Vintage travel trailer inspiration photos

Well, I just got home from work and finished up with dinner.  Had to get my vintage travel trailer fix, so I started surfing the web looking for some inspiration photos of other vintage travel trailers others have done.  Here are a few that I came across...

Although this in not a little vintage trailer, it has got me drooling with envy.  I saw this cutie over at Rose Vine Cottage. This baby is big enough to live in, and looks like it has a bathroom and separate sleeping area a sitting area and even a little hallway. 
I love the pink and aqua, and the shabby chic bedding is So Cute!  Have I mentioned I love pink?

She has a lot more interior photos and even some exterior shots, so if you are in love with vintage travel trailer decor be sure to check out her blog. Rose Vine Cottage

The next set photos are from a German blog that I stumbled upon. I love the shabby chic decor they chose for their camper in shades of pinks, blues and white. You can select the google translate if you want to read all about their adventures in their cozy camper.   However as they say, pictures are worth a thousand words.  If you scroll about half way down on the blogs page you will see several amazing before and after photos. Although these photos are not of a vintage travel trailer but a motor home, it goes to show you that with the right fabrics and colors you can make any trailer into a cute and cozy cottage on wheels. If these photos aren't inspiration I don't know what else could be. If the link doesn't work check out the archive link under 7/11

there are a lot more photos so be sure to check them out at Home Sweet Motor Home  Each area that they took a picture of shows a before and after photo. 

Interior paint for my vintage travel trailer

Well I have agonized quite a bit about what color to paint the interior of my vintage travel trailer.  I knew I wanted aqua. but choosing THE color. I don't want to pick a color and have it come out looking like toothpaste.

I have been slowly eliminating color swatches and have narrowed it down to just a few.

This is my weekend to work so I don't get to work on my trailer this weekend. 

I think I have narrowed it down to these few colors...BM Hazy Blue or Antiguan Sky.  Both of those colors are on the top card.

On the card to the far left is BM Green Wave, 2nd from the top, and warm springs right under than. 

On the card in the center BM Wythe Blue.  Wythe Blue just happens to be Benjamin Moore's color of the year for 2012. I think this is a very pretty and a very soothing color.  Here is a photo of a dining room done in this color.  Click on the above link to read more about this color.

I bought a can of paint from Krylon called Catalina Mist and I love it.  I have been thinking about just having it color matched because I have painted some larger items with this color and I know I like it.  Benjamin Moore also has a color called Catalina Mist which is on the card to the far right. I'm not sure if they are the same color or not.  It is the third one down.  Right above that is the color Bali.  Okay now it's just a matter of eliminating those...eenie meenie miney mo.

Decorating a vintage travel trailer, fabric choices

Decisions, decisions, I am horrible at making decisions.  I know what I like, but I like a lot of stuff.  I love vintage decor, shabby chic decor, and even traditional decor.  With my home I play it safe and paint with neutral colors and decorate with a traditional style.

But for my vintage travel trailer I want to have fun.  I mentioned before that I would love to have a shabby chic cottage of wheels, but alas my husband has different ideas.  So together we have decided on going for a vintage decor of aqua and red, and I love, love, love aqua and red.  As I type this I still don't know what color I am going to paint the interior or exterior of my little vintage travel trailer.

Not only am I having a difficult time making a decision on paint colors I am also having a difficult time with fabric selection.  Maybe you can help.

I have a few options that I am thinking about...

 The fabrics to the left are  combonation of fabric by Moda Bonnie & Camille and Riley Blake.  Both designers have a retro feel to them. The red fabric with white polka dots is the fabric I am using for the curtains in the back half of my travel trailer. I am thinking of the fabric to the right for curtains in the kitchen area.  The aqua lattice print is a possible option for the upholstery. That is another decision I am trying to make.  To make the cushions red or aqua, although I am leaning toward aqua, I am still going back and forth between the two.  

I really like the punch of black with this one.  If I choose this fabric, I would use the fabric with the cherries on it for the kitchen curtains.  It is by Robert Kaufman and it is part of The Giving Garden.  I am not sure if this is a new fabric or a discontinued fabric.  I stumbled upon it the other day, but could only find one source for it. The red lattice print in a possible fabric for the cushions,  The rest of the fabric I would use for throw pillow that I am going to attempt to make.  I am also going to try to make some bunting. I think bunting is just adorable !!!  Having a vintage travel trailer is bringing out my creative side and I am having so much fun.

