Renovating an Old Truck Camper

August 1 2021

Restoring an Old Truck Camper Part 16: A Setback!

It’s been awhile since we’ve uploaded a video. We’ve had a lot of internet issues. The town in which we are currently parked is having some hardcore problems. We hope that will resolve soon. For now, we are having to put our business social media first because it takes us so long to upload anything.

The truck camper has also had one delay after another. Between our travels, Tropical Storm Claudette, and one storm after another, it sometimes goes days without us working on it.

Tropical Storm Claudette was mostly a lot of rain but there must have been some significant wind at some point because our daughter had large branches down in her yard. The top of truck camper split at some point. We braced everything up and hope it is enough to save the camper.

Meanwhile, we put some stabilizers on the slide of our travel trailer. We aren’t moving it very much right now and sometimes, the slide doesn’t want to come in. We’re hoping the stabilizers will brace it up enough so we will avoid any issues with it.

June 16 2021

Renovating an Old Truck Camper Part 14: Important Purchases & Decisions

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

We were in Florida on business for a week which kept us from working on the truck camper. Before we left, we had finally been able to start rebuilding a bit. We were at a critical point where a lot of important decisions about the build needed to be made. The week away gave us an opportunity to talk through everything in detail.

When we got home, we had to take our youngest daughter’s car to the shop. Then our oldest daughter’s air conditioner went kaput. By the end of the day, her car air conditioner also stopped working. The real feel temp was 106 degrees so we installed a portable air conditioner in the smallest room of her house so they can at least get a good night’s sleep. Her car goes in the shop today to fix the a/c.

In between all this running around, we were able to stop to at least look at some things we need to purchase for the truck camper. Our generator arrived, we ordered the fridge, and made the most important order for the truck camper: the latte maker. 😀

The forecast for this week isn’t the best but we’re planning to hit the truck camper every chance we get—very early in the morning and later in the day when it’s not so hot. We’re excited because we’re finally at the point where a lot should start happening.

June 11 2021

Restoring an Old Truck Camper Part 13: Seamstress vs Carpenter

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

SuzAnne sews. Barry has insulated since he was a twelve. Sometimes things get a little interesting on this truck camper project because they think through the process very differently.

But… we were so glad to finally be back and working on the camper again. It was hot and there were a lot of distractions due to our business but we still feel like we made at least a little headway in just a couple of days.

We’re at the point where we have to stop and think about where things are going to go. Then we go home and get on the internet to get dimensions and look at what others have done with their truck campers. Since it will be a mobile office/workshop, we have a lot of things we’ll need to carry with us.

Now we are off to meet a customer in Naples, FL for a week. We wish we were working on the camper but we have a lot of decisions to make about the construction. There will be plenty of time for that on the drive to Naples. We also need to order the fridge and generator.

June 2 2021

Renovating an Old Truck Camper Part 12, We Had to Cut it Down 6 Inches

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

We thought we had over a week of sunny days to work on the truck camper. Materials were purchased, we had a plan and after one day of working on it, we had to make a quick business trip to Georgia. On the way home we were talking about all we could possibly accomplish on the camper during the next week when Barry’s phone rang. It was a customer from Long Island, New York who needed our help ASAP. We needed to leave the next day.

During our one day of working on the truck camper, we cut the frame down by six inches. This is just part of the adjustments that need to be made to actually raise the camper six inches.

It’s actually been a good thing that work has interrupted our work on the camper. Our business travel has been to jobs with very different needs. As we’ve realized those needs, we’ve been able to modify our plans for the truck camper to make it an even more usable mobile office.

May 26 2021

Restoring an Old Truck Camper Part 11: Starting the Rebuild

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

After weeks of tearing the truck camper apart, we finally started a little bit on the rebuild. We still have a lot of things to tear out but we’re also at the point where we need to start building it back up as well.

The appliances went this week. As Barry took out the fridge, we found the source of the critter noise we have heard. We still haven’t seen the animal but it had a rather large nest on top of the fridge. We also feel we’re at the point where we need to start making decisions about the windows. We’ll probably order the fridge soon as well.

Being in the construction industry, we are all too familiar with how long it can take to receive a lot of items. We’d rather order things a little early and have them then be held back by waiting on them when we are ready. We’re very fortunate to have a beautiful yard for this project with lots of fun distractions in the form of our grandson and our daughter’s pets.

May 19 2021

Restoring an Old Truck Camper Part 10: Tearing Out the Rot!

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

After many delays due to weather and travel, we finally had an entire day to work on the slide in truck camper remodel.

We spent most of the day tearing out the rot on just the bottom of one side. There really weren’t any bad surprises because by we know there’s going to be a lot of rot, mold, and insects. We did have one very good surprise, though. The base of the truck camper is in surprisingly good shape. That was very encouraging.

