What have we got ourselves into?!

When we purchased this beast for $550 in December 2011, all we planned to do was remodel it. We thought we would slap some new paint on it, replace some rotted wood and siding, get some new tires, and in no time we would be laying in a hammock at some peaceful campground on the lake with our bargain-priced but newly remodeled camper in the background. Well, things didn't quite work out that way. As we started taking off some damaged siding, we started thinking that this thing may have been worse than we thought. And the more stuff we removed, the bleaker the picture became. We discovered tons of rot, missing pieces, missing boards, bugs, walls that had become detached from the frame, you name it, we found it. At this point, we had a little buyer's remorse. But, as I said in our introduction, we love to take ugly things and make them new and pretty again, so we decided we were gonna face this challenge head on. Here are some pictures of what we found when the siding came off.

Front view. Rot damage on corners.

Left side wall, heavy rot damage, and you can see where a sidewall detached from the front wall.

Front, upper left corner, rot and detachment.

Front, left lower corner, detachment.

Heavily damaged 12v battery compartment, also damaged from apparent collision, some frame damage as well.

Missing boards for the roof.

Right side, not too bad compared to the left side.

Rotted and bowed roof beams. Had roof-mounted air conditioning.

More detachment.

Rear wall in decent shape.

Left rear corner, severe rot.

Redneck wiring.

The Before Pictures

Here she is, in all of her 1973 glory. We know someone, at some point, did some updating/remodeling, and it wasn't very well done. She was in really bad shape, but we would soon learn it was even worse than we thought! Click on photos to enlarge.

Who we are, what we're doing, and why we're doing it!

Hello and welcome! Please follow along on our blog as we chronicle our journey of completely and totally rebuilding what started out as a 1973 Road Ranger travel trailer that we picked up for a few hundred dollars. Our plan is to make this baby nearly brand spankin’ new, and we plan to do it for around $3000.00. Our original plan was to just remodel the trailer, but the deeper we got into it and the more we tore down, the more we realized it was going to need a total rebuild from the frame up. Good thing we like to do this kind of stuff, huh?! Something I’m sure we’ll hear a lot is why we didn’t just take our money and go buy a newer, road-ready trailer. It’s pretty simple.  For starters, we really love to take old, ugly things and make them pretty again. We love taking on “projects.” Every house we have purchased or lived in has been modified in some way by us, (who, by the way, is a thirty-something couple with two young kids, otherwise known as “The Coops” J) Mr. Coop was blessed with mechanical and other man-type abilities, so why not put them to good use? And Mrs. Coop, well…., she’s good at picking out paint and carpet and curtains. ;) And we have two small helpers, Little Man and The Princess, who are really good at fetching tools and other such tasks. Another reason we did not just purchase a road-ready trailer is that going out and purchasing one would set us back anywhere from 9-15 grand. That, I’m pretty sure, would not mesh well with the fact that we are committed to living debt-free. Also, we love the idea of being able to fully customize our trailer however we want.  And most importantly, there are few things in life more satisfying then building something with your bare hands. –The Coops