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

Merry Christmas!

 Just wanted to pop in to say 'Merry Christmas!' and give a little update on how our year ended up. 

The last time I blogged, we had *just* barely started working on that camper up here ^

and what do you know, 9 months later and we're still working on it ; ) 

BUT

it's basically pretty much almost done! 

Just a few finishing touches here and there so no big reveal yet but here's a before and after of the kitchen: 

BEFORE (obviously!)

AFTER:

Can you BELIEVE??

I'm so excited to finish this project up with all of the fun stuff like storage, accessories, and decor but for now, I'll just tell you to head over to our YouTube Trailer Trash to Treasure to watch the whole remodel process and while you're there, give us a LIKE & SUBSCRIBE - that's all we want for Christmas! 

Thanks for reading. See you in 2021! 

Keep Smiling

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!

SINCE YOU BEEN GONE

So um...It's been A WHILE.

So long in fact, that we were able to create an entirely new person, keep it alive over a year and live to tell about it ; ) 

Introducing, to the Keep Smiling family, Simon Yale Fugit:

Born January 1, 2019

10:39 AM

3 lbs. 15 oz, 16 in.

As you can maybe tell from the weight up there, lil' Simon wasn't supposed to show up on New Year's Day. His due date was actually February 12th but our doctors decided he needed to be a New Years baby so here we are.

He spent 21 days in the NICU but at last check up, he was over 20 lbs. and doing awesome. He's now walking, talking, and getting into everything (including dirt - see mouth in below pic ; ).

That sort of set the tone for the whole year - a whirlwind. Read on to see what else we did that was...surprising...or not depending on how well you know us ; ) 

Little Lampy Camper Before and After

If you're here looking for posts about working on an old house, I hate to disappoint you but once again we're talking about old campers. If you want to look at old houses, just scroll down a little bit and you've got about 7 years worth of stuff to fill your time with BUT if you want to see some photos of a really cute camper, you're in luck! 

After five months (almost to the day) of non-stop, all consuming work on our most recent camper purchase we finally finished it and rolled it out to its first event as a photo booth here in Wichita on December 16, 2017. 

If you'll recall, this was the BEFORE: 

(yeesh)

and here's the AFTER: 

It was a real process this time, folks. If you've been around these parts for the past 5 years you might remember us fixing up our first camper, "Lampy" to put a studio and darkroom inside. We eventually converted it to digital but then we had all of this extra space that we didn't need so we decided to scale down when we found this new camper for a steal at $600.

In spite of being about 6 feet shorter, this new camper was AT LEAST as challenging mostly due to the fact that there was nary a straight line on it. The first camper was much more boxy so framing wasn't as difficult. This one's "canned ham" shape meant replacing rotten wood that was bent and built in a factory 70 years ago was...difficult to say the least ; ) I would estimate that about 70% of those 5 months was spent re-framing the camper. 

All told, we ended up spending about $3,600 on renovating the camper inside and out. 

We scraped all of the old paint off using aircraft stripper (nasty stuff)...

My parents removed pretty much every piece of the skin of the camper to get to the old rotten framing and replace it. 

We started with this: 

Then came this: 

Then we lost the floor somehow: 

But eventually got things back in order and framed up: 

 And now...the back (or bedroom area) finished:

And the "dining" area before:

And after:

So, there it is - the Little "Lampy" Camper. We even had a friend of ours that is a sign painter do hand lettering on the back. It's darn cute: 

If you're in the mood, there's even more photos on the Lamphouse website here.

We learned a lot from our first attempt at this five years ago that helped us make this one even better and *hopefully* longer lasting. We're really excited to get it out in the spring and fall to some weddings around Kansas and let people enjoy it like they did the original camper. 

Who knows if we'll get back around to house projects now that this is complete. Lord knows we need to get back to painting the house like, YESTERDAY so maybe that will get some more attention when it warms up outside or who knows, maybe we'll just throw a couple of sleeping bags in the camper and take a much needed vacation...



Until next time, 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.