for an already completed trailer, René
paid $400 for the Aloha. The man she
bought it from told her that he had found
it in a field one day, had knocked on the
door and paid $50 to haul it away. All he
had done to the trailer was clean it up a
bit before selling it on. At sixty-two years
of age, the little Aloha was a little worse
for wear but René was not to be deterred.
“I hooked her up and drove her home,
leaving a trail of rotten wood behind me!”
laughs René.
Facing the reality of a full ground up
restoration once the extent of the
damage was made clear, René found
herself with lots of questions. She found
several online groups that she says were
particularly helpful in networking with
other trailer restorers. Having made some
great connections with other Aloha lovers
and seeing a lack of resources particular
to Aloha owners such as herself, she set
up a Facebook group called ‘Vintage
Aloha Trailers and friends’. The group
now has 900 members and has become,
in René’s words: “A great, positive place
to share”. It was through friendships
she made via online vintage trailer
restoration groups that she first learned
about Sisters on the Fly. She joined the
group in 2013 and describes her “sisters
and their Misters” as “wonderful friends
and some of our favorite people”.
During the complete ground up restoration,
René took everything apart,
photographing every part of the process,
taking a lot of measurements and blogging
all about it.
“I had quite the daily routine” she says:
“Go to work, come home, change into my
‘trailer workin’ clothes, start dinner, go
outside to the carport and work on her,
come in, shower and blog about what I
had accomplished that day. The process
took six months and a lot of that was
based on funds to restore and how cold
it was outside”.
The putting back together process was
extensive and involved rebuilding the
entire interior wood framework from
scratch, as the original timber was so
rotten that it couldn’t even be used as
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