Well thank you folks. You've always made me feel real welcome right here in the vintage trailers. There's some welcome, by several, in the truck campers forum, where I do Lil' Queeny, but it's different here - better. So again, thanks. If you like my stuff, be sure to stay up on Lil' Queeny in Truck Campers this winter. It's where I'll mostly be.
The shop idea has been on our minds for many years. Every time we've done home remodeling or expansion - and there has been quite a bit - it generally adds more work for the finish, and outfitting portions after the actual build. Seems one can always add more and never get to use it. I know, that's what we're kind of doing with the old campers.
And early this spring we even got bids! But we could never really decide the best location: close to the house, clear out in the field, attached, dis-attached, smaller or larger, pole barn or steel shop. Spend money unwisely, or not.
To date, we've decided to just keep the attached three car garage as the work area. It's already set up, heated, has water and a solvent tank, radio. Of course its drawback is the reduced area and overhead door sizes - when compared to a shop.
Years ago we contracted to have the addition built (three car plus garage below, Master bedroom above over 2/3 of it). At that time, my neighbor asked if I was going to put in a taller garage door in one of the bays. I said, "hadn't thought about it". We decided yes, and got with the builder and raised the whole 1/3 side of the garage by one foot. So the double bay is the standard 7' door, and the single bay (where I used to park the truck) was the 8' door. The builder also talked up the joys of scissor trusses, and glad we did!
They weathered it in and we did the finish - the part which takes all the time, and a lot of money, but not on labor. Then later got the downstairs main floor changed up to a great-room style by yanking out interior walls.
Doing the work ourselves over the years (and on these campers, painting the house this year, the flagstone fire-pit) has saved us so much money in labor all these years. But the labor is... well... laborious! I don't think I have a shop left in me! That's why I like piddling with small campers.
DW has always seen these old falling down barns and farmhouses and single room cabins in our travels. She wants to go embrace these and fix them up and restore them! That's why the two of us seem primed for a new hobby with the old campers, especially if we view them as "modifications" (sometimes severely) as opposed to restorations. Modification is what provides you license - to create, to use up stuff, to make decisions based on availability and significantly reduces cost.
Like the flagstone fire-pit - it needs a little history. The pit used to be the truck parking place, before we had a domestic yard.
Then when I demo-ed my dad's 1972 11.5' camper and moved appliances into our second canned ham - the 1960, we dug a pig roasting pit, edged it with rail-road ties, and covered the ties with the camper aluminum. Built a heavy door/cover. We had two pig-roasts, two years in a row, for New Year's Eve and a "friends and family" gathering. Burned scrap wood for about 24 hours, then put the half carcass in the ground (wrapped in many layers of foil), and baked it for another 20 hours, pulling it out of the ground (under the dirt sealed door) at about 8-9 PM, and a couple fellows would haul it to the make-shift table in the garage (now the main-floor living room).
Later, after the aluminum and ties burned out, we made a boulder fire pit out of excess yard rocks we uncovered while landscaping.
Then in 2009, we built the geometric shaped fire-pit ring and seating for a wedding in our yard, again with railroad ties, this time cut to shape with a chain saw.
Then this spring, DW was chatting over the fence with the neighbor lady, who mentioned they were removing their flagstone rock retaining wall at their basement exit area and were putting in those stacking rock retainers? They were hiring a dumpster and getting rid of the flagstone in that fashion. DW said "we'll take it"! I went, "Oh shoot"!
He bought a Bobcat for the job (and for other stuff - after watching me and Lil' Willy plow out his drive last winter several times - 'course they gave us a bottle of Choke-Cherry wine - twice - for the gesture, which is what I was after all along), and then this spring, he brought load after load of rock up in the Bobcat bucket and dumped it in piles - right in our "trailers parking area"! While I battled the early spring weather working on Tow-Mater, maybe you remember.
But this summer, while our son was home during the eclipse, we enlisted youth and vigor. Because rock work sucks!
