Rebuilding a $40 Retro Camper // DIY

okay we'll go jump right into this here so this is the $40 Playmore camper that I bought and used my Toyota 4runner to haul it off the backyard of this man's this man's backyard and I don't know if you can see my cursor but the tires were about a third of the way just kind of buried in dirt down there and this is the condition this is the condition it was in when I hauled it off and this is kind of what it looked like before doing anything so I towed it out of his backyard that's me standing there a younger me I told it I have his backyard and got it to a parking lot in nearby parking lot and had my wife snap up before photo this is the other side of it so kind of just straight up ugly nothing pretty about it this is the inside and what it looked like it was just absolutely disgusting you could see the daylight coming through the floor here you can see they're taping Mountain Dew boxes and everything else it it looked like I'd been repaired from water damage at some point but it still had a lot of water damage going on just absolutely disgusting and smelly everything else you could imagine so um I get it into my parents backyard and park it this is some information here about the manufacturer that I I just snapped a picture real quick and I'm taking some more before pictures here just to kind of give you an idea this is the front of the camper these are these used to be the benches where you would sit and there'd be a fold-out table right here but as you can see it's just absolutely disgusting and there's kind of assessing everything I paid $40 for this thing so I'm trying to figure out what is salvageable what's not and here's my wife and my mom who looked utterly disgusted at my decision to spend $40 on his camper but um it looks like I pulled a trash can up to start chucking stuff into it there's a shop vac so at this point I probably didn't realize that I needed to gut the whole thing out and clean the whole thing out but then as I began to see some water damage up here I started to rip it out and notice that the water damage was just absolutely prolific and it was kind of opening a can of worms I realized really quickly that not much of this is going to be salvageable so it's just some of the water damage so I just start gutting the whole thing at this point I'm just like you know go hog-wild gutting it and had my shot back there at this point I get it I get it moved over to my home now and this is parked in my driveway and I go ahead and spray paint the the tongue of the camper with some some rust Oleum spray paint you get rid of the rust and stuff and my neighbors I'm sure we're very happy that I had this parked in my driveway but I kind of I think I did a pressure washing I think I pressure wash the outside to get it ready for painting so I was like you know I need to stop gutting the inside of this thing and just get it ready for painting because my neighbors are gonna probably slash my tires if I leave this ugly thing my driveway much longer so I spray painted the step there and here's the door it's missing like pretty much all the windows it's just screen at this point this is missing a window panel glass panel and I start gutting the whole thing out and there's no lights or anything in here so I just hung some Christmas lights in to give me some light as I worked at night because I would work all day on this and all night just gutting it down to the actual wood frame had these 1x2 almost like furring strips as a frame and up here you can see these are the actual like trusses that go across so I'm still trying to assess what is salvageable and what's not I'm just kind of going through and gutting it and just ripping it down and this was this was the easy part and you can see here there's some water that was coming in through this little little light here that the seal had dry rotted off so water every time it rain was stripping down this back wall it was just a mess see there's some water damage coming in there it's it's hard because they build these things to be like homes but they also build them where they can withstand like her force winds and rain every time you drive it on the interstate and a rainstorm here like basically driving it through hurricane and it's hard to design an engineer something like that where you have something that's livable and comfortable but also something that is um that's that's basically tornado and hurricane proof every time you take it on a trip so they don't they're not made to last these campers aren't and especially when they build them with wood they're just not made the last probably the worst investment you can make if you buy one new or almost new other than buying a car it's probably a very bad investment just appreciates very quickly unless you decide to live in it you know full-time you might actually get your money out of it but in this case I bought a really junky one but $40.00 buying it and and then did a lot of work fixing it up so me this is me I found a nest of bullets here living in here a bunch of bullets and this is me using the spray to kill them all so this is just piling and all up this is stuff a tub of stuff that I found as I was cutting it out so I found some interesting stuff cups and the lantern these were actually pretty cool with this lantern and this thing I actually fix them up and still have them as decor in my home right now I just thought they were really cool from like the 1970s and you know I don't know so this is where the water and stuff used to come in so a drain line yeah so here's the floor once I started ripping up these peel-and-stick tiles you could see all the way down to the ground through the floor that's because water used to come in right here and it would rot the floor away so it's the taking some more artistic photos here some reason that's my that's