Here are a couple of other fabric choices I have pondered on, but think I have ruled them out.  I really like the one with the roses, but my husband has vetoed it as being way to girly.

The Aqua fabric with roses is by Tanya Whelen and is part of the Darla collection.

The fabric with the daisies is by Michael Miller and is called Daisy Doolittle in Aqua.  My husbands favorite flower is the daisy and since with have a Shasta Trailer it might be kinda cute, but I'm just not sure I like it.I would love to hear what you think. 

Deciding on a paint color

We are almost finished with all of our repairs on our 1973 vintage Shasta travel trailer.  When we first purchased our travel trailer we thought all we would need to do is spruce up our vintage Shasta trailer with some paint. But as we started priming it, we soon realized the paneling was too warped from water damage in a few areas.  7 weeks later we are ready to paint both the interior and exterior of our vintage travel trailer.

We have put up a new piece of paneling on the ceiling.  We just need to caulk the seam then we will be ready to prime then paint.

Speaking of paint, I have no ideal of what color to paint.  I know I want a shade of aqua or turquoise but there are so many shades to choose from.  There are so many shades of aqua to choose from I am getting a little overwhelmed.  I prefer the slightly muted shades like Benjamin Moore's Beach Glass, Bali, Catalina Blue, or Turquoise Mist, but my husband is partial to the more vibrant colors of aqua and turquoise like Sherwin Williams Tantalizing Teal and Holiday Turquoise or Benjamin Moore's Mexicali Turquoise.  I just don't think I am brave enough to go that bold. 

I have eliminated dozens of paint cards, but here is a picture of a few shades I have left to choose from.  I think I am going to try and find a happy medium between the more muted colors and the brighter colors.  Here you can also see that I have a magazine article from Better Homes and Gardens, a piece of scrapbook paper, and a aqua glass jar for inspiration.

Since I also need to pick an interior color maybe I could compromise a bit and do a more muted shade of aqua for the interior and a brighter shade of aqua for the exterior.  We will see...

Better Homes and Garden

This is an online article that I found on the Better Home and Gardens website.  It has a lot of beautiful inspiration photos of colors reminiscent of sea glass. I love these shades of aqua, turquoise and greens.

My favorites on this page is Mermaid by Benjamin Moore.  It is the large middle lid on the right.  My other favorite is Lambs ear by Valspar right under
Mermaid.

Below are a few samples I bought to try out.  The colors I chose where SW Sea Salt, SW Quietude and SW rainwashed.  I have one BM paint sample called Seacliff Heights.  Although in person they are a very pretty muted aqua color, they seem to look a little gray, hmmm...

The other dilemma I am facing is whether or not to paint the trim white or red.  My vote is for white but again my husband is braver than I am and wants to go bold. I like the looks of it on the little trailer I created for my header, but not sure how it would look on a real life sized vintage trailer.  If you have a favorite shade of aqua and would like to share, I would love to hear what it is. 

Almost ready to start interior finishing work on our Shasta

I think we are almost ready to start decorating the interior of our 1973 Shasta travel trailer.

We have to replace a portion of our paneling in out ceiling.  Most vintage travel trailer have issues with areas that leak. The areas that are most vulnerable are the corners, around the trailer windows, and the roof vents,  our 1973 Shasta travel trailer is no exception.

If you have read my previous post, you have seen that we addressed water damage in the front and rear corners.  I think we were lucky because damage was minimal. Now we are addressing the damage near the ceiling vent.  Again we are lucky as the damage is minimal.

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have of the damaged paneling.  I forgot to take pictures again.  I just happened to notice that if you look in the refection of the mirror you can see it. The damaged paneling really wasn't all that bad, but I have seen what can lurk behind damaged paneling, so this was not an issue to be ignored.

The biggest issue we had was removing the paneling.  This particular piece of paneling just happened to run under two cabinets and the closet.  (You can see one cabinet in the picture and the other is in the reflection.)  We THOUGHT this would be a fairly easy process.  All we would have to do is unscrew the cabinets and then start ripping out the paneling.  Until...we discovered that not only where the cabinets screwed in, they were nailed in as well. The nails could not be accessed be cause they were nailed to the frame before the skin (siding) of the trailer was put on.

