Putting the Plan into Action

My best furry friend Pippa was helping me plan the changes we wanted to make.

Following the advice of our timely fortune cookie we began the process
of planning our redo and quickly after that we began the tear out. 

I read a blog recently where the writer explained that she and
her husband were great partners in their projects but they
had discovered that they were most successful when each was
doing a separate job rather than working together on the same job.
Kind of like the parallel play they do in kindergarten.

I just had to laugh and promptly read the blog to Robert and
told him she could have been writing about us.

We have owned a design/ build construction company for
over 20 years  Board by Board. With that has come countless projects
for clients and multiple homes, projects and remodels for
ourselves.  Though it is said that building or remodeling is one of
the most stressful things you can do to your marriage,
we have never really found that to be the case for us personally.

We are an awesome team, creative, eager to accomplish our goal.

We want it to look great and be a little outside of the box.

I am the big picture girl.  I get excited and do a lot of hand waving and
sketching to share my vision.  I typically don't concern
myself with the fine details when I work with Robert,
that's his area of expertise.  He is extremely talented and often even
improves the plan. However, on more than one occasion Robert has
suggested that if there was something else I had to do I
should feel free to move on!  In other words quit hovering and micromanaging!

That in a nutshell is how we make our project ridden relationship work!

 

 As I mentioned the trailer was in good shape but we decided for it to work for us we
wanted to take out the front dinette and make it a space for a permanent Queen bed.
Then take the gaucho out and turn that into a smaller dinette.

Sophie was around to help

Just to get the ball rolling, one evening not long after we brought the
Safari home I suggested we go out and just take down the deteriorating
accordion door that was the door to the bathroom. Well that took about 45

seconds so we looked around and said, "hmmm.... what else can we take apart" 

and the rest as they say quickly became history.

We have quite the collection of nuts and bolts that have
come out of the Safari.  We opted to keep everything we pulled
out just in case we needed something as we put things back together.

In my fantasy world we would be quickly moving on to install the new
cork floor that I had picked out, but Robert had better ideas and opted to
check out all the systems to insure we were in good shape before it
was all put  back together.  Good advice to anyone doing one of these projects.
Fortunately he did, as it turned out our water heater
had a leak and it gave us a chance to update the plumbing with Pex.

Old water heater out.  Maybe we can sell it for scrap.

The previous owners left us 2 souvenirs.  A vintage hair roller
and this postcard from a 1969 Airstream Rally in Nebraska.

I am guessing they must have attended.  Kind of cool!

Partial post card we found

Actual photo, crazy to imagine what this must have been like in person.

So now we have gutted the Safari to the extent we had planned. The floor is in
very good shape, no water damage or leaking areas showed up.
One of the plus's of buying a vintage trailer in a dry climate.

 We are going to keep the bathroom just about as it is for now.
The bathroom is in great shape considering it is 50 years old.
We will add a new faucet, toilet seat and a real door.

In the kitchen we are going to change the sink, faucet and counter tops.
Probably add a small microwave and definitely a backsplash.
New cork flooring will go down and we are going to re-stain the cabinetry in a
two tone palette.  That should take about 3 weekends I am guessing.  I now realize that was
rather naive thinking! Oh well, we all need a positive person on the project, right?