We definitely underestimated how time-consuming painting 100 square feet of ceiling would be. We removed all the cabinets, doors, hinges, and light fixtures, removed the tile and installed a peel-and-stick subway tile backsplash, and then painted the ceiling and cabinetry white. The prior owners had installed weird laminate tile as a backsplash above the sink, and someone had inexplicably painted the ceiling pink. Our oven is original, too-that’s a unique feature to our RV these days, many trailers come with a microwave instead, which we wouldn’t use.Ī lot of our work was simply to make the Bigfoot look nicer. The fridge looked almost new at purchase, and the 41-year-old stove still works well. How can you make it functional but maintain the old, cool aesthetic? What was essential to update, and what could we leave original to keep costs low? In some ways, we were lucky-all the appliances could stay. There’s always a balance to renovating an old thing. In all, we spent about 10 weeks (working around our full-time jobs) between bringing the trailer home and moving in for good. This prevents common roof leaks and other problems that come with more traditionally constructed campers.Īllie likes to get things done, and Joe’s a perfectionist, so there were many “this is fine” versus “we have to do it right” debates, but we found the answer was always somewhere between those two points. Ours is made from two large pieces of molded fiberglass joined at a seam. The Bigfoot’s layout and structure made renovations easy-fiberglass trailers are well-built and resilient. A cosmetic overhaul was a must, and the 41-year-old trailer needed a few fixtures to bring it up to modern standards.
#Space saver over the range microwave free#
Some burly fellows arrived (classic Colorado) and helped us free the trailer from the bumper and place it back onto the hitch ball, and we learned two lessons: Always hook up your chains when towing, and triple-check that your trailer is connected correctly before setting off.ĭespite our early mistakes, we were under no illusions about how much work our Bigfoot would need. After hooking up the Bigfoot to our new truck and pulling onto College Avenue in Fort Collins, we heard a colossal screech-we were dragging the trailer down the street by the chains. Our newfound power made us cocky, though. The Subie had been our trusty camping vehicle for years, but it wasn’t designed to haul the Bigfoot and all our gear, so we traded it in for a 2013 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 with a towing capacity of 7,500 pounds. Our last step before renovations was upgrading from our Forester.
#Space saver over the range microwave how to#
We took Jed on his word (luckily, his word was good, though it took us a while to figure out how to light the furnace), hooked the Bigfoot up to our borrowed E-350 van, and camped in the trailer all the way back to Colorado. We didn’t even test the furnace or the appliances. We gave the Bigfoot a once-over, but we didn’t know what we were looking at.
He was even wearing a T-shirt for a band Joe knew from our local area. We were initially wary about trusting a stranger we had only met on the internet, but turns out, Jed was a big fan of Colorado bluegrass. We made him promise not to sell the trailer before we could take a look at it, and then sped the 1,050-mile, 15-hour drive from Fort Collins, Colorado, to the Idaho Panhandle. To secure our Bigfoot, we sent the owner, Jed, a $500 deposit sight unseen. This was July 2020, when the used-RV market was absolutely on fire. And fiberglass trailers hold their value, particularly Bigfoots, a higher-end brand with plenty of reliable models still around today. These trailers are also considerably lighter than many other typical RVs and trailers (our 1981 Bigfoot B-17 SM Deluxe weighs in at 2,300 pounds, while an aluminum Airstream Bambi 16RB, a new camper of roughly the same size, starts at 3,000 pounds).
Molded fiberglass is durable and easier to clean than materials like wood that are affected by moisture. A fiberglass trailer became our best choice to replace the Jayco. We started to consider camping permanently, but wanted a hard-sided shelter to better withstand unpredictable mountain weather. It allowed us to camp much more comfortably, for longer, and tour around the West for Joe’s bluegrass band performances. Our gateway to the Bigfoot was a 1992 Jayco pop-up camper. But after our 2013 Subaru Forester became cramped with outdoor gear, and a few epic Colorado storms terrified our Chihuahuas, we started to consider alternatives. Before our Bigfoot trailer, we were tent people.
0 kommentar(er)