Not knowing what the heck to do, I turned to my wonderful friends on the Vintage Shasta Proboards, and they helped me solve this little riddle.  We ended up buying a little Oscillating Multifunction Power Tool.  It is only $24.99 from Harbor Freight, but we had a coupon and got ours for only $17.99.  This is an awesome tool and saved us hours of hard work.

Instead of removing the cabinet, the oscillating tool allowed us to cut out the paneling where we needed to.  What we did was take an angle square and drew a straight line from one side to the other.  The oscillating tool allowed us to cut down the line through the paneling.  This gave us a nice straight edge to work with when we were ready to cut out a new piece of paneling.  We then used the tool to cut the paneling around the cabinet and closet.  I was amazed at how close this tool allowed us to get.  Luckily there was no indication of wood rot anywhere else in the ceiling.  Once we get the paneling in place we will be ready to start the finishing work.  OMG, I need to pick out a paint color!

 

One step closer to painting our 1973 Shasta

We have had our little vintage Shasta trailer for 7 weeks now, and we are still not finished with the inside, or the outside for that matter.  It seems like one thing just leads to another.  Hey isn't that a song?

I worked this weekend, so my husband worked diligently with out me, so no pictures but I wanted to share our progress.

Last week we addressed some water damage in the rear of our little Shasta trailer..  This time the area that needed to be addressed was the front curbside corner just above the counter top.  My husband also discovered more wood rot on this same wall when he removed the kitchen window to reseal it.

This ended up being a bigger job than the back corner because we could not see behind the cabinets to see how far the water damage extended.

We knew we wanted to remove the exterior trim pieces and reseal them with butyl tape.  So instead of taking out the cabinets and removing the paneling on the interior,  we took this opportunity to remove the trim pieces and pull the skin away from the frame. I read a lot of post on the Vintage Shasta Pro boards and read how to do this.  If any of you are reading this, thanks guys!

I have to tell you, this freaked my husband out quite a bit. He was afraid we wouldn't be able to put Dottie back together again. If he had read as many post as I have, he would know that it's really not that big of a deal. 

With the skin pulled back, we were able to see the whole frame of the front side.  There were only a few boards that had rotted back there and was much better than I had feared.  I have seen a lot of scary photo's posted on at Vintage Shasta Proboards  that have kept me up worrying at night.   The worst board was the bottom board that formed the frame for the window.  It ran horizontally across the whole trailer, but was only rotten under the window. However it had rotted in half so we replaced the entire board.  Another board that was rotten was also part of the window frame and was the piece that connected to the other board we had just replaced. The corner was not as bad a I had feared.  We only had to replace the board that forms the vertical corner piece.  It was pretty soft in several places.  If we had not fixed it I don't think the the screws would have had anything to screw into.

After we did the corner piece, we were ready to put Dottie back together.

There was only one problem.  It was getting dark. So we screwed  the skin up in a few places threw a tarp over her and called it a night.

Thrifty finds for my vintage travel trailer

I love to go to thrift stores, garage sales and flea markets.  I love hunting for treasures, and I love it when I find one, but I love it even more when I get a good deal.

To say I am frugal is an understatement.  I am uber frugal.  Two dollars is usually the limit I will buy something for.   If something is $3, I put it in my cart and think about it.  I usually put it back unless it is something I decide I really want. I would say 9 times out of 10 I usually put whatever it is back on the shelf.  It is very rare that I will spend more than $5 for anything unless it is something I have been hunting for.

Here are just a few of my thrifty finds.  I can't wait to get them in my little vintage travel trailer.

Red an white tablecloth $ 2       Yellow & white gingham pillow $ 2
 Thermos Insulated Picnic jug $ 4 (I almost put this back)
 Androck Sifter (left) $ 3
 2 bushels of tulips .25 each
 Aqua pillow $ 1
 Bromwell's Sifter $ 2
 2 yellow vintage aprons .50 each
1 spatula with green red and cream handle .50
Aqua picnic tablecloth $ 2

$18.75 for everything.  Not too shabby

  














Here are some more of my thrifty finds...
Red and white card table tablecloth $ 1
red basket $ 3
4 butter knives .10 each
4 vintage plastic drinking glasses 4 for $ 1.49
Chrome Canister Set (missing flour) $ 6 had to really debate if I wanted these.
They where on my list of things I was looking for however they weren't aqua or red.
Aqua pitcher $ 2
red polka dot napkins 2 for $ 1
Melmac bowls 4 for $ 1.49
Plastic aqua picnic plates $ 1 each
1 red, white aqua and pale yellow tea towel (under glasses) $ 2

I am on a constant hunt for anything red or aqua.  I occasionally will look for things on ebay or go to an antique mall to get ideas for my little vintage travel trailer, but don't usually buy anything, because I like the thrill of the hunt. 

