Category Archives: renovation

seaside & sunsets

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The beach is definitely one of our favorite places. The boys LOVE literally rolling around in the sand for hours. Middle little made this portrait of mommy and daddy in the sand today.

Here’s the glamorous campground bathroom selfie. Getting used to life with lots of dirt and very few showers. Thankfully this place has free showers – we do have a shower set up in the airstream, but we do NOT have full hookups here, so that means one shower pretty much will fill our grey water tank which is a HUGE pain. Moving the airstream once it’s set up at the campground is not something you want to have to do, so when we do not have a sewer hookup we have to 1) not use much water AT ALL or 2) hope that one of the mobile trucks that drives around and drains your tank for a fee has the right hookup for our system or 3) buy a mobile dumping tank that looks like a little enclosed wagon. This is not something we’ve wanted to do yet since we don’t have a spot to haul it around and store it and they are super expensive considering it’s just a plastic tank on wheels.

So for now we’re trying to use the campground showers as much as possible and when we wash dishes we scrape the food off, soap them up and then try and use one bucket of water to rinse them all off. It’s a good lesson in conservation and considering CA is in a 5 year long drought probably a necessary practice no matter what. It’s been great to teach the boys more about conserving!

Once again, all of these adjustments seem like just a small price to pay for these VIEWS! This will go down as one of the most beautiful sunsets I have EVER seen. EVER. We had a little glimpse of heaven tonight watching the sun go down on our last night here at the San Onofre Campground. Until next time!

first stop: San Onofre beach

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Our go-to favorite beach camping spot in Southern California has always been San Onofre Beach, so when we thought about starting out we figured it is smart to start somewhere familiar that we love. We drove out of the 112 degree desert and have arrived at our ‘camping beach’ safely with the airstream!

We were saying our prayers all the way down the hill after finally pulling through the weigh station ? Turns out with all of our things loaded up + propane + water we are just out of the ‘safe’ towing capacity of our Toyota Sequoia ? We LOVE our sequoia and are racking our brains as to what we could take out of the airstream to lighten up. Thankfully we will be here working on some things in the area, so we have some time to figure out a plan before we have to drive again.

Talk about stress. We are FINALLY all moved in and managed to weed through everything we own and get rid of a LOT. We packed up the rest and had the movers take it to my family in SC to store, but kept all our favorite or essential things just to realize we are in a bad spot with the weight. Anyway, we have arrived in San Onofre and set up camp, unloading all of our tools and construction materials that we had to bring with us to finish up. The boys ❤️ their ‘camping beach’ so we have not had any issues with the transition for them so far. It just feels like we are in a weekend vacation. So weird.


We have water and electricity hookups here, but no sewer. We figured for our first night living in it we won’t know any different, so just pretending we are camping with some extra perks. ? We looked like the total amateurs that we are trying to back in and level it the first time, but we managed!


So we hooked up our water and have running water!!! Yay! Unfortunately we did not have time to hook up the propane tanks and hot water heater before leaving so we have no hot water ? we are just so happy to be out of the 112 degrees and the desert …..and this is our new backyard view, so we don’t even care!

airstream renovation: flooring

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Something is FINALLY happening on the inside!! I think at the end of all this maybe we will have time to better organize our updates, but for now just trying to keep up with it so we can have some of this written down and documented. This week we’ve made some big strides!

We installed the floors early this week. We went with TrafficMASTER allure after reading a lot of reviews on what to use and not use in a travel trailer. It is so crazy the things you have to factor in and consider when taking your ‘home’ into all different climates and also moving it around constantly. It is like having to build everything to be able to withstand an earthquake at all times. So fun. Anyway, the floors we went with a floating plank style but since we could not use real wood bc of climate control, moisture and weight issues we went with the Allure vinyl plank. Here’s what went down (literally)

It is crazy how much the lighting changes the shade of this floor, but in most light it is more of a neutral unfinished tone than the golden hue. We wanted it to be warmer than a grey driftwood, but still light and very neutral.

Pros: easiest floor we have ever installed. So so so easy. Literally press it down and a pair of heavy duty clippers or box cutters did the trick to make the cuts. It looks great – has a nice texture and we loved the color options. It is super easy to clean and seems very durable as little ones have already dropped tools and heavy objects on it with no ill result (big plus).


Cons: installing it in a travel trailer voids the warranty or any type of guarantee it may otherwise have. In reading the fine print, it actually recommends installing it in a cool dark place. Well that makes life rather boring. Short story:: it can’t take the heat.

