So it begins. Ever since spending summers with my grandparents on their airstream travels in the Northwest, I always figured that at certain age I too would leave tenting behind (at least most of the time) and hit the road. The certain age arrived, and I began my search for a vintage canned ham (airstreams are too pricey for my budget) and not long after picked up this 1956 Shasta, which I thought was not in need of much except upgrades. Well I found out as many a vintage trailer fanatic has that most of these gals have a bit of rot and mine maybe has a bit more than a bit. Here I will chronicle my hopefully short but perhaps intense rehab. Our goal is to be roadworthy and camping by April 11.

What she looked like when I found the damage.



And now that I've dug into the restoration

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DOORS!!!!

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Been working on some more of the final touches in preparation for painting.  The door and screen door on my old trailer were really a mess, but I'd been putting off doing anything about them out of some weird psychological blockage that if I took off the door and couldn't fix it I wouldn't be able to camp again.  So I had suffered with an exterior door which only closed with a gentle nudge at one corner and a screen door that took so much fighting to open and close that it had been nearly torn apart.  So when our July 4th camping trip fell through (not happy about that) I decided to put the time to good use and tackle the doors.   Long story short so far it's been pretty straight forward.  Taking apart the doors was easy.  I used the old ones as templates and got to work.  The aluminum trim was shot so I took them down to the local sheet metal shop to get new ones fabricated.  They will be ready sometime next week. I built out the frame and added a new birch inter
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Reupholstering Dinette Seats

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Really any color I want?!!

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I have been a little obsessed lately with paint.  Now that the doors are "almost" done (still need to hang it) I am turning my attention to the most obvious undone aspect of my restoration....exterior paint.  There are many options here...most of which have their own sub options. The first decision was DIY or send it out or a combination. Send it Out Maaco $500-800 depending on the amount of prep required. Higher End Resto/Paint shop $2-3K or more Combination Do the prep myself-- send it out/hire Hire the prep out -- paint it myself Either of these probably comes out to costing around the price of Maaco DIY-- great resources and discussions at these forums Rolled On    or the Vintage Shasta Trailer Forum(VSTF) Rattle Cans --believe it, some very nice paint jobs have been done with rattle cans, this link is to a video by a VSTF member $50 paint job--  with Rustoleum or equivalent Alkyd Enamel   roller method http://www.freewebs.com/kc8jwa/painttechniques
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