More than likely I will not use the pitcher in Dottie because it is breakable.  I am also trying to keep things as light weight as possible so when I go shopping at thrift stores or garage sales, I am mostly looking for vintage kitchen items made with plastic like Melmac, Lustro Ware or bakelite.  Vintage items made of tin will also do. I would love to find some vintage aqua or red Lustro Ware salt and pepper shakers like these...

I am also hunting for a vintage bread box, spices and spice rack.  I also am keeping my eyes opened for a Bakelite radio, and aqua one would be AWESOME...maybe something like this???

or a red vintage Bakelite radio could be cool too. Maybe something like this...

It looks like Mecky from http://kettlekornerkottage.blogspot.com
was lucky enough to find this one, maybe I will too!

Oh well, enough daydreaming for today...

Decorating my vintage travel trailer

My husband and I have spent a lot of time working on our little vintage travel trailer, and she is nowhere near being close to decorating.  But that doesn't mean that I haven't spent countless hours thinking about paint colors, fabric choices, or scouting thrift stores and flea markets finding just the right accessories.

The counter tops and table are yellow and white, and I love the retro design.

Although I would absolutely love to make my little vintage travel trailer into a shabby cottage on wheels, all done up shades of mint green, pinks and yellows, my husband just wouldn't go for that.

So, since I love vintage kitchen's from the 30's 40's and 50's just as much as shabby chic, I decided that would be the route I would take.  It didn't hurt that my husband has always liked that style as well.

I love pink and black, and pink and aqua color combo's of the 50's but again my husband did not want to be surrounded by pink.

My other all time favorite color combo is red and aqua.  I love, love, love those colors together.

So, red and aqua it is!!!  Yay.

Here is my inspiration piece.  It is a little table cloth that I have had for quite awhile.  The colors are perfect.  Red, blue, aqua and a touch of yellow. 

I have been scouring the internet looking for just the right fabric to go with this.  I have looked on eBay, Etsy, and local fabric stores trying to find fabric that has red, aqua and yellow to make curtains for the kitchen, but just can't seem to find anything I really love.  The closest thing I have come across is dish towels and other tablecloths.  I may just end up buying a few of those to make my curtains.

I have already picked out fabric for the rear of the trailer.  Red polka dot's.  I love polka dot's.

This is my first time ever making anything.  I bought a sewing machine years ago, because I wanted to learn to sew, but I never got past figuring out how to thread the darn machine.

Well, knowing I wanted to attempt making my own curtains, I got out my machine that has been stored away for more that 10 years.  Got out the directions an voila I did it. Yay!

Dealing With Hail Damage

When we purchased our little vintage travel trailer, the one thing I noticed right away was how much hail damage she had.  That is actually how she got her name.  She has little dings and dots all over her. It wasn't until we got home that we actually seen how bad it really was. 

So I knew giving Dottie a paint job was high on the list of things to do and she definitely need some paint desperately, but this trailer needed a lot of work first. Not only does she have a lot of hail damage, but she also has quite a bit of peeling and chipping paint.

So the last couple of weeks we have been sanding, and sanding, and sanding some more.  We are still in the process of sanding, but we have been taking turns between working in the interior and exterior.  Although I love Dottie, I am a little less than pleased with how much hail damage she actually has. So I started research how to get hail damage out of aluminum siding.  Well as far as I can tell, there isn't any.

When I was doing my research, "removing hail damage with dry ice" came up a lot.  So I am like "why not?".  We decided to give it a try.  I did a search for the nearest place that sold dry ice, and we were on our way.  Well I was really skeptical, and for good reason.  It didn't work.  We also have a 1978 VW bus that has some dings on it to so we thought we would give it a try on it while we had the dry ice on hand.  It didn't work on that either.  Maybe we were doing it wrong, but I doubt it.  We tried several different methods and none seemed to work.

