A bunk bed too...

What's that?  It's a bunk bed!


  Hooray!  Beds for all three kids!

This brace supports the weight of the bunk.  The notch allows us to fold the bunk up and latch it to the ceiling.

Speaking of a ceiling latch, we used a (slightly modified) window latch....

We haven't found old-style bunk bed brackets yet.  (Do you have a set for sale?)  In the meantime, we've installed three brackets: one on each end and one in the middle. The brackets keep the bunk from flipping when someone climbs onto it...












We had one more mystery to solve before we could install our new bunk bed.  After carefully planning out and fabricating the bunk we brought it to the trailer for a test fit.  We had a problem.  The bunk was in the way of the window crank.  OOommmphh!  Now what? Well, I set off in search of bunk bed photos...


Mystery solved!  The windows under bunk beds have knobs for cranks!  We added a set of knobs.  (Thanks again for the photos, Norm.  They've been indispensable!)

 The ultimate test.  The bunk with a mess of kids on it.

Oh yeah, we put in two room dividers too.  I used vertical blinds and fabric to make these accordion dividers.  (The original dividers would have been vinyl.)

 This is the door that is between the kid's "bedroom" and the bathroom.

note: you can see the bunk in the "up" position in this picture

 This is the bathroom side of the divider.

both room dividers

The worst part about making the vertical blind dividers?  Buying vertical blinds.  In public.  

"Hey, honey... why don't you ask the nice sales person where the vertical blinds are."

"No. YOU ask."

I used binder rings to hang the dividers. 

Our front sconces finally have a cover!  We got these great fiberglass shades from Moon Shine Lamp & Shade. 

You might think we're running out of things to do on the inside.  Well, we're not.  Not yet, at least.  Our list is getting shorter though.  Our trailer is sure starting to feel homey.  I think it's time to do a little camping...

Camping in Luxury

We've been working really hard on the trailer since our last camping trip in July.  Here are some pictures from our trip to Cloudland Canyon State Park for the TAC rally this weekend.

Check out the inside of our trailer: 

This place is starting to feel like home. The girls were excited to sleep in their beds for the first time. 

Brian telecommuting from Cloudland Canyon State Park.  

Our friends said "The world is ending! The Sanders got a cell phone."

At the TAC rally on Memorial Day weekend Kristi the vintage awning lady gave me lots of tips and pointers for making my own vintage awning.  In August, she emailed to tell me she had an awning available that would fit my trailer, if I was interested.  She caught me at a weak moment!  After having taken a month off from sewing the curtains, I was back at the sewing machine again, in the middle of sewing the pillows and seat cushions.  My answer was a resounding "Yes!  Yes!  I would love to buy that beautiful awning that I don't have to make!"

Brian spent lots of time and energy reaming out our awning rail before we left.  When it was time to put up the awning it was as easy as pie (that I didn't have to make!)

With such a pretty awning maybe no one will notice the air conditioner. 

Seven trailers and families showed up for the TAC rally.  We had a great time visiting with other trailer folks, looking at their pretty trailers, picking up bad habits new hobbies (I think Samuel will soon be addicted to Geocaching) and making new friends.  We were even gifted a beautiful and delicious chocolate-cheese ball.

Thank you Natalie, Terry, & Paula Deen

We also got to meet some new vintage Airstream owners.  They weren't camping this weekend but came to the campground to visit some friends.  We gave them a quick tour and loved hearing about their plans to bring their new '57 Flying Cloud back to life.  (I hope we didn't scare them off with our horror stories!)

Cloudland Canyon has a trail to the bottom of the canyon, it has 600 stairs.  So, we did manage to get a little hiking done.

Watch out for cracks!

What's going on here?

There was a lovely waterfall at the bottom of the canyon.  

< insert best Wizard of Oz voice > Pay no attention to the water bottle in the picture!

The weekend was too short.  Shorter still because we left Sunday evening to avoid driving home in Monday's Hurricane Lee downpours.  Can hardly wait to go again... but there's more work to do first.

We Are Wimps

 I admit it.

We were going to wait to get the air conditioner.  It's just too dang hot to get any work done without it.  Maybe it has something to do with our last camping trip in the hundred degree weather, too.

 

I won't have to find lifters for this roof vent.

 We installed the A/C and turned it on.  We left for our mid-day-heat-break/millionth trip to the home store.

We returned to a VERY chilly trailer:

Our new A/C is everyone's favorite eye sore.

