he said: “I think we can find something a
little nicer than this”. With that I said, “Oh,
but I can see it, she will be pretty again.
Please, please, can I get her?” He said:
“Happy Birthday!”
With that, she came home with us where
she fitted perfectly in our garage.
For the first couple of days after we got
her home I just sat in her and tried to
envision what needed to be done. I could
feel my creative juices were coming back.
Luckily she didn’t have water damage or
structural damage. So it was basically just
putting A LOT of make-up on her.
Before I began I thought I would bug
bomb her and get rid of any spiders
or critters that I didn’t want to run into
while working on her. To my horror, the
next day there were hundreds, I mean
thousands, of little pine beetles dead all
over the camper and garage floor. YIKES!!
It took 4 bombs to kill them all. It was
horrible, I thought I had wasted money
on something that was infested and that I
would never be able to use. But after the
fourth bomb, I could tell that I had finally
got rid of those little pests!
So the work began. The layout in the
trailer had a twin bed, a long bench and
a large table in between them. The only
place to stand was in front of the small
kitchen. It felt very cramped. I wanted to
totally gut the inside and re-do the layout,
but a friend suggested not doing that
because of the weight ratio. Plus I had no
idea there would be wheels sticking up in
the trailer. That’s how little I knew about
restoring a trailer.
So I ripped out the bench, the twin bed,
fixed the damaged wheel wells, and my
husband helped me lay down a new sub
floor. We then sealed all the cracks and
holes and sealed the roof seams with
Eternabond and caulking. I removed a
cupboard door and the closet door that
wouldn’t close. My vision was unfolding
before my eyes.
After tearing everything out and cleaning
the walls and vacuuming all the dust from
everything, I began to paint. The wood
was so dry that it took three coats of Kilz
primer and another three coats of paint.
I choose a cream color, so that I would
have a solid base to work around.
28 | vintagetrailermagazine