Meet MayBelle!

In May of 1965, Airstream built our International Safari in California.
In honor of that anniversary we have named our little trailer "MayBelle".

21 feet of cuteness, my very own grownup play house and one
of our favorite remodeling projects to date.

When we brought her home in August of  2014, we felt the trailer was in fairly
good shape considering her age. And she was, except it seemed like it might
be a good idea to make a couple of easy changes!  Famous last words for
those in the Airstream world. It's a bit of a black hole that you are not really
warned about. However, I will say it is a fun hole to fall into.

All things considered we were able to turn this around fairly quickly.  By April

of 2015 we had taken our maiden voyage.  With a totally redesigned interior,
new frig, water heater, furnace, fantastic fans, plumbing, lights, electrical, kitchen,
new floor, cushions, drapes, mattress, windows and doors sealed and various other 

misc. 50 yr old trailer repairs we are ship shape.  We are currently waiting on our 

new awning and that  should just about wrap up all the big items we have on our list. 

There is some talk about a polish job in the future, but I am staying out of that. 

Oh yeah, and a door for the bathroom, but that is still in concept mode.

I have been promising for some time now photos of our finished interior.
Here they are, presenting to you.......
Our MayBelle!

Don't forget to notice our little chandelier!  Every life needs some whimsy!

Just as a quick review this is before

                                 The kitchen functions so nicely.  I am very happy with the decision to take out the stove and
and replace it with a cooktop and convection microwave. I love my Danze Anu faucet too!

   

I am such a fan of the magnetic wall behind the cooktop.  I spent hours looking at

other blogs and photos of Airstream kitchens.  I liked the idea in concept and 

am so glad we made it part of our kitchen too. It is super handy when cooking

With spices, knives, etc all just right there. The single bowl stainless sink is perfect. 

I have a collapsible dish drainer that I can get out if necessary. The flip up

 counter to the left of the cooktop is just the right amount of extra space. 

 What was once a dinette is now a permanent Queen bed that lifts up for extra storage.

   Another great decision for us. We store clothes underneath the bed and the dinette
has large pull out drawers under each bench that hold cooking items.

 

 We reused the original drawer latches and the Airstream Bins in the drawers under the bed.

The doors drop down and the bins slide out.  As much as we are firmly in the camp

of renovators rather than restorers, we did want to incorporate any of the original

features that we could that seemed appropriate to her updated interior.

The frig is new.  After considering the cost of repairing a 50 year old refrigerator we decided

to invest in a new one.  Of course there was not a straight across replacement.  The new one is taller
and thinner. Thanks to my husbands uber talented skill set he made it work. I have heard the new
ones aren't necessarily better, we opted to throw the dice and go ahead and replace it. 

So far so good. 

just a cuteness moment!

The bathroom has basically stayed the same. It is in very good shape and even had the original

hand shower, which I thought was very cool.  I had not seriously considered actually

taking a shower in this bathroom, figuring it would be just too small of a space.

However on our first trip out I thought "what the heck" I should at least give it a try.  I was so

surprised to find out what a great little shower it is.  Terrific water pressure, the hand shower

is perfect and the accordion shower curtain is very "Petticoat Junction" for those of you

old enough to know what that means!  To sum it up I love it and will not be heading down

to the RV campground showers any time soon.  We also added a new Danze Parma

faucet.  Nice little contemporary twist, but still a good style for the bathroom.

 One last little thing I did was add these decals above the bathroom window.

There are not a lot of ways to add decor to this bathroom.  I don't want to drill a

bunch of holes in the walls but I did want to add a feeling of art.  I thought the back

window valance reminded me a little bit of a window box so I decided to plant

some flowers.  The best part is when I get tired of them I can just peel them off. 

I am still keeping my eyes open for some other fun items to add to this

space but I think it will take some time to just find the right items.

 From our Airstream to yours.  Live Riveted!  It's a great way to go!

Almost Ready to Live Riveted!!

Just a few short weeks ago we had a little snow and I thought our Little Wheelies looked awfully cute!

We are going to take our Little House on The Wheelies on the road in mid-April!  

It will be our maiden voyage and I am beyond excited!

With our looming deadline we (as in Robert) are really moving rapidly in our
renovations these last few weeks.  New water heater is in, new plumbing is done,
new furnace is 75% installed, new refrigerator is in and waiting for it's stainless panel.
The best part is we have water in the kitchen!
My beautiful Danze Anu faucet is stunning or should I say running!

 Another element I wanted was a stainless panel behind the cooktop.
I have noticed others using it as a magnetic storage surface
and a cute spot to decorate.  Works for me. 

 

My first rivet!  It's actually not that hard!

Ta Dah! I am so proud of that little thing!

 

And it's in!  I can hardly wait to stick stuff on it.
  We also added a stainless panel at the underside of the top cabinets
The range hood was no longer working and we could not find a match that worked 
with the existing venting so we have opted to cover it in the metal.  Which makes
us fire resistant in the event of some over enthusiastic cooking and it really looks cool.
We have two new fantastic fans to install so we should be just fine.
I am prone to high performance cooking but I am anticipating more
BBQing than actual cooking on the cooktop.

I will post a photo of all of it soon. 

On another note Robert decided to replace all the rest of the copper plumbing
with Pex. He turned the water on this winter and he found a pipe had burst.
Not wanting to be dealing with this every year he said "to heck with it" and tore
the rest of the old plumbing out.  When it was all replumbed we gathered
around like new parents to see if it was all going to work. Well we were a
bit surprised when we had a "water feature"coming out of the bottom of the
rear of the trailer.  Though it was kind of interesting we knew this would not
be a long term hit in the RV parks!  Fortunately Robert remembered he had
taken a cap off and it was just waiting to be put back on.
Water feature eliminated!

One last thing,  when Robert replaced the water heater it came with a new access
door and it was white.  I decided to put my crafty paint skills to work and
we now have a faux aluminum access door. A couple of cans of Aluminum
colored spray paint got me there.  We shall see how it holds up but I think it
is a pretty good match. 

Before

After

I am putting together my list of supplies for our little sojourn.  Planning and dreaming
about all the cute things we will need.    Maybe, maybe this weekend
I will finally get to put that mattress in there.

Back to you soon.

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?