Kyle showed me some blogs he'd seen about people who live in tiny houses, some so small that they are built up from a trailer bed and towed around. I fell in love with the idea of them and thought it would be cool to build one when we graduate. Then I read the ebook of the guy who makes the houses, and he said the first small home he ever lived in was an airstream trailer. I suddenly remembered that when we were dating Kyle said he wanted to live in a silver bullet someday. We found some on ksl, realized we could afford one if we bought a junky one and fixed it up, and by the next Monday this was sitting in our driveway.
A 1966 26' Airstream Overlander Land Yacht
After a few trips to Home Depot and reading a bunch of how-to's on airforums.com, we started working on her.
Step 1: Remove and replace rusted screws, and clean 40+ years of filth out from under them.
Step 2: Kyle got to work on the rust-covered bumper, spraying with cleaner, rubbing with steel wool, and then spray painting it to seal it.
The whole thing used to be as rusty as it is at the top of the photo!
Step 3: Tape up temporary holes in the trailer with old hornet nests in them that the hornets in our neighborhood kept trying to fly in and re-inhabit.
Step 4: Use lacquer thinner to clean off the encrusted weather strips stuck to the window.
Here's one Kyle made pristine.
Step 5: Clean the old paint off the Airstream nameplates that go on the sides. I can't wait to repaint these babies.
It's been fun to work on cleaning it up, but it's also 90 degree weather and now that we're in it, we're fully realizing how long it's going to take. But, I think we're still both pretty psyched about it.
The only thing still stressing us is where to live in it. Mobile home parks aren't allowed to let trailers rent if they're over 10 years old, and RV parks are $30+ a night. We're looking into living at a state park nearby and working for them part time in exchange for free hookups and rent, but the BEST possible option, and the one most people who do this currently seem to have found, is to live in a large backyard or pasture of someone in town. So we're putting these up north of the MTC tomorrow:
And here's a picture of Joshua, collapsed in the shade, after Kyle took him running this morning. He is such a dog.