We’re now at the point where we can start to frame up the bottom of the camper. We knew to expect that lumber prices would be high but it’s still a shock. Fortunately, it’s a small camper.

As we tear into the camper, we’re seeing more and more how we can retrofit it for our needs as a mobile office that we can also use for camping. Now if we can just stay put long enough to consistently work on it.

May 12 2021

Renovating an Old Truck Camper Part 9: Meet Our Crew!

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

We are so ready to really get into this truck camper renovation but we had more business travel and the weather this spring has not cooperated very well. There have been a lot of very rainy days. Still, we were able to remove more of the siding and exterior hook ups.

We have been waiting for the electrician to add a 240v outlet to our daughters house so we can weld. They also have been delayed due to the weather. The biggest news is that we were able to assemble a top notch crew to help us. You can meet them in this video below.

The days we have been able to work on the truck camper have been beautiful and full of fun with our kids and grandson. We had expected a lot of work with the truck camper but we hadn’t thought of all the good times it would bring by just being with our family.

April 30 2021

Renovating an Old Truck Camper Part 7: How we are doing this with pocket change!

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

Travel has been a part of our life since we married but the RV life has definitely spoiled us. We like coming home after a day of work or exploring to a home cooked meal, our own bed, and morning coffee from our percolator. Now we find ourselves renovating an old truck camper! Through a combination of using the Acorns App and Bitcoin Cash Appl, we are able to build this camper with pocket change!

In 2020, business traveled picked up so much for us that we found ourselves in airports and hotels rather than RV parks. While we’ve enjoyed every trip, it didn’t take us long to miss RV travel. We started kicking around some ideas that would enable us to get from one job to next quickly but would still allow us to camp along the way. Truck campers kept coming up so we started looking into them more and more.

SuzAnne mentioned all this to a friend one day. He said, “Well, we have a truck camper that is in really bad shape but if you want it, it’s yours.” We looked at it that afternoon and picked it up a week or so later. It’s in bad shape. We were looking to do a truck camper remodel but it’s turning out to be more of a truck camper build.

In this YouTube, we explain why we are doing this and how we plan to fund it. We’ve renovated a pop-up and we also did major repairs to our first travel trailer but this is our first time rebuilding an old truck camper. It’s going to be quite the project, but the more we get into it, we’re actually excited to tackle this project and can’t wait for truck camper living while we are on the road on business.

April 13 2021

Renovating a Truck Camper Part 6: We Uncovered an Entire Ecosystem!

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

We tore into the truck camper.
We weren’t expecting to be pretty.
It wasn’t.

We expected to find more black mold and rotted wood but we weren’t expecting to find a whole new ecosystem! There were ants and what we thought at the time to be eggs from some other insect. After a little research, SuzAnne found out that the ‘eggs’ were actually a type of slime mold; probably white carnival candy slime mold (Arcyria cinerea). It’s possible that it is a nutritional source for the ants. Some ants also farm fungi. She could only find discussions on this so if anyone is knowledgeable in this area, please let us know.

There were cockroaches, big and little. Other insects scampered away faster than our cameras would focus. We found a lot more rat and mice feces and frog skeletons. There were other types of slime mold and shelf fungi. And lots of black mold, of course.

The front of the truck camper is badly rotted out so that will have to be entirely replaced. The rest of the camper has sections of mold and rot but we were surprised to find other places that were still in good shape.

Now if we could just stay home long enough to work on this thing!!

As for the critter we heard a couple of videos back, we haven’t heard a peep out of it so we really think it has moved on.

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April 6 2021

Restoring an Old Truck Camper Part 5: Snakes in a Camper!

Barry Renovating an Old Truck Camper 0

Our next step in working on the truck camper was to clean the interior. Again, it may not make sense to clean something out that’s eventually going to be ripped apart but it was so full of feces (frog, snake, rat, mouse, etc.) and black mold that we knew it wasn’t safe to work on it.

Again, we turned to our Norwex distributor daughter for help via a Zoom call.

Wearing respirators and gloves, we first began by throwing out the contents of the camper. Then Barry took a shop vac to the interior while SuzAnne brushed feces from the interior walls. We then scrubbed it down with Norwex Ultra Power Plus Laundry Detergent and the Norwex Cleaning Paste. Our intention was not to get the inside sparkling clean, nor did we think that possible. The above products worked so well, that the inside of the camper looked and smelled fresh and clean.

Still no sign of the critter. We are thinking (and hoping) that it decided a clean dwelling wasn’t where it wanted to be.

Our daughter’s Norwex page: https://mikaylahilderbrand.norwex.biz/