Coming together

When the glamper came back from exterior paint the time crunch was on. That was Friday evening and we were to leave the following Thursday on the innagural camping trip. The main part was done but it was the 10,000 little details we had to finish.

Back at home, window trim installed... ready for the whirlwind!

First item of business was the wiring... That was ALL Dusty, (and a little Radlee too, of course).

Dusty and his little helper

Once the wiring was done Dusty was able to put all the new trim around the corners and seams. He fought and fought the corner molding, just when he thought he had it, the aluminum on the roof would buckle and he had to unscrew everything again. Finally he completely un-attached the piece of roof aluminum, shifted it all and things went smoothly (more or less) from there.

re-installing the roof vents after the new trim was on.

While he was busy on the roof I got started on what would be the "signature detail" of the glamper. 100's of polka dots! Originally we had planned to mask them off before the turquoise was painted, however a lack of material to cut and mask polka dots with changed that plan. In the end we ordered 400 2-1/2" vinyl polka dots from a sign company. (Not the sign company I called however... They wanted 4 times the price that Dusty was able to get them for.... and when the guy asked what we were doing with them, I told them we were using them as decals on a camp trailer he said "but 400 of them???" I told him it was to be polka dotted, and I could hear the confusion in his voice) We decaled the tongue and propane bottles the first night, random and obscure, and soon realized 400 polka dots were not nearly enough....


I did have enough to start the body of the trailer the next day though. I couldn't decide if I wanted them orderly and in nice, straight lines over the body or if I wanted the dots placed randomly. In the end we decided that a repeating pattern would be the easiest and most visually appealing. Laying the pattern for these dots was easier said than done, luckily I had all the tools I needed laying around the house. I used a 36" t-square, overhead projector marker and a tape measure. After experimenting several different ways I realized a grid system was by far the easiest, this way I had my top line and one side line for every dot and once measured I could stick the dots on in no time. Grayson was my trusty assistant for this project, handing me tools as I needed them and moving everything along with me. I ran out of dots about halfway through the second side so Dusty had to pick up more on Monday for me, in the end we used almost 700 dots.

Marks left over from placing the dots, they wiped right off with a baby wipe.

Once Dusty finished the trim he turned his attention back to the inside. We painted the original gold hinges and knobs for a temporary fix, as I bought the wrong hinges and couldn't find the "perfect" knobs. We re-installed all of the cabinet doors and put the original stove back in which was now free of 50 years of cooking grease (so gross!).

Shiny and clean... still chippy but it just adds character

He also installed the new floor. We knew we wanted dark hardwood floors but I knew I didn't want to spend $80 for flooring for the trailer, nor did we have the time to wait for it to come in as most stores don't stock the dark hardwood. The boys and I took a trip to the Re-Store (a thrift store for building materials) looking for several things on our camper list. While there I spotted the perfect flooring. While most of the flooring was just bits and pieces this was an entire box, it had been opened but looked to have plenty to do our little job, better yet, it was marked at $39 when I asked the manager about a better price he gave it to me for $35, I was so excited! I also scored the perfect stainless steel sink for the counter while I was there.

New floor (pre-cleaning, obviously!)

With these little projects checked off of our to-do list we were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!