VINTAGE CAMPER MAKEOVER COMPLETE TOUR!

 Hey guys, welcome to 2021. Hope it's treating you well! 

This year is off to an exciting start because after ONE WHOLE YEAR (how?) we have finally completed our vintage camper remodel. 

For a little background - we bought this camper in 2019 for $600 with the plan to maybe turn it into a photo booth, maybe just a camper? Honestly we didn't think that we would even have time to touch it in 2020 because we were so busy with our photo booth business - Lamphouse Photo Co. 

WELP. 

With all events and weddings canceled in March 2020 we started work on our 1968 Play Mor 140. 

AND!

We documented the entire process on our YouTube channel: 

Trailer Trash to Treasure 

Which, (woo-hoo) just passed 1k subscribers! 

We worked on the camper every week and finished it almost exactly a year from when we started. 

Here's the before tour: 

First the exterior. Oof.

Poor guy had been given the rattle can mossy oak treatment and it was doing his cute shape NO favors. 

Next up, the "kitchen"

BIG USE OF QUOTATION MARKS THERE ; ) 

What's there to say, it was basically gone. Disintegrated. Like the little scalloped edge on the cabinet though so style points for that I guess. 

Here's the dinette that would fold down into a bed:

The other ~bed~

Would you sleep there? 

So we got to work with the help of my dad, Dave and mom, Connie and demolished the interior first:

We then took it down to the frame, rebuilt the walls, ceiling, stripped the skin and repainted the exterior and ta-da, here's the final product: 

The kitchen after: 

I think the kitchen might be my favorite part of the camper. 

We installed a new faucet, built upper and lower cabinets, added a water pump and water system and new hardware of course. 

Next up, the front "dinette"

We ended up opting for storage and turned the dinette into a permanent couch/bed. 

We're tent campers and we usually eat outside on a picnic table so we didn't think we would spend the time to convert it back and forth every day from a dinette to a bed. 

And finally, the bedroom:

Did I say the kitchen was my favorite? Maybe this is? Idk, I love it all.

Simon is a big fan of the big, fluffy bed:

The bed converts back into a couch area during the day to add a tiny amount of floor space, access to under the bed storage, and a nice seating area for meals or relaxing.

If you want to see how we rebuilt, repainted, re-everything'd this whole camper from the very beginning please head over to our YouTube channel Trailer Trash to Treasure and click the 'Start From the Beginning Playlist' 

We have another awesome project starting in a few weeks so hit that subscribe button and follow along on our next adventure! 

Until then, 

Keep Smiling!

Exterior Green Paint

Exterior Pink Paint

Interior Upper Cabinet Paint

Interior Lower Cabinet Paint

Interior Wall Paint

Kitchen faucet

Hardware (pulls & knobs)

Backsplash stickers

Box Cushion Tutorial

Drop Cloth Shade Tutorial

Flooring

Lights

Vintage Camper Remodel Update!

Hey guys! 

Had a minute before we got started working on our 1968 Play-Mor Model 140 vintage camper today so I thought I'd check in and give you some updates. 

If you saw our first video that I linked here last week, you know that we have already demolished the entire camper. Here's a peek at that process: 

Here's what the camper looked like on day 1: 

Then once the interior was removed, we took the walls and roof off (see that video here): 

And we were left with just the old rusty frame and rotten decking: 

After that, Conan pulled the old decking off (making meticulous notes of where everything would go back) and sanded, primed and painted the frame (here it is primed): 

That video is up on our YouTube (Trailer Trash to Treasure) if you want to check it out: 

Up next was rebuilding the old walls using the original studs as a frame to work off of: 

And that bring us to our most recent video:

Up next, the decking on the trailer frame gets rebuilt so that the walls can go back up and after that it's roof, wiring, insulation, skin. 
Easy peezy lol
So far it hasn't been too bad. The weather has held out for us most of the time (except for terrible allergies that we've all got - Simon included) and we're excited to start thinking of how the exterior is going to look and what the interior will be laid out like. 
We weren't really planning on making any changes to the interior layout - if it ain't broke - but we might have a couple of things that would make it a little more functional, we'll see. 
If you're seeing this and you haven't already - please go LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to our channel, Trailer Trash to Treasure. 
Until next time,  Keep Smiling! 

We're On Youtube!

