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After months and months (and months!) of pouring our days and nights into this renovation we are finally finished!
Both the interior and exterior of our 1972 Airstream Sovereign Land Yacht came to us in pretty pristine shape - eight track and all!
It was so loved and taken care of by the family that owned it before us that we wanted to make sure we did the renovation right. We owed that much to them at least.
As we’ve talked about before, we had lots of reasons for downsizing from our 37’ 5th wheel to a vintage Airstream. The biggest being that we fell in love with boondocking (camping without hookups) and wanted an RV that was built from the ground up with that in mind. I think it’s safe to say that Airstreams have always been built with the goal of exploring off the beaten path, even if ours did need some upgrades for true off the grid living.
We also wanted to make a legitimate family home out of this trailer. Something that all 6 of us could live comfortably in full time and that would last another 45 years. Not just a showcase of beautiful interior design without practical functionality. Afterall, this is our HOME, not a showroom.
This drove us to spend hours upon hours of research on everything from solar panels and lithium batteries to water heaters, gray tanks, cabinetry latches, hooks and internet boosting antennas. Every single part of this Airstream has been thought and re-thought through so many times I am just happy not to have to think about all this stuff anymore.
Before we show the final results, you may want to read through the process.
Now that you're all caught up - here we go. The official Airstream renovation tour. Or as we like to call him - Metalhead (we’re Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle nerds).
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You may recall that from the last post we had help from my Uncle Fred and finished up with the doors, drawers, and floor. Which left us with a final punch list and one major project (making custom frames for the vista windows)
Our final punch list included things like, caulk around the tub and floor, hang hooks for towels, touch up paint, figure out what was wrong with the water pump, reattach the small back splash on the kitchen countertop, etc. We had several small things to fix and fine tune but there was one major project... The pesky vista windows.
I had an idea to somehow have portholes instead of the pill shaped window. We just had to figure out a way to work around the large opening we were left with from the original window frame.
Our first attempt was to call in a friend of Dad’s who is a ‘metal master’ and he made us this contraption. While it was good and really accurate, it wasn’t exactly what I had in my mind
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With the bathroom project behind us, it was time to call in reinforcements. We were nearing 6 months on this project and we were ALL ready for it to be done.
My Dad had been keeping his twin brother informed on the whole process. They talked multiple times a week and bounced ideas off of each other. Well, Fred has some special tools for making cabinets and we were about to that point, so Dad made a very important call.
Fred was more than willing to come all the way to Indiana (from his home in Oklahoma) to help us. Dad asked if he could stay a week to get some major progress done. Fred said that when my dad tells him it will be a week, he needs to count on two, and he was right.
Fred made it to Indiana on Sunday, Feb 19th and we got a game plan together. We had already scheduled to get our countertops installed on Monday, the 20th so while Jonathan and I hooked up the trailer, Dad and Fred were going to start tackling our dinette table top!
We had not moved the trailer since we got to Indiana in September! We were a bit nervous but crazy excited.
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Guys, we are so far behind. Let me back up a bit and tell you about our bathroom.
We choose to go really functional with the bathroom. Instead of picking designer tile and spending way too many hours grouting said tile, we chose a simple bathtub with a plastic inclosure and shower curtain.
Seeing that we didn’t have a plan for the bathroom until the day before we started building, I am super happy with how it turned out.
The day the tub arrived we quickly got it inside so we could measure and make a game plan. We knew we would have to raise the tub due to the P-Trap but we were able to keep our rise at around 3 inches instead of the 5 that we thought we would need. Every inch counts in an Airstream.
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These last two weeks have been a bunch of little things. While our home doesn’t look a whole lot different from week 20, there are a few odds and ends that needed to be done. Let’s have a look!
We didn’t really *need* more ventilation for our Nova Kool fridge but since the original vent was already there we decided to go ahead and use it. So Dad cut these crazy curves from scrap wood and attached them with some brackets we made out of scrap metal. Then, he bent some aluminum left from our ceiling panels and created this cover so that when air is sucked in from under the fridge, the hot air is released through the vent in the ceiling. Added a little caulk to seal it up and poof! We have ventilation.
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Ashley Longnecker / April 16, 2017
We’re Jonathan & Ashley Longnecker. We love weird ideas, great food, travel, drawing, music, homeschool, tattoos, dreads, woodworking, design and our 4 amazing kids.