The Long Lost Blog Post

I am not writing this blog in our kitchen or in an airplane. I am writing it in Little Wayne!!! We are staying in Little Wayne for the weekend as we Airbnb our house, and it’s truly going great. Don’t worry, Wayne looks drastically different now than it did in our last blog post in March. It’s comfy, cozy yet also spacious, even a little bit luxurious. This post will be chock full of pictures as I do my best to remember what occurred in the last 2 months. It was a whirlwind of one project after another, countless trips to Home Depot, 75,000 phone calls to my father-in-law Larry, a few phone conversations with the wonderful folks at Vintage Campers in Peru, IN, and above average stress levels.

So where did we leave off…?

We were just starting to put up wall/ceiling panels in March. Glad that’s over! Haha. That was a lengthy process involving lots of careful measuring and lots of careful cutting. Before cutting each panel I would take pictures of the studs, measure the location of the studs, make sure no electric wires or plumbing lines were in the way, sometimes add in extra support, cut and install the fiberglass insulation, measure for any receptacle or switch box cut-outs, re-measure everything, then cut and screw the panel into place with Spax 1.25” torx head screws (I mention the type of screw because I want to remember them for the future. They are awesome). This process times about 30 panels took a solid couple of weeks. For the curved sections of wood at each end, I used cardboard to trace the contour of the curve and then traced that onto my wood. Still, this was a trial and error situation, as I had to shave off a little bit at a time until the board would fit well…well enough to where trim could hide any squirrely sections.

Adding extra supports:

Extra support & measurements behind the wall where the kitchen shelf will hang:

What a mess!

Taking a break to build a gate for a friend:

And...back to the walls:

Done! Cerveza time

Cassidy then took over and finished the walls, painting in the bedroom and using a wood stain & sealant in the living area of Wayne. She did a killer job!

A quick sidenote on podcasts: These are my jam. Man did I go through some podcasts in the last 8 months. Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Star Talk, The Bigger Pockets Podcast, Waking Up With Sam Harris, How I Built This (about building companies, not trailers, but inspirational nonetheless) and the always fascinating Joe Rogan Experience provided the fuel to power through some monotonous tasks and a lot of late nights.

With podcasts on the speakers, it was time to finish the bathroom. We tiled the shower with a combo of 3”x6” subway tile ($19/box at Home Depot) on the walls and ceiling and penny tile on the floor and bench. Then we grouted the tile (a nice quick process and one of the few projects that does not involve measuring J). 

Cassidy picked out this really cool blue hexagonal floor tile from Stone Source in Nashville. I had installed the grey version in our house this winter so I knew the process already.  The tile saw is pretty fun to use, and it’s especially nice because you don’t have to worry about losing a finger the way you do on a table saw/mitre saw/any other type of saw. 

Next I put up some DIY shiplap in the bathroom. I ripped down leftover pieces of birch walls on the table saw and then tacked them in with a finishing nailer, separating each piece with by the width of a quarter to keep the gap consistent.

Then we put in some pre-finished pecan hardwood floors. What a difference they make! The process involved a flooring nailer and a finish nailer, and again careful measuring etc but we were able to finish most of the floor in a day.

Dig Cassidy's funky avant garde paint design on the walls of the bathroom. I love it!

Then it was back to the bathroom for the toilet and sink installations. The toilet took a little bit of finagling to get pipe measurements correct so it would sit flush against the wall. I also had to run a little more plumbing under the trailer to allow everything to line up and I put in a vent pipe along Wayne’s exterior wall. I really can’t say enough about the German Duravit toilet and the Gerberit in-wall tank. Just fantastically engineered. And it saves us a whole lot of space in the bathroom. The sink is a little 12" deep IKea sink. Cool design and it's also a space-saver. 

When hooking up the plumbing I noticed a couple winter weather infractions: The hot water supply cracked in 2 spots: a 90 degree fitting and the shut off valve. Considering that this was a mild winter, I will be insulating the pipes a lot better before winter 2017-'18 arrives. 

Next I tackled a bed frame. I kind of flew by the seat of my pants, but made sure to include storage underneath the bed, as well as a removable panel to access our plumbing which runs just under the bed.

Then came kitchen cabinets. While Cassidy was at the flea market peddling her Threads of Democracy shirts (@threadsofdemocracy), I spent the last weekend of April, which happened to be rainy and unseasonably cold ~45 degrees, donning my long johns and putting together the Ikea cabinet bases inside Wayne. These were also engineered very well (thanks, Sweden). It’s a pretty simple process. No disrespect to China, they’re doing a lot of really smart technological things that I cannot begin to comprehend, but the difference in quality between something made in Europe or America and something made in China is astronomical. It’s worth the extra dollar to avoid headaches and get something made well. Ok, back to the script. Here are some more pictures:

Cabinet doors were one of the last major projects, and all the credit goes to Cassidy. She ordered the cabinet doors from a company called Semihandmade (@semihandmade), which specializes in making doors to fit Ikea frames. She ordered a paint sprayer that hooks into the air compressor. She researched and found a high end paint from Farrow and Ball that looks really sharp. And she did an amazing job, while saving thousands of dollars off the cost of getting pre-finished cabinet doors. My wife is a badass.

While Cass worked on cabinet doors I installed trim around the windows, bathroom door, roof vents, and along the seams of the ceiling. I enjoy doing trim because things look much more finished after it’s up:

I also put in new windows on the front of the trailer. You might recall the large front window was missing because someone at some point had put in a window A/C unit. The hole was covered by an attractive large plastic bag I would staple into place whenever rain was in the forecast. The window was quite an upgrade. I used the grinder to cut out some of the existing frame then had new storm windows made by the good folks at Cumberland Hardware, just 1 mile from our house in East Nashville. I tried a few custom window shops first, but no one would return my calls for such an odd project. Cumberland turned around the windows in a day for only $50, and they look fantastic.

The last big projects occurred on the days leading up to move-in day, Cinco de Mayo. On quattro de mayo, with 1 day left I had to tackle something I had no previous experience with, running the gas lines to power the propane stove and the hot water heater. I had ordered 2 20 lb propane tanks from the helpful folks at Vintage Campers. As I mentioned, the VC folks are awesome and incredibly knowledgeable about vintage trailers, especially Spartans as they own several themselves.

I was really nervous to run the gas, because, well, a gas leak would be no bueno. I probably should have prioritized this and done it sooner, but we were slammed with everything else on the to-do list! After doing some research, talking to Larry and our friend John, I felt equipped to attempt the job. It’s a similar process to plumbing, basically pipe + fittings. You also need a pressure regulator, which I picked up at Trinity Gas here in East Nashville. I also filled the propane tanks at Trinity Gas. The owner has a striking resemblance and the same wrongly-convicted-of-murder kind of vibe as Tim Robbins' character in The Shawshank Redemption.

I got back home and started the job. The fittings must be absolutely secure to avoid a gas leak. To seal the pipes you either use this yellow Teflon tape designed for gas pipe, or pipe dope, and since I was familiar with Teflon from plumbing, I opted for the Teflon. I put the system together then Face-Timed Larry to go through it all and make sure we were ok. When I had triple checked every fitting I turned on the gas to check the water heater…and didn’t get any hot water. So I called Larry back. Haha.

It was 10 at night on Cuatro de Mayo. I was running on pretty little sleep. Larry asked what model the tankless water heater was, downloaded the instructions, and in about 2 minutes found my error. I hadn’t hooked in a power supply. The unit is made to be outdoors, and it comes with a temperature control that you run inside to control the hot water temp. I had done this step. But it also needs 120V power to turn on. Like every other appliance in the world.

I worked on some other stuff that night and saved the hazardous stuff for the am after getting a little sleep. At 4:30 am I was thinking pretty clearly and was able to hook up the power supply using an extension cord plugged into our outdoor receptacle. I went inside Wayne and sure enough, we had hot water! I texted Cassidy at work, who was kind of freaking out over the tight timelime, and over the fact that we might not have hot water when the weekend’s high temp was 55 degrees. It was a good victory. Here’s a picture. Nothing special to look at, but it serves an important purpose: to make my wife happy.

What else? We were rushing on our 2 contracted projects for Little Wayne, kitchen countertops and shower glass. Our friend Jeff at Granite Masters who installed the marble counters in our house gave us a week turnaround and had the countertops in on Thursday, May 4. The shower glass arrived just in time on May 5, and it took the 2 experienced installers a couple hours to set in place and seal with silicone. I was very happy I didn’t attempt to install the glass myself. Pictures of the countertops and the shower glass:

I like deadlines, and I think I need them in order to get things done in a timely manner. However, I hadn’t ever faced a deadline like the one we faced on May 5: You have to leave your house and stay in a trailer you’ve been working on for 8 months by 4 pm. We had tons to do in the house, too, from installing deadbolts in our band/tool room and consolidating 2 closets of stuff into 1, and cleaning like crazy, and getting everything out of the house we would need for 4 nights. Our guests had a 3-hour flight delay due to weather, and it’s a good thing, because from 4:30 am until 7 pm when they arrived, joined by Cassidy when she got home around 3, we were running around like insane people getting stuff done. In hindsight, it was a seriously productive dayJ. Also in hindsight, we will be streamlining the process in the future.

Starting at 7 pm on Cinco de Mayo, everything went off without a hitch. We had the most relaxing weekend in Little Wayne, and we enjoyed our newfound free time by hanging out with friends, getting outside, and trying some new restaurants in Nashville. It truly could not have gone smoother. Our spirits were high and we had to revel a little bit in our accomplishment—we are both still kind of amazed that we pulled it off.

In the weeks since Cinco de Mayo we have made a few kitchen upgrades: a tile backsplash and some cherry wood shelves. We got the wood from our other friend Wayne (really!), in Springfield, TN, who has a wood mill and some really really cool sawn hardwoods at amazing prices. Go see him! We ran an orbital sander over the boards and then put on a couple coats of polyurethane and called it a day.

We have a few small projects left, including build a small deck, install a roof-mount AC, build a rack system on the hitch to hold our propane tanks, and finish polishing LW's skin. A few months ago, some of these projects would have seemed too daunting to undertake. But the true gift that Wayne has given us is the confidence to “settle into the big unknown” – who can quote the artist??—and get outside our comfort zone.

We gained so much new knowledge and a bunch of new skills on this adventure. Now that it’s over, we are in the market for our next adventure! It might be a fixer-upper house, or maybe another travel trailer that we make mobile this time. It will likely involve some frustrating moments but the end result will be absolutely worth the struggle and the journey will be unforgettable. Onward, DIY Team Wellons!