Our first few days.

Wow. It's kinda surreal sitting here, in the Airstream, listening to the rain making that tinny sound as it hits the aluminum. This is my home now. All 240(ish)sqft of it. We're really doing this. It is happening.

There's been a lot of drama and stress the last few weeks with the delayed closing. Our last day in the house we spent 10 hours moving the last bit of stuff (which I swear multiplied like rabbits as we packed it up) and cleaning (BIG thanks go to my sister for helping!) and signing papers for the closing since we would not be in town. We then drove 8 hours to PA, getting in at 2:30am the same day! Well, I guess that would be considered the next day... but you get the idea. And then it took another hour to get our son to back sleep once we got to Rob's parents so, 19 straight hours of insanity. I hope I never have to pack to move and pack for vacation in the same day ever again. Talk about crazy! You can't find anything, you don't remember what went where and you pretty much don't even care. You just want to be DONE. We had a good time in PA though and enjoyed our time with Matt (Rob's brother), who was in from Thailand, and our last day there we took a little ride on his parents' sailboat, which was lovely. I needed a little sunshine in my life.

When we came home, we came home to the Airstream. Well, sort of. We spent the first night at my parents since there were boxes and piles of things that had been thrown in during the move that were preventing us from even having a place to sit, let alone sleep. We spent the next day cleaning and organizing and by the end of the day we had made some good progress. There was no running water yet so I wanted to wait another day to sleep here but, Rob wanted to stay and we did. I wasn't exactly happy about it so Mrs. Grumpy Pants (that's me, in case you were wondering) was hanging around for most of the night. Here we are, 4 days later and we still don't have water. 1975 pluming is stupid and nothing at all like what we have today. Rob has tried and tried to make it work but it looks like we're going to have to scrap the leaky drain connection and start fresh. I'm not grumpy anymore about it (mostly) but it is kind of a pain to haul my dishes in the house to wash them and I can't even rinse my hands in here if I cut up an orange or something, which is... sticky. It's not so bad though, really, and James and Laura have been so amazingly gracious to us and are letting me add my dishes to the dishwasher and come in and out for drinking water, etc... SO thankful we're starting our journey here in their driveway. The 'Stream just isn't ready to stand on her own 2 fe... 4 tires.

I neglected to take photos of the first day or two but I snapped a few while cooking dinner today. The following give a glimpse into my life now.

Rain, sweet potatoes, bacon grease... not so bad. 

Note the stack of dishes... :-/

Kitchen!

My boy watching Mighty Machines.

Will's room. Also home to all of our clothes (except hanging ones).

The curtain-door I made for Will's room. It's actually working pretty well. 

Yep. The bathroom is a disaster!! Someday, this space will be lovely... but until then, it looks like this. 

:-( More bathroom randomness. (Note the new toilet!)

I am not complaining that I have a box of fresh tomatoes, eggs from my girls
and a bag of our home-grown garlic taking up my counter space. 

My spices, oils, etc!

I have to say that living small doesn't really bother me too much and I think things are going to start calming down a little bit soon. Because the camper feels so connected to the outside and we always have the windows and door open (the weather has been Amazing!), William has been just running outside all the time. Sometimes he asks, sometimes he doesn't. It's been a real struggle for me but, I can feel myself adjusting little by little. Today was slightly more normal feeling, which was nice. Will and I ran around in the (light) rain to burn off some energy this afternoon and then watched some Mighty Machines on Netflix. After I finally got him down for bed, the rain picked up. I'd like to go shower but, a) it's raining and I have to go walk to the house to shower and b) it's dark. Hmm... Maybe I'll go over later.

In other news, we STILL haven't picked a name for our puppy and we get to pick him up in 9 days! I admit that it's probably going to feel a little cramped as we adjust to another body in here but, once he's potty trained and sleeping through the night and we can ditch the crate I think it'll be much better. Yes, we have to fit a crate in here. No, I'm not exactly sure how. We will make it work. I was showing Will how to use the clicker for training the dog today. He was loving that. Though, I don't think I'll actually let him use it for a while, since I don't need a confused dog! :-)

Thanks for reading this long post! Feel free to contact us with questions, encouragements, ideas, dog names, etc... :-)

The New Floor!

Well, after 2 days of hard work (by the Hubs) we have a new front floor! I repeat, we have a new front floor!  (Or course, now we have to move on to the back but, let's enjoy this moment, shall we?)

