trying to see what we are doing
#3 - If you don't have a place to burn things, it's going to be a lot of work dragging all this to the dump.  We have burned all the wood in our fire pit.  For all the aluminum, we stuck it free on Craigslist and got someone to come haul it away same day.  I can't believe I convinced my hoarder husband to let me do that, but he agreed and it was so nice to have it gone quickly.  Also, it keeps the neighbors happy. We try to dispose of everything same day and tarp everything down to keep it as neat as possible.
#4 - Keep the valuable pieces you are reusing in another place.  We created an area in our (already overcrowded) basement. Things we don' want damaged or stolen like the stainless steel sink that can be resold.  Until we can install it, we keep it away from the camper.  We've never had issues of theft in our area, but better to be safe than sorry.

More to come!

Camper Rehab: the blue prints and tossing around ideas

Lets remind ourselves what we started with.  This picture will be at the beginning of almost every post so we can see how far we have come!

This was the old layout.  We are nixing the front bed (king size), we will be only doing one pop out in the rear.  We gave the stove, the fridge and air conditioner to the guy who owns the land where Matt hunts.  We will install a new fridge, maybe a new ac unit (only because we already have one that we don't use) but we will not be replacing the stovetop. It would probably be nice for breakfast and coffee, but it's just as easy to do it outside on your cookstove.  Plus, if it's hot, who wants to cook inside?  I just don't see the need, so we are nixing it

Here is the preliminary blueprint with the new lay out.  Instead of a tiny dinette that only fit 2 people on a good day, we are making the whole end of the camper an eating/card playing/drinking game having/fun zone.  It will also be a sleeping area.  We are contemplating putting a murphy bed along the front to make that bunk-like, but I'm not sure it's going to happen. We are salvaging the dinette table and the stainless steel sink, the rest are going to be rudimentary storage.  We are going to make this beast as space efficient as possible.  We are tearing this thing basically down to the trailer and building up.  The great thing is all the wiring and the converter is in perfect shape which is extremely helpful.  We are currently looking for scrap yards with RVs so we can maybe get some second hand windows and a door.  A DOOR, let me know if anyone has a camper DOOR.  CRAZY expensive online, that we will almost have to buy second hand.  On the plus side, we are wrapping it in metal Matt can get at work (5% over cost)

The trailer will look a lot different, but this gives you an idea of what the other pop out bed would look like

Right now the bed would be on a large platform that would be pushed in and out of the camper. It would take up an enormous amount of space that is unusable to make room for it when it's time to travel.  I'm hoping we can do it like the above so it folds up, not in, but I'm not sure if we will have access to the material to do it that way....we shall see

My pinterest boards are already filling with ideas.  I've stopped pinning the adorable red and teal air streams these women totally makeover and sell cupcakes out of, time to get realistic.  This thing is going to be pretty no-fuss. A girl can dream though...

I'm not sourcing anything- if you need something, head over to my pinterest board.  There is a button on the right side of my page. I'm just too lazy... I know, I know, irresponsible blogger

I may not get my red and teal camper, but a little battery powered chandelier for some Glamping?  Just might be in order.

Pop-Up Camper Rehab - First Post, The Pick Up #whathavewegottenourselvesinto #grosstopia

This is the 1991 Jayco pop up that Matt slept in when he went deer hunting for years. I've even slept in there a few times.  A few years back, something happened and the top and it couldn't go all the way back down and it went downhill fast.   It belonged to Matt's good friend's dad. He handed over the title to us, he just wanted it gone.This is also the camper Matt got bit in by a brown recluse and had to be taken to the emergency room.  

First thing we did was TEAR OFF EVERY PIECE OF FABRIC POSSIBLE.  We burned everything down there, it wasn't even worth trying to close the thing with all that nasty canvas and mattresses.  (Oh the  mattresses...YUK)

Found lots of bugs, spiders, salamanders, every animal you could think of.

Even a birds nest on the air conditioner

Believe it or not, this thing hasn't moved in 10 years and we were able to pull it out, air up the tires and those tires got us all the way back to Kansas City.  The rubber was well shaded so they held up.  Still pretty impressive.  The lights even worked for the highway and it rode super smooth all the way home.  This thing was plush back in the day.  Our neighbors are going to LOVE us.  Sometimes it's nice not living in a stuffy HOA neighborhood.

Because it was unable to close, everything has to go due to water damage, dirt, and bugs.  We will be salvaging the sink and probably the table counter top. We have big plans for the layout, more to come.  I'm going to try to document every step.  I've looked everywhere on the internets for rehabs.  Lots of before/afters but not many details.

We just went in there and started unscrewing anything we could. Threw away what we had to, recycled what we could and burned the rest. 

Dinette gone

Made for great bonfire material

Labor Day Weekend - Bennett Springs

We headed down to Lebanon, MO where Matt deer hunts to pick up an old pop up camper we are rehabbing (LOTS more on that to come).  That took up all of Saturday.  We camped Saturday night on the Niangua and headed out to Bennett Springs Sunday morning before having to head back to KC for a 7pm T Bones game.  

It is seriously one of the most beautiful places ever, this picture does it NO justice.  Sometimes I seriously dislike Missouri and it's lack of lakes, I was spoiled growing up.  But Minnesota has nothing on Missouri's river systems, insanely beautiful.

Bennett Springs produces 100 million gallons a day, so the water is freezing with a strong current.   Not to mention CRYSTAL clear.

We were short on time, so we didn't catch much, but was a great time, as always.

2 minutes on the road