I Restored a Rat Infested Vintage Camper Trailer! DIY RENOVATION

so the day has finally come it's been a long journey but behind me is a 1957 westerner vintage trailer the story unfolds almost eight years ago so i work on a farm and i was driving out to a field one day by this old spud cellar and i looked back in there in the darkness and there was this old trailer i thought man that could be something cool so i talked to the guy who owned it and he said yeah i'd get rid of it and so i ended up trading some labor to get the trailer i had to take a backhoe to pull it out of there because the building was flooding once i got it out of there and opened the door i thought oh my gosh this thing is rat hotel big time they had literally taken over the thing it was so smelly they had urinated on everything and chewed up the upholstery and it was they were just running wild in there so i put a hazmat suit on a tyvek suit on and pulled everything out of there and threw in a pile and burned it later and then brought the thing home and it was parked alongside the garage for years i gutted it all out and saved some of the pieces for kind of a model to build the new cabinets and stuff in the future but i just didn't have time it just you know how life is it just things go on and on you think i'll get to it i'll get to it i'll get to it and you never get to it well one time i got a month free and i thought this is it or it's never gonna happen so i set aside four weeks it was last february pulled it into the shop farm shop and started going crazy and building this thing and it was an awesome experience i just love to bring the thing back to life it reminds me of this disney cartoon of this young teenager brings a car back to life they found in a junkyard it really does seem like the things are alive after you spend all that time bringing it back so it's just a short amount of time i couldn't do everything to it because the full restoration would require all of this aluminum to come off and be replaced by new stuff obviously there's some dents in here but it didn't really bother me because i felt it was vintage anyway and i got to devote more time on the inside and again only having a short amount of time so this was all gutted completely to the frame where i rebuilt some of the frame repacked the wheel bearings got new wheel bearings that kind of thing put new flooring in new cabinets refinish the appliances but again as the pictures show they were quite trash they were different colors the rats had gotten into them it took quite a bit of restoration to get those cleaned up i kept the siding i restored some of the labeling just cleaned it up and that the windows were broken i replaced the glass and some some of the screen i still have yet to do put a new skylight vent up there we and this is where my wife diane comes into she's the one that actually put together the theme since it is a westerner which her trailers built in california during the popularity of the tv shows they thought wouldn't be great if we put together a travel trailer for people who could just get into that theme those who loved you know the rifleman or some of those shows they thought they'll love to go camping in a trailer that is is popular at the time and is based on kind of shows that they love to watch i thought that was an interesting integration between something people really love and something they might love to go camping in and just to have that that whole theme going on and that's why it's called the westerner actually and there are several out there that people have restored we decided to go with a black and white scheme because a lot are various colors like more of maybe brown or that western brown but it was all made to match the 1978 jeep cj5 that we're going to pull it with [Music] that's why we chose these colors what i did inside is i went ahead and replaced the water tank which holds the water the fresh water i'll also put a a great tank in there in case we're camped at a park and we don't want to let the water out on the ground and then i put a dc ac converter in it so we can run the pump also have a battery to run some of the stuff on there but we kept the original ice box which just uses blocks of ice to keep products cold a lot of people have added refrigerators or microwaves or those kind of things but we kind of thought well we'll just keep it more original because we probably won't spend more than a few days at a time in it we would really love to go to some of those vintage campouts that people put together where they all get vintage trailers and they go to a big park and they hang out we have still yet to do the awning that comes out those are the original hooks that brings out the awning we're going to try something maybe a little different with that when they had him put some power on the outside for like lighting or whatever we could use and then insulated it with the foam insulation instead of the fiberglass originally had the fiberglass but personally i don't like work with fiberglass so i used some of that building insulation the foam it was the inch thick there's not much framing obviously but i got to tell you this thing sat out and it's very windy up here it was completely gutted just the outside in the frame and it was stood 50 mile an hour gusts one one day i went out there and it had completely turned in a circle because the wind had taken it but i never tipped it over i thought crazy how little products are in this as far as framing and those kind of things but yet how sturdy they really are so if you're going to rebuild one feel confident that it's a really good project that's going to last you a long long time virtually forever as long as you keep putting stuff into it i gotta tell you it feels really great to sit in this thing after all that work anybody that's involved in restoration you get to that final day when you can look at all your hard work and go wow this is awesome i'm so glad you know we live in a special time when it's so easy to find out about diy projects with youtube and all the other access ability out there we can find almost anything out if we don't know ourselves when i was younger i had took wood shop for like five years that gave me a lot of the skills it took to put this trailer together i used something that i had learned years and years ago but now if you hadn't had that experience you can get on the internet and find someone who will help you there's so many people that's willing to share their knowledge and experience with you which is fantastic if you want to get involved in one of these projects don't be afraid a lot of people think i don't know i can't do that i couldn't do that just take it step by step you don't have to start with a full restoration of a vintage trailer or 78 jeep or whatever start with a smaller project like maybe a small furniture project or an appliance project or whatever it is start small and through the years build up and you'll find yourself doing bigger and bigger projects as your knowledge and experience grows there's no greater feeling than to put something together that turns out and especially if you're happy with it you think wow that just is an amazing feeling living a minimalistic life today is very popular and if you like that type of lifestyle these are perfect little units to live that way it's so simple easy to clean if you want to pick up and move you just hook it up and pull it somewhere nowadays they're a little more expensive to pick up but don't let that deter you look around you can eventually find one that somebody probably doesn't want a lot of money for i basically threw a work trade basically paid around 500 for this one which i thought was too much at the time but now when you look at the value of these vintage trailers like a lot of vintage things they just keep going up in value so it's a good investment as well so think about it that way it's restoration and if you love that thing as well as a good investment if you want to restore it to bring it back to life and then get a return on your investment it's just a win-win situation so that wraps up the video about the restoration process all the framing all the construction that went into restoring the 57 westerner on our next video we'll take you through a tour of the trailer and how it became the final version of what it is my wife and i putting it together and the theme that we went with and all the things that went in the interior as well so until next time thanks so much for watching

Channel: DIY Duke

Views: 121,577

Rating: 4.9055715 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, Do It Yourself, How-To, Instructions, Help, Tutorial, How, To, vintage, tiny, trailer, tiny trailer, minimalist, van living, trailer living, diy camper, camper, restoration

Id: IdNUqg8J2og

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021