my driveway it's one of a bike parked in my driveway it was there for I don't know five six months just like that as I worked on it in my free time oh I found Zelda a Nintendo 64 Zelda while I was cutting out you know little treasures like that worth 40 bucks right there no I'm just kidding not really but here I painted it white wood just awesome kills as you can see down there just some kills and just to cover up a lot of the stains and stuff and later on I'll we put up you know kind of put some designs on it so I'm like painting and gutting at the same time it looks like or maybe my wife is painting and I'm just gutting this thing out you know just going to go into town and getting it down to the metal frame basically so I'm realizing that none of this is salvageable and I'm like oh man what did I get myself into here so I don't fill up my trash can once a week and so this windows completely not there and this windows busted out I would just fill up my trash can once a week and you know and when they come in haul it away I'd fill it up again and did that over and over and over I didn't get like a big rented dumpster and anything like that this is my older brother he's he's helping me out you see the floor just completely severed from the shell of the camper they're probably from backing it into something or whatever it's just a mess so we're just stripping the whole thing down and starting with a clean slate here there he is prying some some rotted wood off and we're just kind of chewing the floor away getting it down to the metal frame here's what the metal frame looks like I'm taking a skill saw and it actually had like 3/4 inch maybe like OSB as a floor wispy one stick tile so I was just like you know what we're not gonna we're not gonna do this so I what it is I marked where the frame was at and I just sawed around the frame basically and avoided the frame with my saw and got it down to the middle frame that way I didn't have to peel up all the peel and stick tiles and yeah trash my blade and stuff but I don't care and here's a trash can filled up so I'm sure the garbageman were really happy about that that's me working at night they're still gutting it down and cleaning everything so I got I got it down to let me back I got it down just to the metal frame and what I did is I just took 3/4 inch plywood I think it took three sheets total of 8 by 12 or I'm sorry 4 by 8 three-quarter inch pressure treated plywood really heavy-duty stuff and I just made it fit with three sheets I did I did two up front in one of the back it made this thing so much stronger and sturdier it didn't like wobble when you actually walked in there when she bought that stuff down I did tar paper along the bottom well here's my my to-do list and so I just wrote it there on the wall and I use it every day as I've worked on it and worked on a couple of hours a day basically after I got off work did my shopping Milo's list there here's my eldest son his name is Noah and you've probably seen him in some of the videos he's now almost 10 years old but he's out there helping me out learning some learning some stuff with the hammer there's me and Noah working on attaching the floor and yeah so here's my typical setup after work was at a trailer with lumber in it and saw horses and skill saw really I had no idea what I was doing look at like that was like I don't know seven years ago and I've learned so much more about carpentry about handyman stuff plumbing electrical stuff I learned so much in just that five to seven year span these are the literally all the tools I had to do this project and get it looking good was I had a skill saw I had that that black and decker piece of junk battery power drill and you know hammer and pry bar and that was basically it I did this job with those tools and I really I really have very little knowledge about carpentry and everything else so you're gonna look at some of this and we were like whoa what was he doing and those are my thoughts exactly don't worry and here's the frame here's the shocks really rusted but still I just greased them up and they seemed to work fine it's a fresh grease and so I'm bolting and bolting the floor to the actual actual frame beneath it caulking along the sides and stuff to keep the water from washing up in there so this is what it looks like in front of the front of the doorway now a lot better and a lot more secure I'm getting the floor almost done it looks like it the floor is done here so I did the back the back took like one whole sheet and so it looks nice and clean I was able to salvage some of the framing so it's looking a lot better at this point and I'm getting more optimistic this is kind of like in the rebuilding phase now after I've demoed everything at all so what I gotta go do now is I could reattach the whole shell along the outside to the actual floor and kind of figuring out that's my wife waiting for us to go out to eat I'm sure and she's like please stop working on this stupid thing and she's like are you gonna come to the car now so yeah she's definitely disgusted with me at that point she's like please let's go so um that's showing some lag bolts that I put through to touch the floor and it's the trash under this thing yeah if if I were to do different I'd probably rent like one of those dumpsters and have them come pick it up these are some some roofing screws that I used to reattach the actual metal frame to for the metal the metal shell to the floor and it's gonna win along the outside the whole way and just reattach it with those rubber washers like it's like metal roofing screws basically and they're not cheap but they do good job and they kind of pull and everything in and kind of sucked it all back into the floor and it's me putting some pressure treated I'd use nothing but pressure treated lumber on this which probably wasn't