We've spent the last couple of weeks prepping our woodwork to go back in the trailer.

removing the hardware

For the most part, we've been able to reuse the original woodwork.  A few pieces had to be replaced entirely:

facing on the front gaucho
streetside twin facing
middle twins baseboards
overhead kitchen cabinet doors
fridge-side panel
(new) access panel under kitchen sink

For the replacement pieces we purchased birch veneer from the local home store. In places where part of the veneer was missing Brian was able to use pieces from the old veneer to match up the wood. 

The Sanders, sanding.  First with a belt sander, 80 grit.

 Then with a palm sander, 150 grit

A coat of sanding sealer first, then on with the Shellacking.
For the new wood:  2 coats of amber Shellac, 2 coats of clear Shellac
For the original wood: 1 coat of amber Shellac, 2 coats of clear Shellac
Thank goodness it dries fast.  Only two hours between coats.

 

It dries so quick, in fact, we had better results Shellacking inside.  It dried too fast in the heat.

 
Our Formica counter for the kitchen is really neat.  It has little copper flecks in it.  Most of the copper has tarnishes so the flecks have a pretty copper-green patina.  The counter is stained though.  I read all kind of things about how to get the stains out.  I feel like I tried them all: lemon juice & salt, baking soda, several surface cleaners.  Nothing worked.

 Then I tried the Mr. Clean Magic Sponge:

clean on the left, stained on the right

Ta-da!  It worked!  

What's in those things anyway?  Do I even want to know?

Our propane tanks are here.  The boxes they came in are more interesting, it seems:

     

Oh dear! Someone should put up some walls.

I keep walking in on people.

    

    

 

Stinky slinky telephone.  Who wants to play?

UPDATE:
Just for you, Frank.  Here's the "pretty" air conditioner.

Having an A/C on our vintage trailer reminds me of driving a minivan.  I always said "It's nice to have, I'm happy to have it" but I could never bring myself to say "I love it!"

Some Work but Mostly Play

Oops!  I'm behind on the blog again.  In true catch-up fashion I'll update our progress with a list of things we've installed:

door handle
converter/power center
all 12v and 110 outlets
reproduction Bargmann 99 taillite lenses
toilet riser (Brian made it & tiled it)
external waste plumbing and dump valves
hot water heater (and winterizing bypass)
curtains (I made them... all 14 panels)

Did you catch that?  Maybe I should say it a little differently:

This part is so exciting!
We have power!
We have a working toilet!
We have curtains!

Our trailer is starting to feel so much like home that can't resist using it. We've taken the trailer out the past two weekends. 

The first weekend, drove to the north Georgia mountains for a family reunion in McCaysville, Georgia.  Our extended family (from Missouri, Illinois & Wisconsin) stayed both in my parents cabin and a neighboring rented cabin.

Family Reunion highlights:

• picking blackberries, with the chigger bites to prove it (yikes! a first for us!)
• walk around the neighborhood, seeing a mother & fawn
• zip-line in the backyard
• introduction to Facebook Scrabble on an iPad (hooray for wifi)

 

I see something shiny behind that cabin

 my grandpa's home made ice cream (always the best)

digging for treasure (with uncles and a metal detector,  so fun!) 

kayaking and subsequent lake "swims" on two separate occasion
I won't say which two of us fell in but I will say that Y chromosomes were involved.

 This past weekend we visited another fine Georgia state park.  Samuel thought it was especially appropriate that Brian finished the toilet just in time (read= almost-all-night-er) for our visit to the Georgia state park called Tugaloo.

Get it?  Tug-a-loo!  

 We enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in our giant bathroom.

What a scorcher of a weekend!  On Saturday it was 99.5 degrees.  (The record high for that day/location is 101.)  We've camped with these friends for so many years but this is the first time we've ever ventured into a lake. I'm pretty sure our kids will look back at this weekend as "the time they let us play in the mud." 

 For the record, Annabelle says, "I didn't play in the mud."

Highlights from our Tugaloo weekend:

• Starbucks drive-thru...

Ok.  Maybe that was just a highlight for me.  It was only the second time I towed the trailer.  I was feeling pretty smug.  (No need to mention whether I drove over any curbs or not.)

• another mother & fawn sighting (it must be that time of year) 
• field trip 20 miles down the road to the air conditioned Coleman outlet
• ice cream at a truck stop  (People watching? Yes!  There were people watching us!  I guess it's hard to overlook a group of 20 sweaty campers.)

For a brief moment Saturday we thought it was going to rain.  

Samuel taped a garbage bag over our new...um, sky-lite. 

Yes, we lost an original Hehr vent cover.

just the kids

the whole gang

Back at home, our neighbor rang the doorbell Sunday night holding something odd.  It was aluminum, square-ish, and old.  She said her husband thought it looked like something that belonged on our Airstream.  It was our vent cover!  We lost it before we left our street.  Thank goodness for kind neighbors!