Disappointed that the dry ice didn't work, I set about looking for other ways to deal with the "hell" damage.  Replacing the skin is not an option for us.  A job of this nature is way beyond my husband's skill level, but he has been doing body work on cars (with sheet metal) for the last 20 years.  In my search for a way to fix these nasty little dings, I discovered a post on vintageshasta.proboards.com/ on dealing with filling holes in aluminum.  Although, a hole is not the same thing as a ding, this got my husband to thinking.  The suggestion made was to use JB Weld to fill the hole.

Now this might make some of you cringe just a little, but what my husband did was drill a tiny little hole using the smallest drill bit he had on hand.  After he made the hole inserted a  pick and used it to pull the dent out, turning it a 180 degrees. When he was finished with pulling the dent out (the best he could) he filled the hole with JB Weld. and then used some Bondo to smooth everything out.

 

There is no way that he will be able to get all of the dings out.  This is because some of the hail damage is in between some of the little crevices. As you can see from the above picture he is only concentrating on the dings that are on the larger flat pieces of the siding.

Wall Papering a Vintage Travel Trailer

Well, we finished up replacing all the rotten wood in the rear left hand corner of our little Shasta travel trailer, also known as Dottie.  There are many owners of  compact Shasta travel trailers who are lucky enough to own a Shasta that has beautiful birch paneling. I believe that I have read on vintageshasta.proboards.com that most Shasta trailers that were made before 1964 had this beautiful birch paneling originally.  Unfortunately our 1973 Shasta 1400, did not have this paneling, but the      (IMHO) the not so pretty 1970's wood paneling.  The two sheets of paneling that was in the corner was in bad shape and needed to be replaced.

Well, since I knew I would have to replace the paneling, I had the idea that I would use wainscoting.  I love wainscoting and what a perfect excuse to use it.  I have used this in a couple of places in my home, (laundry room, bathroom, and a bookcase/window seat in the master bedroom).  The only problem is, is that when we went to purchase it is $40.00 a sheet. Not that this is a bad price, and we only needed 2 sheets, but I never realized how heavy it is.  It is funny, my husband is very concerned about the weight, and every purchase  or change we make he wants to know if there is a lighter solution.

So, we bought the cheapest ugliest, lightest paneling we could find and just covered it with paintable wallpaper that looked like wainscoting.  Yay!!!

I have a sneak peek that I will let you see.  We are just going to paint it white along with the rest of the walls. 

We started painting the walls and was just going to paint the little rubber  rounded cabinet welt that was used for trimming around everything.  This was used everywhere, but it looked horrible painted.  So we pulled it all out.  (I didn't get pictures, sorry I wasn't blogging at the time and just didn't think about it.) Again, this was used everywhere.  It was between the ceiling and the walls, in the corner of the walls, around the cabinets, and counter tops, between the floor and the walls, you get the picture, it was everywhere.  Well unfortunately, where ever this rubber welting was, there was a huge gap between everything.  We will probably use to light weight trim, quarter round etc around the ceiling and floor, but for now we just ended up caulking everywhere.  I did manage to get some before and after pictures of this.

Tip:  My dad was a carpenter and he taught me to do this years ago.  The tip he gave me was to keep a glass of water handy.  After you squirt the caulk into the corner, wet your finger and run it along the caulk to smooth it and remove any excess.

Before Caulk

The Dreaded Wood Rot

From what I have read, many of the vintage travel trailers have some wood rot in the corners and around the vent.  Dottie was no exception.  She had wood root in the rear left hand corner and above the vent.  We have just tackled the wood rot in the corner.

Wow, was I shocked!!!  I just thought we would be dealing with some soft wood, and I knew it would need to be replaced, but I had no idea the wood in the corner had crumbled to nothing but slivers of wood.

 Here you can see on the rear paneling signs of water damage, but look what was behind the other panel that looked about the same.  You can't really see it from this picture, but there was a board that was right up in the corner, it was completely gone.  Nothing left but slivers of wood. That is what the two horizontal 1x2's used to be connected to.  You can also see that the bottom half of the vertical 1x2 was also completely rotted into slivers as well

If you suspect any wood rot at all, soft paneling on the out side is a good indication,  don't be fooled into thinking it is fine.  I would have never guessed that one of the key pieces of wood that support  our frame was completely gone.

There was also some wood rot on the rear wall in the corner as well so we replaced all the wood there too. I wish I had taken photo's of that side too, but pretty much was identical to the wall pictured above.

The wood behind the rest of the paneling looked like it was put in yesterday.