Air-dreaming
Well, it’s about that time. The time when we move out of our winter rental (a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom beach house!) into our beautiful little silver bullet.
Meet “The Airstream”
Nate and I have lived in several places (eight to be exact) in the past six years of living together and I can honestly tell you that this is one of the best places we have lived. Not only do we own the Airstream, which means we are not giving money to others for a place to live, but it is the easiest way to learn to simplify your life.
Last year, we started obsessively searching Craigslist. The first camper we went to look at was located in Connecticut. We drove the three hours there to find out that it was a sad, mouse infested, run down Airstream that we just couldn’t get ourselves to spend the money on. (Even though we did think about getting it because we were so excited and antsy to get one of these large campers that we had done so much research on.) After deciding we should wait, we drove three hours back to Maine and looked even further on Craigslist hoping we would find another one.
No more than two hours after we returned from our mini road trip, Nate called me and said “We are going to go look at another one tomorrow in Massachusetts- this is the one we are getting!” My first reaction was, “Well, how can he be so sure- we haven’t even seen it yet!” But, I always (well, most of the time) trust Nate’s instincts so we drove down to Massachusetts the next day and saw our new home. It was perfect! After looking at it for about a half hour and inspecting everything we knew to inspect, we hooked it up to our truck and drove off.
As we started driving home, Nate thought it would be a good idea to check all the hook-ups to make sure everything was in place and ready to go since he wasn’t actually the one who hooked it up in the first place. Well, good thing! The previous owner of the Airstream had hooked the camper up to our 2″ ball hitch, but the camper had a 2 5/16″ hitch on it! One bump and ByeBye Airstream! So, after removing the camper at a truck stop, leaving Nate behind with the Airstream, and me driving around for a little over an hour to find the right size ball, we were back in action! We get onto the highway and no more than 3 minutes down the road, the awning decided it wanted to fly open. We were at a loss, because we were on a single lane highway with a line of traffic behind us and no place to pull over. We finally found a dirt section so we pulled off, grabbed the duct tape and taped the awning to the side of the Airstream.
We finally made it home and for the next two months we renovated the Airstream to make it “livable” for us. The first thing we did was rip out the two vintage twin beds. They were situated side by side in the middle of the camper, were pale yellow and had floral carpet on the walls next to them. We replaced them with a fold up, full-sized bed with storage underneath.
Before
After
After
The next thing we did was tear up the wood sticker floor (Nate tells me that they are vinyl tiles but that I like ‘sticker floor’ better ☺) and replaced it with Armstrong wood flooring- which is similar to Pergo.
We then painted the entire bathroom (walls, cabinets, tub, sink, etc.) and bought a new toilet.
Before
After
Before
After
We didn’t have to do too much to the kitchen except some cleaning, but here is a picture of it when we were living there:
Although it was a lot of work at the time, it was still extremely cost effective to spend some money to do it right in order to live happily in our Airstream. We plan to move back in on June 1st and will be working and getting things ready for the trip until it is time to leave! :):)
Hi all,
I was just pointed to your site by a fellow named Pat on the Northwest Overland site. I think we may be cut from the same cloth (separated at birth) as my wife, daughters, and I have a ’98 Dodge Ram 2500 and a 1974 Airstream (31′ Sovereign, center bath, rear twin bed). I squinted and had to look closer at the photo above with the Cummins pulling the Airstream as we almost have the same setup! While our adventures are not nearly as cool, you could check out our truck page at http://www.purdygreatlife.weebly.com/truck and our Airstream renovations at http://www.purdygreatlife.weebly.com/airstream.
Hey TJ!
Glad to have you following along! We took a look at your site. You weren’t kidding when you said you had to do a double take at that picture of the truck with the airstream! Too funny!
Unfortunately, we recently sold our airstream because we were not home to take care of it. We miss it but have talked about getting another (shorter) one sometime in the future!