So the day after we celebrated our beautiful new floors it hit triple digits here in the high desert. Blaring hot sun with no reprieve. By mid day with it closed up and stored the floors were already having issues 🙁 we have several spots that buckled and warped with the high temps. Thankfully as it cooled again that night some of it went back down, but we are going to have to go through and glue down several parts of our nice new and NOT cheap floating vinyl floor….which is a bummer.


It still looks good. It will still work, but despite all the rave reviews we had read, we will NOT likely be recommending this flooring to anyone renovating an RV or travel trailer bc of this. Unfortunately most other flooring options would be just as bad or worse so we feel we still have a good choice, but definitely not impressed at it warping in spots on day 1. Hoping it will be a fairly easy fix and we will not have more issues with it moving forward. Overall we are still happy to have it in and excited to move on to the next step: building in the furniture!

airstream renovation :: wall panels back in

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We finally have some visible progress! The walls are finally all in! E made a door to cover the big hole (aka generator opening) and we have sanded, primed and painted every single wall panel and re-installed them all.

Since we have moved several things on the top center panel, we had to cut a new piece of aluminum for both the center panel and the front end cap (curve). E did an amazing job engineering that – NOTHING about working with curved space is fun or easy, but he pulled it off and it looks great!

The kids are having a lot of fun now that they can spend more time inside with us ‘helping.’

Because we have added in fans and moved the A/C unit we had to completely replace the top center panel. This was a fun process of a LOT of measuring twice….and three and four times to make sure we only had to cut once. It was pretty funny watching 4 adults try and hold that piece of aluminum up as we slid it into the center holds. Amazing how heavy a little piece of aluminum can get holding it above your head for an extended amount of time, but we made it and it fit perfectly!!

We installed 12v led lights down the center panel through the whole thing. We now have working lights, outlets and a working A/C unit (we hit our goal to get the A/c installed and up and running before the desert heat creeps in!).

We’ve been really blessed this week with some cooler weather – I know it won’t last long, so we are enjoying the clouds and moderate temps while they’re here! 

It’s time to start getting serious about the interior design and build out the insides! We think we know what we want, but I am having a hard time deciding on some of the materials (shocker, I know). We want the interior to be bright, open and airy so we are going with a lot of white and light colors, but with 3 boys (ok more like 4 counting the hubs) and living outdoors most of the time, too much white may prove to be a bad call.

We are en route to the lumber yard as I type this so stay tuned for some good progress pics in the next few weeks!! We’re down to 7 weeks to get this thing completely DONE and get moved in, so the pressure is on and the hours are getting long!

airstream renovation :: part 4

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This has been the most stressful, but rewarding phase yet. It’s about to start getting REAL! I have to give a shout-out to my super talented husband who managed to get all of the electrical wiring in the right place & tested, the spray foam in (despite a few challenges) and then completely cleaned up and ready for walls in a relatively short amount of time. If anyone is wondering what we’re doing in our ‘spare’ time – this is it….night and day aside from our normal work hours. The kids have been troopers and are really starting to get into it too as it’s getting to the point they can pitch in and help more.

Getting this thing water tight and all the last little rivets, caulking and cracks filled took a long.long.long time. Once we finally got everything in, set and sealed, it passed the water test! We then had to finalize the placement of all the electrical wiring. Trying to decide the exact spot that you want an outlet when you don’t even have walls in yet to work with is a challenge. I learned that I am very visual and my spacial orientation is lacking when it comes to envisioning where this all will end up. Talk about stress! Making sure you have every wire in the right spot and set before you’re about to foam it all in with NO undo button will definitely make you break a sweat. We had some intense days of making sure this thing was 100% ready for the spray foam.

Speaking of the foam…..now that it’s behind us, I’m sure it is awesome and will be a great asset to our comfort in the future. Up to this point, it has been nothing but a pain in the a$$. As you know, this stuff grows as it cures, and when you only have 1.5″ space and no wiggle room, the expanding qualities are nothing short of awful. Thankful that we have excellent safety gear on hand, and after many many many hours of ‘trimming’ it back down, we are about 99% DONE with the insulation phase!

The final step of this phase is salvaging the old aluminum wall panels. Man these things were rough. We have washed each of the panels several times, sanded them down and coated them with the best primer we could get our hands on. They look amazing compared to where they came from! We’ll hopefully be wrapping the walls up this week!!

Next steps: lights and switches installed, walls painted, A/C & generator installed & then we’ll get to lay the flooring!!!

airstream renovation:: part 3

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We decided for sure in November that we were going to go forward with this and jump into FULL TIME LIFE ON THE ROAD (at least until we get tired of it), and since then have kicked this reno project into high gear! Despite spending a LOT of time on it, visible progress is LOW AND SLOW right now. We have been taking out the last little bits of the ‘old’… patching vents and spots that won’t be needed with our new design and layout, and getting it cleaned up and water tight. Within the next month, we should FINALLY be on the up and up and can start re-constructing this thing with new and usable insides.