AHHH!  A couple of posts ago I mentioned that we had purchased yet another vintage camper to fix up. Here she is, a 1968 Play-Mor Model 140: 

So ugly it's cute, right? We honestly didn't think we'd have time to touch it with a busy season of events this spring and summer but guess what? We have some free time on our hands now (like it or not) and we figured what better way to get our minds off of things than to dig into a real project. And because I like to double down on my challenges, I decided to film the process and put it on YouTube so you can follow along!  Anywho, episode 1 is live on our Youtube Channel Trailer Trash to Treasure:  It's going to be a unique project due to our current situation (i.e. we're unemployed for the forseeable future due to the ban on large public gatherings and thereby...photo booths ; ). We're trying to get it frame off and put back together in 8 weeks on a shoestring budget and perhaps the biggest challenge - we can't just hop in the car and run to the lumber company every two hours. Should be interesting.  Be sure to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE (wow, I feel so youtube-y saying that) so you can watch each episode. The plan is to put them out every Sunday night until we run out of stuff to show you which could be weeks or it could be years. Let's find out together!  Keep Smiling!

ANOTHER Vintage Camper!

We did a thing! 

If you've been following along for a while or if it somehow slipped your mind, in 2012 we purchased a vintage camper for $500 and turned it into a traveling photo studio and darkroom. Flash forward a few years and it's still rollin' but with digital guts. Read all about that here. 

But if you want more beat up, before pictures and the story of how we found this cutie, keep reading!

We have been wanting to downsize for a while now. Since we stopped developing photos in the camper, having an extra 5 feet or so for a darkroom was unnecessary. Also, since we started Lamphouse, there have been a number of venues open in up in Wichita that could easily accommodate a camper smaller than Lampy. Throw that together with the fact that we've gotten a warm response for the "Lampy" camper as a digital photo booth and we were ready to start looking in earnest for a smaller camper to fix up.

Problem is, in the past 5 years things like "glamping" and "putting a photo booth in a vintage camper" have become ~things~ thereby driving the price up on old campers and even making hard to find ones that aren't fixed up already.

View from the hitch. This window is definitely not original. Hoping to replace it with one that is or similar. 

So a few weeks ago I decided to start really looking. That means checking craigslist about two dozen times a day, along with any other classified you can find and even, if you have NO shame, asking your neighbor who has one in their backyard if they'd ever consider getting rid of it...

We stopped in Russell and got duct tape for this window. It lasted about...1/2 a mile I'd guess. 

I found a really cute one on a classifieds site in a town called Russell, about 160 miles away but it said that it had been sold. Womp womp. I thought my chances would be better on a smaller site than Craigslist so I checked again that night and WHAT WHAT there it was - for sale again!

The seller told us that the man he bought it from was using it to go fishing at the lake. 

It was already 11 o'clock at night so I couldn't call the business number that was listed. I set my alarm for the next morning and immediately dialed the number - the camper was still there and still $600. One problem? The tires were mush.

A Loveland, Colorado sticker

We went ahead and drove straight up in the Jeep and had a look at it. Conan mentioned there was a camper parts store in town that we could maybe get tires at and the man selling it said that would be a bust so he called the local tire shop and lo and behold, he had 2 perfect, used tires! The seller even jacked up the camper and took the wheels off for us! Kansas nice, y'all!

From the other end - cute marker lights! 

So we got two tires, put them on and headed home on side roads and two lane highways. A trip that took 2 hours going took 4.5 coming back. Now that's what you call "white knuckle driving"!

Here she is parked in Stafford, Kansas on the way home:

Y'all ready to see your fixer upper? • • • BIG NEWS! Today we bought our second camper! She's about 6 feet shorter than Lampy and cute as a button. We can't wait to get to work on her and start sending her off to amazing events in 2018!

A post shared by Lamphouse Photo Co. (@lamphousephoto) on Jul 7, 2017 at 6:18pm PDT

The inside is pretty standard fare for an old camper. An area for a table 

A cute little kitchenette

(with an icebox!)

A sleeping area

And some souvenirs! 

I'm keeping that mug.

Conan dug around on the internet and found what he was pretty sure was the make of the camper - an ALJOA (or ALJO if it was after '57). He went out and had a look and sure enough, you can barely make out ALJO on the top and back panels of the camper.

He even found this neat old photo of the exact same camper as ours:

We're SO excited to get to work on her! If you had asked me about 4 years ago if I wanted to restore another camper I...well, I probably would have said yes because I'm crazy and a compulsive business starter but whatever. 

I haven't quite decided if I want to post about renovating the camper over here and on our business blog or just over there yet but I at least wanted to introduce you guys since you "get" us ; ) 

I'm hoping to get in there and start demo this week or next if the weather stays nice-ish.

Next up?

More camper stuff maybe and a look at an AMAZING piece of furniture we got for the kitchen a while back!

If you're interested, our local paper, The Wichita Eagle did a little write up about the original Lampy camper and the new one here. 

Porch Painting Before + After

So, after living here for 9 years and working on the exterior of the house little by little for the past 3, we FINALLY got some paint ON THE HOUSE!!

