The saying is: “Difficult roads often leads to beautiful destinations”. The conversations we have had for the past year were difficult, long, revisited each month, revised each week, thought about almost daily. Its one of those common ‘should we/we shouldn’t’ scenarios.
But we are on a dream. One that started when we bought our silver cruiser and again when we joined the famous Airstream club. During our first club rally, we sat in a trailer, like ours, but with a huge twist. They called it a Grand Lounge. And damn them. That was the starting point for our discussions as we began seeing all the things that we could do to ours to improve on excellence.
He: “What if we added a cabinet under the TV?”
She: “Why?”
He: “We could have a dedicated place for the coffee maker”.
She: “Well, it would be nice to have a little more counter space. But I don’t think we need a huge cabinet or all new upholstery, new seating arrangement, new table….”
He: “Could we upgrade the countertops, put in a different faucet?”
She: “Umm No.”
He: “What if we added a wine cooler or wine storage?”
She: “We drink red wine which doesn’t need cooling.”
He: “What if I made the table tops and cabinet tops to save money”?
She: “Do you want to do all that work”?
So, you can see which of us is the pragmatist and which is the dreaming fool; a great marriage of two fine minds.
We drew up plans with Ultimate Airstreams, who do this type of conversions work and more. Anything you throw at them seems possible. You want drawers? No problem. A wine drawer? No problem. More outlets? No problem. Then we got estimates for the work…this is when it hit us. On the big scheme of all things living, how important are these dreams? How do you make a decision like this? How do you justify it…or do you even try?
The key to decision making between disparate people is to find common ground, common goals. If we did anything, I wanted better lounging space for watching tv while cuddling under a quilt. She wanted a tad more counter space and improved storage for big, heavy items. Okay, all of that is do-able with a modified Grand Lounge. As to cost, it came down to “do we want to do this in this life and enjoy it or worry about it in our next”? So, we talked with our friend Ian, at Ultimate Airstream and came to an agreement on project scope and cost. The whole affair was to take 3 weeks. And after clearing everything from the trailer, we took it to Portland and hoped we made a good choice.
The drive back home was interesting…. Me glancing at her….she glancing at me. Then we both said “Oh my God what did we do”? I may walk slowly but I never go backwards. So, we swallowed and agreed let’s make the best of this decision.
It turned out better than expected. The 25′ trailer now lives like a 30′. More storage, more counter surface and better flow. I have a drawer to outfit for wine storage and all our heavy, bulky items are stored safely. She has many options for storing items in a sensible way. It was nice to have a designer on the team and she selected the color of the upholstery well. She opted for the blue-grey color to closely match the aluminum color of the walls to visually expand the area. This was neutral enough to allow her to add various colors and change things up. We took it on a week trip and tried raising/lowering each table tops to give us different lounging options (shhh, don’t tell her I said this, but it makes up for having twin beds!).
We are now planning a couple of trips, one that will last 68 days. With this new arrangement, we can’t imagine not having the storage we will need or more comfort than our new interior provided. It is comfortable to host 4-6 guests. The original layout was terrific, but this is definitely an improvement on excellence!
Here are before and after photos. Thanks go out to Ian at Ultimate Airstream for his patience with us and help with design. And to Philip at Ultimate Airstreams for his terrific communication and problem solving throughout the project. A stellar team!
And now, a brief video walkthrough….
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