DS makes his living "doing stuff". One of the best gifts I've ever received was from DS; it was only a text - on Father's Day one year. In it (and he did something real similar that year for Mother's Day) he thanked me for teaching him through example, that he could learn to do anything. Like that time we fixed a stuck float on his 1964 Ford Econoline forward-control van in the Walmart parking lot, or the time I drove it home and shifted through the gears, sans clutch, while he drove behind in my truck marveling. Or the time he impressed me while I was hunting and he changed the starter on that same van, in that same parking lot, in a snow-storm, after getting some detailed instructions from the Auto Zone veteran (now our bud). DW shown the headlights, but he used a cell phone flash-light. Oh sure, he can cuss. Like me. I came up with some pretty clever new phrases that hot August day I was re-positioning fiberglass batts in our main-floor reno rafters wearing nothing but a pair of short pants and flip flops - no serious!
But anyway, while he was here, we got his help, and he was excited to build a "stone work", as he has recently played a little with that and actually had to buy some tools to do so.
Then he moved all the excess into a storage wall along the driveway up front. Well, here...
A nice rock wall for storage until we get it into the NEXT project which is a pond/hill feature just beyond that little pine tree.
And grass is now growing (after seeding) in the fire-pit.
Free material. Building materials. We made a recent run to pick up a good size load of 2x6 redwood. Real redwood from the 80s, because somebody tore down a deck and set it up on Craigslist "free" stuff. Some 2x10s in fir. All unloaded, and sorted to length now in the field. Except scrap still in the trailer which needs to be stacked on the wood pile because we didn't take time to cut firewood this year. :/
And speaking of the field, we need some place to park resto-modded campers right? So we "got's this idea see"?
Take a couple of those redwood 2x6s for example, maybe an ugly or starting to rot edge and put it downward, with the good edge up. One longer than the other. Two in L shape. Stake that out at spots in the field which lend themselves to a cool little "RV spot". Out back we have three pine trees, finally doing well in the Wyoming wind and cold of our winters. That spot we call "The Pines" and with a landing built of 2x6 in L shape, and a little gravel fill to level it, Voila! Instant camp spot, and parking area for Tow-Mater.
Michael Martin Murphey (kind of a friend, as we met him one year, and then stayed in touch a little, when our son promoted him while doing that kind of work at a concert here in our town). Yeah, he came to mind as I got a song stuck in my head, "And ole' Tow-Mater.... in the pines!
Now Fairweather June, and let's face it, this is her thread, will have to live in the field this winter too. There's a low spot, where SOME is hidden from the neighbors, and that will become our new "camper staging area". Right off the new main road being created right through the middle of things. Then little tangents will come off (mostly back-ins) from the main road and go to little short connectors to places like "The Pines" and Tow-Mater. Or to another one when we get Fairweather June done, at a place called "The Garden Spot". And maybe another one in the future at the further reaches in a place where we've buried all of our pets over the years. We'll call that "Pet Cemetery" and it will have an appropriately themed camper build parked there! Of course, first we have to watch the movie "Pet Cemetery" and make sure we're not buying into something that's "Just wrong".
So that's the plan, and cheaper and easier than building another building. These things are supposed to be weather tight anyway right? Little tiny homes? And I expect we'll sell some, and move them through as time goes by.
We still want to do a small one for DS. And that can be built in our garage.
Yes, next spring or summer, in between more house projects, we'll demo the Leisurehome, and make storage places inside or out for the materials. But when we build the frame, or the floor, or the walls, etc. we'll do it in the garage. The shop. :) Because that's where we have our fun times.
Next winter is more for Fairweather June. So like with Lil' Queeny, Fairweather June will take a few years. And we'll probably get to DS's build prior to June's completion. But that one again, will be pretty cool. Unless we can get that little black and white canned ham for him, and if so we might lean heavier on resto than mod.
I got side-tracked today, but tomorrow I'll fill you in more on this recent acquisition.