So, the last time I wrote about painting was when we were finishing up the soffitt around the porch.

To jog your memory

Here's what the house looked like before the soffitt and trim were painted way back in 2012:

And here's the "after" from last fall:

And finally, the finished-ish product!

It didn't look half bad and I was feeling pretty confident in our color choices for the whole house.

When the weather was consistently nice we decided to go ahead and get started on painting the actual porch. Before we get started, I realize that this is probably not how you go about painting a house. There are rules! You work tirelessly scraping and filling and sanding and priming every square inch of the house before you start painting. HOWEVER, I have seen those poor souls. I have walked my dog by their scaffolding week after week, month after month, giving them a little wave of acknowledgement until the weather gets too hot or too cold and they retreat for months at a time.

So instead, I decided to clean, prime, scrape and paint just the part of the house that was in reasonably good shape - the porch - to fortify myself for the crap journey that lies ahead.

And you know what? It totally worked! Am I looking forward to putting scaffolding on our roof in the fall? NO, friend. But I've seen the progress and it's wonderful and I want to finish the job. So, without further ado:

PREP

To start with, we took everything off of the porch. Every plant hook, stray nail, wreath screw, unused porch swing 2x4. Everything. Including the porch furniture

Here's my dear mother and father working way harder than anyone 45 years old ever should : P

Looks better already!

Then up went the scaffolding so we could power wash the ceiling of the porch. P.S. My mom is the only person on the earth who can look this pretty while hoisting scaffolding above their head. I said it.

Then my dad got to work playing in the water er I mean, POWER WASHING THE PORCH lol while we scraped paint off of the balisters and trim. I didn't get a lot of pictures of this because
1) scraping
2) water and cameras don't mix

But here's the before of the porch floor:

And after:

Dang. Thank you power washer!

I should mention that over the course of this paint odyssey, we've looked for/tried every paint scraping tool known to man. This guy is still my absolute favorite but my mom tried this heat gun from Harbor Freight and honestly? It worked pretty well. I was shocked. It cut through latex paint like a hot knife through butter and even took off a lot of the enamel paint, too!

TRIGGER WARNING: BIG OL' SPIDER AHEAD!








Another thing my mom discovered - this lovely lady hiding right up underneath the porch rail with her bbs : /

I shouldn't be surprised since Conan and I have found two of these before around the outside of the house but I just always assumed they weren't a thing in Kansas. Brown recluses? Sure. Everywhere. But black widows? I thought we left them in the smoky mountains of northeast Tennessee when we moved here 22 years ago but I guess they followed us. Sorry, everybody!

PRIME-TIME

By the time I got a picture, we had already put a coat of paint on the windows so that's why they're cream colored but you get the idea. Nice and sparkly white!

PAINTING

You can see at this point that we had already painted the siding and trim. So much for taking a bunch of photos : /

BUT, Conan did highly endorse this trim brush:

When you're painting what has to be MILES of trim everyday, it really is worth the $6 to get an actual trim brush with one of these stumpy, soft handles. Your wrist will thank you for it!

Here are some of those miles of trim:

Funny story: We actually painted the balusters and railing a different color than what you see in this photo (there was no red trim and the white parts were the color of the siding) then, we stepped back to look at it and immediately knew it didn't look right. We hopped in the car and drove around looking for porches with rails like ours to see where we went wrong and the answer was - not enough contrast. Conan re-primed and re-painted the rails in a day so that I could get my bunting up by Memorial Day : )

When it came time to paint the treads on the stairs we were equally stumped. I noticed that a lot of the photos I liked on Pinterest of similar houses had the risers painted the color of the balusters and the treads, the color of the trim so that's what we decided to do!

We used Valspar Porch, Floor & Patio paint because it had a little grit to it and you could have it custom tinted.

Here's Conan plugging away with his handy dandy trim brush.

Another of Conan working on the steps because I a) love my little bunting that took years to find and b) Wichita flag!

We also gave the fence a couple coats of primer and the same cream color paint as our risers and balusters. Here's the before:

And the after:

And that brings us to today (well, a few days ago, actually)!

We still need to prime and paint the steps on the south side of the house and re-install our railing that's just sitting there oh, and PAINT THE REST OF THE HOUSE but I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. What's even better? The neighbors seem to like it : )

Thanks to Mrs. DIY for reminding me to include the actual paint colors and brands on this post about PAINTING THE HOUSE ; )

Siding/Columns: Olympic One, Satin Latex in Tortuga

Dark green trim: Valspar Signature, Latex Satin in Olive Smudge

Red trim: Pittsburgh Paramount, Latex Satin in Dutch Boy's Red Farmhouse



Up next?

We did something crazy AGAIN ; ) Can't wait to share this little nugget!