the best idea if you're gonna be in there really confined space looking back because pressure treated lumber has a lot of smells and chemicals so um but I think I was just really scared of like water damage and stuff and yeah that's my friend Austin he would come over in the mornings after he'd get off work at Starbucks and he would um he would help me out with this thing I really appreciate all his help see so like this is us using like a handsaw to solve a 2x4 and now I have like nice tools I have a good chop saw and stuff so this is what we had to work with that's kind of rebuilding the front of it there's just a top of tools that I was using gives you an idea mm-hmm and it's Austin and we're kind of just figuring out how to rebuild it I knew nothing about framing and stuff like that I'm like act like I do now I really knew very little it's my dog waiting for us to throw a tennis ball see the tennis ball we would throw a tennis ball and it works on throw a tennis ball and works on give her some exercise so um still just kind of building the inside so what I did is I took one by two pressure treated one by twos and actually reattached them to kind of build out that framing what I wish I had done was before I rip these out take a sharpie and trace where they were that would have been really smart but yeah I'm just kind of putting these in place here and reattaching retouching them to the existing frame and it's going pretty well see looks like I'm building looks like I'm building the bunk bed here these are the metal roofing screws I put along the front keep the water from splashing up in there so I'm trying to rebuild the roof now and some of the beams that went across and you you kind of see it sagging down there in the middle that's just because it's like you know just floppy metal basically it's just sagging down and that's not good you want it to you want it to be you know like pretty straight across so the water doesn't pull up in there and yeah so okay so we fast forward it quite a bit here I musta got tired picture taking pictures so here's the front Finch as I rebuild these benches here and I've built little shelves in here so the idea is that we would sit at these benches and be able to eat food and there'd be like a table right here and then also I had this mattress that I would put across and make it a bed as well and you can use this for storage down in here so that was kind of a and I used on luan two sheets of luan like plywood to be my walls I built a little shelf in here so if you're laying in the bottom bunk you can use this for like little storage like for cell phones and stuff like that this is a top bunk that I'm building and this is like basically this is um where they call it it's like white plastic like shower board if that's what they call it it's like just waterproof shower board this was like really floppy and hard to actually get up there and nail up there and I have like three people help me do this and didn't actually turn out that well so I would not haven't done that again use that shower board I will use something more rigid and I don't know I didn't really again I didn't really know what I was doing a whole lot in this but for $40 and everything else it wasn't bad so here's Noah up here in the top bunk this was he's excited about his bed being built and this is front bench and be kind of doing the roofing around so I just used a piece of plywood as the bed here and plywood up here for this bed and we'll put mattresses in there as you'll see here so I'm boxing in the tire wells and I found this on the side of the road and I was like huh whenever they would fit in here and I ended up not leaving it in there I'm into putting a mini fridge there instead I believe but it's coming along it's getting there I had to cover up the the roof vent with that shower board because I had to actually get the whole roof in out and get rid of it I believe so rain was coming in there so I had to cover that up I'm trying to rebuild the door now using these one by twos and I didn't do a very good job of rebuilding the door but it worked I just didn't really know I was doing but um so I got a ladder built the ladder Noah would use that ladder and he'd go up and I also have a little sink the beginnings of a sink here I'll put in what's coming along it's getting there let me keep going here so I'm painting the inside for some reason painting it kind of a grey and then have a red accent wall back there I don't know what this is those might be insulation not sure so here it is hooked up oh I'm thinking I think I'm hooking it up to take it to the scrapyard not to scrap it for money that's not what I'm doing but I'm going to get it weighed so that I can get it a title and a tag for it I had to actually do a homemade title for this because it um I registered it as a home made trailer because the title of the original title was lost and they had no problem with that it might have cost extra not sure but I got a tag in a title for it you just have to weigh it never forget what I weighed I mean it might have been like 600 pounds or so my god but here's the me paint in the front just turning out kinda nice I just left the bare metal right here you could see the metal I thought that'd look cool and oh I've got a new window I went to like a mobile home supply store and got a new window and popped it in there I wish I had done all the windows like that this was like I don't know a 50 dollar window but it looked really nice once I popped it in there replace that front window so here's our cat one of our cats who's no longer with us our IP and so I put a padlock on there just really simple except I realize that you know you could like people could lock you in there so okay so this is um this is like astroturf rug that I just basically like cut down the size and I didn't glue it I didn't