finishing touches

We’re finished. I can’t believe this day has come. Actually, if I’m being honest, I had no doubt we would finish it, but I can’t believe you’re able to read about it because we actually kept up with documenting the process. This part has been really fun and sort of surreal. Making our last, last,…

countertops and dining table/additional sleep space

To take advantage of Adam’s amazing woodworking skills and to make up for the fact that we painted over the wood paneling (see the wall post for our heartfelt apology) we knew we’d want to incorporate as many wood elements into the final design as possible. One area to do this that made the most sense…

flooring

I can’t tell you how in love we are with our floor. Which, is a big deal because I’ve been skeptical of our choice since we bought it almost 6 months ago. At the time we bought it we had had a particularly large spending month with the Spartan and were looking down the barrel…

walls & cabinetry

Getting the walls up proved to be one of the most painstaking and difficult parts of this process– much like putting in the windows, but a WAY bigger job. First let me say as I’m sure you’ve guessed, due to the curvature that we all love so much, this job wasn’t as simple as measuring/cutting/screwing….

plumbing

There are two parts to any plumbing project: the drain lines and the supply lines. We will start with the drain lines. The toilet needs to drain through 3″ pipe and a 1 1/2″ pipe is required for the shower and the faucets. To decrease the amount of 3″ pipe running under the camper, we…

wiring

This is the area where the credit goes to my brilliant spouse. He studied various wiring diagrams and researched everything we’d need to turn our aluminum box into a functioning home away from home. He was able to teach himself how to wire the entire camper and then actually wire the entire camper in a…

installing the AC

We really hated the idea of installing an AC on the Spartan because we love the sleek shape of the exterior, but living in Florida we really had no option. We shopped around, briefly thinking about AC’s other than rooftop, but we eventually want to take her on the road and rooftop seemed like the…

framing and insulation

This was by far the most exciting and anxiety provoking part. Anxiety provoking for me at least, only because this is when the planning and designing start to happen. Once we build the walls for the bathroom and frame the dining and kitchen spaces, that’s that, so making sure we fit everything into the space…

axle

The axle was something we went back and forth about replacing because this camper will sort of act mainly as a back house. But, eventually we landed on going ahead and replacing the axle and tires because we wanted the option to pull it one day. The axle we chose is a Dexter 6, 000…

wheel wells

The old wheel wells were extremely corroded so we knew we’d have to replace those before we could move forward. See below. (This picture is probably one of the first we took when we first got the camper home, so lots of what you see has been replaced at this point, but it’s the only…

frame, subfloor, and next steps

Welcome to the fun part: making things new again! After replacing some of the corroded channel along the bottom of the interior of the shell and removing the exterior skirts so the shell was free from the frame, we removed the old subfloor. The old subfloor is made from asbestos tiles so we had to be…

polishing

We’re still working our way through the polishing process. If you’ve read our recent posts on lights, doors, and windows, you’ve already started to get a glimpse of what she’ll look like all polished up. We figured it would be easier to go ahead and polish in those hard to reach places before we replaced…