holiday road...

camper is packed and we are ready to enjoy this beautiful holiday weekend in santa cruz!

T minus 24 hours...

we are a day away from leaving on our memorial day roadtrip weekend in the teardrop camper!  w are so excited for our weekend in santa cruz!  it will be filled with bike riding, nature, naps in the pod, good food and most of all enjoying one another !!!

dad's helper...

jarad was working on the camper before work this morning and he had a little helper...i think wilfred is excited for his first road trip...

the love shack...

when we built the teardrop camper almost 2 years ago, we ran out of time to paint it.  i had bought the paint, but unfortunately we never got around to it.  now that things are slowing down and we have a trip planned for memorial day weekend to santa cruz in the camper, i was feeling inspired to spruce it up!  i found the old paint but didn't like the color.  i wanted an "apple green" color, and the paint was looking like a fluorescent highlighter.  i took the paint to the hardware store and asked them to re-tint it for me.  they can usually do this if the color is in the same shade and you want to go darker.  so they added more green and a bit of blue to get the color you see now.  i truly had a custom paint color made just for me, and it only cost $4 to re-tint the paint.  now we are ready for our trip in a couple of weeks!

teardrop...13 days in

we are feeling the time crunch of getting the camper finished before our deadline of june 29th.  jarad left yesterday to go back east and won't be back until monday.  so we worked a couple of week nights to get stuff done.  he has also left me a "to-do" list while he is away.  here is the latest...

dad and jarad securing roof

insulation completed and roof finished up until the start of the hatch

partial side panels (covering insulation) complete

testing out the "coziness" factor...

while jarad is gone, i am hoping to get linoleum flooring, patch/sand entire body of trailer, paint (lacquer, prime, paint yellow) and buy mattress.  so far it has been a fun family project, my dad enjoys building with jarad and my mom is liking having us over for dinner all the time.  i can't wait to start working on some of the aesthetic details this weekend and really turn it into a piece of art.

teardrop...second weekend of building

we had a busy weekend, but put in a full day of work on the trailer on sunday.  here is what's new...

roof is on...

started insulating...

building cabinet by feet for storage/ipad dock/phone charging station...

jarad leaves for a trip this week, so we will put in a couple of nights of work before then, and he will leave me a "to-do" list to complete while he is away.  we have ordered windows, LED lights and wallpaper. 

progress on the camper...

last weekend was primarily spent working on the camper.  while we have been talking about this a lot for several months now, this was the first time actually building.  not only was it fun, but at the end of the weekend we have something that resembles a camper.  here is a timeline of events:

friday 6/1/31:
~register trailer as "utility trailer" at AAA
~bring trailer bed to my parents house (that is where the building is taking place)
~eat an awesome home cooked taco dinner with mom and dad
~go to harbor freight and home depot for lumber and tools

dad and jarad brainstorming in home depot

loading up the truck, this is the last time the camper will be in this many pieces

saturday 6/2/12:
~trip to lowes for more lumber (they have better prices than home depot!)
~make base of camper to rest on trailer bed and seal it (short day of work, we had a birthday party!)

building base of camper

base built and sealed with roof tar

sunday 6/3/12:
~the roof tar has worked great as a sealant and we are now ready to bolt the base to the trailer bed
~jarad cut out the sides and the placement of the door
~sides go up and we start to place the ribs that will create the ceiling of the trailer

sealed base bolted to trailer

sides of trailer cut out

sides are bolted to base and now i am sealing the seams

creating ceiling of camper

here is what about 8 straight hours of labor and a few trips to the hardware store look like...

teardrop camper in 30 days...

since my last post almost a month ago, we have been thinking long and hard about what we want out of our camper.  jarad has been modeling it on the computer and when we looked at his design, we realized that it is only 48 inches wide, which is bigger than a twin size mattress but too small for a double size mattress (54 in).  my original idea was for it to be big enough to hold a queen size mattress (60 in.), but i am now realizing that is probably too big, and would require a much bigger/heavier trailer bed.

knowing that we wanted a larger camper, we had to take a good look at the trailer we bought to see if it could be easily widened or if we would need a 6 x 8 trailer instead.  we even considered getting a boat trailer, which is a lot bigger, light weight and fairly inexpensive.  since then, we have decided to use the existing trailer and build on top of the wheels.  this past memorial day weekend jarad spent a lot of time building the trailer bed and getting the hitch on his truck.  he is still modeling the camper and we will begin building the base of it this week.

our plan is to take it on the road for a 12 day road trip to colorado, wyomming and idaho at the end of june/beginning of july.  we have exactly a month to complete this...here is our progress so far.

completed trailer bed

truck hitch and receiver

we have also been thinking of names for the camper.  jarad's dad has named it the "love shack" and it seems to be sticking.

brainstorming the teardrop...

after doing a lot of online research, we have found it hard to find a teardrop camper that fits our needs.  our original idea was to buy a used one and modify it, but we are finding them to be too small and overall rare to come by.  however, you can easily find plans to build them yourself, which is what people did back in the 40's and 50's, which is what we have decided to do.

i think this will be a great project for us, and i am excited to document the process.  our goal is to have it completed for our big vacation in july.  we have just 8 weeks to finish it and hit the road!  jarad is using a 3d modeling program to design it.  in the meantime and until we get building, i am focusing on the decor and have lots of ideas to recreate the kitschy and retro look that these teardrops are known for.  i am not the only one excited about the decorating, my grandma couldn't resist buying this adorable pillow while shopping in balboa island.

today we purchased two crucial pieces; the trailer bed and the truck hitch.   

we are getting the trailer bed from "harbor freight". here is the link for it, it is $299 and we have a 20% off coupon (it came out to $265 total).

secondly, the truck hitch we got from "rock auto", it came out to $154 including shipping.  here is the link for the hitch.

i need to do some research to see what kind of paperwork we will need to do through the department of motor vehicles, and we will get started with the frame this upcoming weekend.

ironically, on this month's edition of sunset magazine, a teardrop camper is featured on the cover, check it out here