like do anything with it it's just like a rug that I bought at Lowe's it's an outdoor rug so the idea was that I could like at the end of the camping trip I could roll it up in here and then take it out and just shake it out because all the sand or whatever would get into it and it worked pretty well except that it kind of slid around a little bit as you walk sometimes it would like slide my bunch up but they worked pretty well than that it smelled good and it looked nice um it was cheap it was like 15 dollars for all that road well not carpet so I I didn't like curtains around here just to kind of cover up the storage beneath here and under the bed oh oh yeah it scared me that's a dummy that I had and I would play pranks with this dump but apparently he decided to sleep up in there so I would hide him places and freak it out all my family so this is Noah waking up in the morning having breakfast in the camper it's getting you know hey when your camper gets good enough that way you can like eat in it without vomiting because of the smells then you're doing good in good shape so this is me hooking it up again I'm not sure why oh no this is me at the scrapyard okay so I'm taking it to a scrapyard to get it weighed and you you have to roll over the scale basically and they weigh it for you so maybe I should have cashed it in to that point for money no I shouldn't have so I'll tell you after this video is over how much I spent total on his camper and what I sold it for so I kept it maybe six months to a year not sure we used it several times so this is me getting fancy putting some decor and stuff in here got a mini fridge going on a coffee maker I got the lantern hung back up some water I think we're getting ready for a camping trip maybe our first trip at this point oh so this is how I would am I doing here so maybe I'm putting new tires on it um putting new tires on and then this is a extension court that would actually run in through the camper and that's how I plugged it in and got electricity so I just use like power strips and stuff throughout the whole camper it's so small I could get away with doing that and um so oh okay so I painted a like retro stripe across here and this is me chillin flip-flops and that's Angela if you've seen any of our tiny-house videos you know who Angela is and she's getting ready for our first camping trip she's saying bye to us I think we're hooking up all ready to go for a camping trip here so we went to st. Augustine Florida and this is us parked along the beach this is a 1a I was born not far from here and this is Noah checking out the camper right I walked down to the beach this is really cool you just pull off on this side of the road you can take a nap you know make some lunch you got everything you need right here I don't have a bathroom in here which it did when I bought it but I didn't I didn't rebuild it with the bathroom so it's basically just kind of like sleeping quarters bathroom would have just taken up too much space but it's all good here we are maybe at a rest area or a truck stop I'm just taking pictures okay so here we get to this is anastasia island state park this is our first camping trip in our new camper and we're excited and we're getting out this is when we just had one boy and we can get away with living in a camper this small for a weekend and yeah so this is me just taking some pictures what it look like okay so this is the finished product this is before we put like bed sheets on the bed and you know this is this is basically the finished product so this is my wife and eyes bed down here and this is Noah's bed up there and it will look like along the front there so it kind of gives you an idea what it looked like when it was all said and done and a mini fridge set up oh and there we go back at the beginning so that was here I'll take you back inside whoo that was the inside so we went from this to you know this right here much much better and it just was nice it smelled nice i bleached the metal walls down when i stripped it all down and stuff and um so i paid $40 for the camper i paid maybe a hundred dollars to get it like titled and tag and stuff and you know all total i probably have around 250 to 300 dollars in this camper and what did i do with it I kept it about six months to a year we used it several times for camping and little trips like this and just been a lot of time in it and then we traded it for another camper that was about the same size and didn't need nearly as much work as this one did and it was a nicer newer camper and I I didn't have I guess I didn't have the energy for fixing it I listed it on Craigslist and I sold it for $600 so you know I spent maybe $300 total at the most 400 we used it several times and I sold this essentially got $600 back out of it so I made money on this on this deal and and that's without really knowing what I was doing so if you're looking for you know like a part-time hobby that you can make some money yeah definitely find some old campers like this on Craigslist or wherever and you know you maybe you can find inspiration in this video but I really appreciate you guys watching and this is what it's all about getting out with your family and and just making memories with your family going camping taking them outside and just spending time together and whatever it takes to to enable you to do that it's well worth it all right guys thank you for watching and that is all see you next time

Channel: Our Simple Story

Views: 1,492,618

Keywords: retro camper, camper rebuild, camper remodel, camper, camper life, rv life, how to remodel camper, how to rebuild camper, rv remodel, camper trailer, retro, DIY, DIY camper remodel, DIY camper repair, camper repair, how to fix up camper, rv living, tiny house living

Id: paASoRY8mK0

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018