People ask all the time how we know how to do renovations or how we’ve  created a successful home business and get the freedom that we are looking forward to. Our answer: we just decided what we wanted, followed our passions, jumped in, and you learn as you go – sometime along the way you start to actually know what you’re talking about! My husband is pretty much a genius, I will admit, and extremely handy, but we have adapted a little secret we have called – FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO. Seems to be our motto in life. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose {like discovering that a few of our windows are leaking when it rains}, but then you go back and learn how to fix it (thanks, YouTube)! Now we love sharing our stories with others in hopes they can save a bit of time and get to where they want to be a little bit faster!

I feel like we are finally starting to round the corner on this big scrap of metal….. and we’re getting excited!!

airstream renovation:: part 2

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We arrived in the desert the end of May 2014 and soon realized renovating a camper in 110+ degree heat was not going to be an easy, enjoyable task. After we survived a summer and temps started to cool, we slowly started making plans and E started in on some of the critical framework. We figured it would come in handy by the time we had to PCS again (about 3 years down the road) so we weren’t in any hurry.

Once we finally got all the disease-ridden trash out of the thing and gutted everything that couldn’t be pressure washed or bleached off, Erin and a few guys started re-building this thing from the ground up. The frame had to be scraped to the bare metal, new parts had to be welded on, the entire thing was painted with POR-15, we went to a freshwater and grey water tank system only (going to use a composting toilet), and replaced the decking with a composite material from Nyloboard (marine board so it won’t rot….ever).


EARLY SUMMER 2015:: we took it in to get some electrical wiring set up. We worked long and hard trying to re-design the interior plans taking into account how we THINK we may use it (this is super hard since I am a visual person and can’t get a good idea of the feel of the space yet). With summer travel and crazy temps in the desert, not much happened with it until we finally picked it up from the electrician in November.

Next step:: get all the old patches sealed up, clean out all the old peeling clear coat off the double paned windows (what a pain), patch a few doors and get this thing water tight and ready for insulation to go in.

the airstream:: in the beginning

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Some people have asked how we decided to randomly buy and renovate an airstream and travel the country. Short answer is….we didn’t. Now that we have been through counseling and I am hopeful that our marriage will no longer dissolve over this issue, I’ll post a bit of the back story…

Have you ever had one of those ‘maybe one day’ conversations with your spouse that you casually mention dreams or ideas that might be cool to do at some time in the way distant future, but isn’t even on your radar or in the scope of reasonable possibility at the time? So I thought we were having one of those the day Erin said, ‘Oh I saw an old airstream for sale on ebay.’ Fast forward (I’m omitting the part where I snapped back and said, HECK no) and by summer 2013 we were the new owners of a 1973 piece of rolling aluminum that came complete with the hantavirus.

Lesson here: not everything advertised on ebay is as it seems. picking it up

Fast forward a few more weeks and we were now the new owners of a Toyota Sequoia because our previous vehicle was not even able to tow the aforementioned ebay purchase. OH MY!!!!! Once we got the new ‘find’ home I was told I could actually not step foot in it for health and safety reasons (I was super preggo with baby 3) and even from a distance I knew why. GROSS {insert several weeks of marriage counseling over the disagreements on making this ‘investment’ at a time in our life where I was a frazzled mom with soon to be 3 kids 3 and under who was lucky if I got a shower once a week and CERTAINLY had no time or energy for a renovation project}.

So after much counseling and debate, I finally caught a glimpse of the vision that E had for a longer term dream he had for our family. With his love for adventure, activity and desire for our boys to grow up experiencing the outdoors as much as he did as a kid, he knew something like a camper could come in handy (not to mention we had to move 9 times in 5 years and this would have been super convenient in those transitions). I fully agreed, though the means by which we got to the end would have been very different if I’d had my way. But we were at where we were at, so we agreed to keep the crazy thing….rats and all.

Life threw many curves at us just a few short months later and we found ourselves in the midst of a lot of changes. Our 3rd child was born in October, we moved to a new house across the neighborhood in November, and by January learned we were making an unexpected move to the middle of nowhere, CA. Thing were a bit busy to say the least. 10 months after we had purchased it, once I was no longer carrying a little human inside me and could get away long enough to actually shower afterward, I was allowed to set foot inside our airstream (with hazmat gear, of course). April 2014 E and I ripped out all of the old ‘insides’ in about a day and it was NOT pretty. These are the first publicly released images of what we saw: