SURPRISE!!! We made an impulse decision to buy an Airstream. This beauty is a 1974 31′ Land Yacht Sovereign. Full of LOTS of work and LOTS of potential! Oh, and her name is Stella.
We have had dreams of fixing up an old Airstream but were just waiting for the right time. In typical Reid & Kristin fashion we started researching renovating them, came across a fixer upper on Craigslist, went to just “window shop” and in the end got it for a price we couldn’t say no to! So our journey began, right then and there, on tiny Guemes Island. In most of our endeavors, I am usually the dreamer and Reid is the realist, but in this specific situation, we both pushed ourselves slightly out of our comfort zone. We may not have the most time or money in the world, but we decided instead of planning for it in the future, why not just live out our dreams now? I am SO excited to travel the country with our family and see things I normally wouldn’t be able to see or do. This is the ideal situation for me because I am a total homebody but also love adventure so it really brings me the best of both worlds. I can now see the world from the comfort of Stella 😉
We found ourselves trying to tow this massive 31′ Airstream behind our pickup truck with the wrong tow hitch for about 3 hours home, I will tell you what, it was an experience I will remember for a long time!! We also kept looking back going…well I guess we’re doing this!!
I have been doing a crazy amount of research on fellow renovated Airstreams like Tiny Shiny Home, Mavis the Airstream and my favorite, The Modern Caravan. All amazing blogs to read! My goal is to blog about this entire experience from start to finish. Starting with… DEMO DAY!!!
Our demo day began with ripping out the bathroom. Reid came in to me one evening after dinner and said “I think I am just going to take a few things out of the bathroom so I can see the subfloor and understand what we are working with” and from there… the entire inside of Stella was ripped out in a day. The demo from start to finish took several hours. This included taking out all old built ins, kitchen, appliances, the aluminum skins, flooring, subfloor, plumbing, electrical and even some of the belly pan. In the tail end of Stella, the frame had separated slightly due to massive rust in the steel crossbeam. This worked out perfectly for Reid because he has been really excited about using all his new welding supplies! We got quite lucky and found a guy on Craiglist getting rid of a bunch of old steel off a trailer for free and have been able to salvage and use that! You can see in the photo below Reid was able to cut and make an entire new rear cross support out of salvaged steel. Reid called it her “Hollywood butt lift”.
And now for the inside…we weren’t joking when we said we were going to totally renovate this beast. We decided it’s not worth it to spend a ton of time and money making it look cosmetically pretty if the frame is just going to fall apart in 5 years. If there’s any time to do it over and do it right its now!
All of the aluminum skins used for the walls we are storing and will pressure wash and paint when the time comes. Aluminum can be expensive so if you can reuse it with a good cleaning session and fresh coat of paint, it’s worth it!
We are lucky that all of the windows are actually in really good shape, they are in desperate need of cleaning and new screens but overall they get the job done. This was good news for us because vintage airstream windows can cost several hundred dollars. YIKES.
We don’t really know what the future holds for us and Stella. We do know that to do it correctly it is going to take a good amount of time and patience which we are willing to do! Especially since we are completely changing the previous layout so it’ll require all new plumbing and electrical. For now, we are focusing on structural repairs such as adding in more outriggers and cross beams and getting rid of the existing rust. This is the part that doesn’t excite me but must be done! I am beyond blessed to have a very loyal, patient, and stubborn husband who won’t quit until a project is perfect. But for now, I can at least envision all of the pretty things at the end and have had my own fun coming up with our ideal layout. We have tweaked some things since I sketched this up such as changing the current dining situation in the front to a U-shaped dinette with a custom tablescoping table that also turns into a large bed if needed.
Well folks, this concludes part 1 of a journey I am sure will have many parts!!! This is our girl Stella, she’s a hot mess, but dang do we love her. Subscribe to the blog or you can give me a follow on Instagram if you want to follow along on her journey! 🙂