I've spent a lot of time over the past few years daydreaming about renovating a vintage trailer. It probably started a few years ago when my fiancé and I thought about thought about quitting our jobs, dropping out of school and starting a rice pudding truck. Yes, a food truck that sells rice pudding. Thankfully, we didn't do that. I think if we had we would both weigh 400+ lbs right now.
Instead, I decided to continue my studies as a product design student, all the while casually checking craigslist every so often for vintage trailers. They always seemed too expensive or in a condition that would require basically tearing down the entire trailer and starting from the ground up. For someone with virtually no experience renovating a trailer, that seemed overwhelming.
A few days ago I found the tiniest trailer I've ever seen on craigslist. I believe the manufacturers name for it was, "Lil' Loafer". You read that right; LIL LOAFER. How can you not love something with a name like that? After exchanging a few e-mails, I drove out to The Middle of Nowhere, CA, to check it out. Turns out the owner had three trailers he was selling. As much as I loved the name Lil Loafer, I found a slightly larger 13' trailer on his lot that I fell in love with. It's a 1966 Playmor. I spent a while inspecting it before I decided to buy it. I've named her, "The Bean". Right now she's a green bean but when I'm done she might very well be a white or black bean. Who knows.
1966 Playmor
The next thing I have to decide is what exactly to do with it. I realize that sounds like something I should have thought about before buying a trailer, and I did think about it a lot. I'm torn between two ideas.
The first is to refurbish the trailer, keeping as much of the original trailer as possible while making it more structurally sound for camping in. I would use it for camping or park it in my backyard and rent it out as an Airbnb. You know, the whole glamping thing. People love that shit.
The other option, and the one that is most exciting to me, is to turn the trailer into a traveling business. As a product design student, I would sell anything from ceramics to clothes to home goods and even small pieces of furniture. This, of course, requires much more planning than the previous idea. I need to figure out the specifics of what kind of business it is, where I would sell things and how much of the trailers interior would need to go. And that's not an easy decision.
As you'll see the next post, the interior is what really makes this trailer so lovable and charming.
Until next time,
Marla