It was a ton of work and a lot of time was spent trying to figure out exactly how to do this thing without compromising on the structural integrity of the body. In the end it took a little creativity and a lot of sweat but, he got it in. It's great! To be honest, I'm mostly excited because I can now prime and paint the front end! Sure, I'm also excited that the rotten, nasty wood is no longer an issue for us and we won't fall through the floor. That's definitely good. But... paint! Yay! It will be such a relief to have it starting to look fresh and clean in there.

I spent the duration of my son's nap today scrubbing mildew and grime off of the walls so I can slap a big, fat coat of Kilz on there later after he goes to bed. I normally choose no-VOC paints and primers but, this particular can of Kilz says "maximum VOCs". Good grief. I'm not going to like that part. However, the low-VOC one wasn't suitable for floors or mildew so... what's a girl to do? Those are the 2 main reasons I needed it! Good thing it's a small space and I should be able to get it done quickly and get out.

Update: I got to paint in the afternoon instead of at night and the primer didn't actually smell too bad. Yay!

Anyway... for those of you who want to see the process of doing the floor, here are the photos.

Nasty, Nasty, Nasty.

More Nast.

Here we've removed the old subfloor and the floor insulation.

He cut out "wings" to remove small spots of rot from the other section.

We sealed any gaps and cleaned surface rust. We then used Rustoleum "Stops Rust" primer and paint to seal the deal.

Burning the midnight oil... 

We have good help.

New insulation (I know fiberglass isn't the best but, we're gonna make it work).
He had to cut the front board into 3 sections to get it in place. Not ideal but, its secure.

Nailed, screwed, bolted and glued. That baby isn't going anywhere.

The wings.

We still haven't decided what to do with the floor. Do we try to use some of it or just scrap it and start over.
There isn't enough to cover the whole floor and I'm worried it might smell mildewy, even though it's newer.  

And here's the before and after of starting to prime. The before pic is also an after-cleaning the walls photo.

Before (but after I scrubbed the mildew off)

After. I still need to paint the trim and cut-in around the windows but, it's getting there.
Much more dramatic in person. 

So, that's where we are for now. Next up: more painting, replacing the back floor and our caulk from Vintage Trailer Supply should arrive early next week so, I guess we'll be working on that, too! :-)

I've got to do something!

I'm getting so restless! We brought home the camper on a Wednesday which, for my family, means that the Handy Hubby began his work "week" the next day, Thursday. He works 12 hour days, Thursday-Sunday, and then is off Monday-Wednesday. So, like I said, we brought her home Wednesday and I'm having to twiddle my thumbs waiting for HH to be off so we can get to work on this old girl. A lot of what needs to do done initially is demolition and that's his department. However, I just couldn't stand it anymore so I went out and started taking measurements of the windows for new curtains today.

There are 9 windows (counting the front 3 as 1) and I will need to make 8 sets of curtains (the side double windows will share a set). That's a lot of sewing! The kitchen window, seen above, will get a new roller shade which I will cover in fabric. (Like THIS) The window already has this crazy roller shade box with spots at different levels to secure the shade. It's totally weird and I'll have to get a photo of it to show you. I think I'll keep it though, just for kicks and because it's one less thing we have to rip out... and that's a good thing.

If you look at the photo here ---->
you'll see the curtain track that is original to the Airstream. I could take it all out and put in regular curtain rods OR I could leave it and use it. I would have to buy "g-tabs" to slide in there and then I could attach the curtain panels to those for a retro sliding panel. I haven't decided what I want to do yet. Again, it comes down to... do we want to yank those off the wall? I guess we'll have to see.














Here's another shot of the rail going around.

Could be cool to have the curtains all the way around like that. One solid line around the front.
Might be good for keeping the light out as well...











Ok, and here's a rant: Why did these people put so many holes in the wall that I now have to patch?!

Seriously. Why?

Anyway... I have a lot of work ahead and I've got to pick some fabric too! Do I buy fabric and sew them myself or do I buy ready-made panels and hem to length? Check out my Pinterest board to see some of my ideas for fabric, attachments and all kinds of Airstreamy stuff!

Also, I started cleaning the walls tonight. They were so grimy and sticky and yuck! I just used a good spongy/scrubber and a bucket of hot water with Dawn super extra power (not the actual name ;-) ) and it worked great. The walls don't feel tacky anymore so, we should be able to paint over them without a problem. I got about half of the front of the "ship" done and I've got a lot more to go! It'll be easier once we pull everything out, for sure. Can't wait for Monday!