50's Travel Trailer almost DONE!

The Windows are in & the exterior is DONE!!

Next-up.....the booth seating, the screen door, cabinet doors & mattresses will go in.  He thinks he'll be done with it in about a week - can't wait!

We're getting closer to becoming Texans - just ordered our new license plates for the Jumpin' Jackalope Ranch:

Trailer Skin & Paintjob!

First-up, the skin goes on the trailer...starting to look whole!

& then the paint - sure looks pretty!!!!!

The Travel Trailer gets closer!!

It's been a while since we shared an update on the travel trailer, so here goes - quite a lot of progress of late!

First up, the kitchen is tarting to come together - with fabulous vintage Pink Boomerang Formica:

& more walls go up!:

And more of the interior of the trailer begins to take shape:

& then the insulation & brand new, very WHITE exterior skin goes on:

NEXT-UP:  The exterior paint job!!

Refinements

Back to the house plans, with first cuts at elevations, more details added, etc.

Here are some views of the house from different angles:

And scale of the home & bar area relative to a 6 foot tall person to get a feel for ceiling heights, etc.

& now back to the computer model of the house exterior - here'a an ariel shot:

& the front from 2 angels.....

& the back:

zoomed in....

Quite a lot of progress, with next details starting to flesh out the interiors.  Though we're taking a break from more design work over the Holidays.  Not much more on the house plans for a little while :)

We hop you're enjoying seeing things take shape!

& Back to the Travel Trailer...

Some great progress on the trailer - check out the awesome Pink & White Cabana Stripes on the floor - LOVE them!!!  & the refinished side walls are up, too!

The Moai Icehouse layout

Here's the first pass at the layout of the Bar, too.....with MANY cocktails to be enjoyed in this space!

A Few Early 3-D Drawings

We got some very cool, very early, drawings done by our architect's intern in a program called Google Sketch-up. We can look at the house from all angles. This is when it starts to get FUN & EXCITING!!!

These are obviously very rough & early, but we think pretty cool, as you can start to get a better feel for the space.

& you can CLICK on the images to make them bigger, too :D

Here are a couple of the Front of the house:

& the Back of the house:

Travel Trailer Colors

We picked out the colors for the exterior of the travel trailer last night, which was really FUN!!

The dominant color will be white, with stripes & design done with these.

Seaside Green - from the 1956 Studebaker Line:

For the Pink, my first choice is "Elvis Rose", which is the color that was created for Elvis' Pink Cadillac.  This is my back-up color.  The refrigerator will also be this color.

Sunset Glow Pink from the 1957 Oldsmobile line:

And, finally, the Yellow - from a 1961 Rambler - Waikiki Gold:

Back to the house plans...now with furniture!

We're inching closer, with some revisions to the floorplan & starting to add in how furniture would fit into the spaces of the main part of the house.

It's starting to feel a bit more "real" at this point - yeah!! :)

& Zoomed-in.....

More meetings with the architect next week to refine things even more, and we should also be seeing new drawings for the exterior & tiki bar soon as well.

Stay tuned!

A fun side project

We've got a little project going on the side, which is re-habbing a vintage 50's DeVille travel trailer.  A company in Erie, CO is doing the restoration, directed by your truly.  DeVille trailers were very well made, which provides a great start of the restoration.

The overall look & feel will be 50's Pink, Aqua & Yellow, but that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves, as here is the "before" of the outside of the trailer - on it's way from New Mexico to Colorado

& a couple weeks later, this is what it is looking like today, as the restoration has begun!

There was a fair amount of wood rot once the skin was removed, which is not surprising given the age.  All of that rotted wood will be replaced with new wood.

& disassembled even more - ready to start!!

No More Living Off The Grid!

I went by our land yesterday - since neither of us had been out that way in a couple months - just to check on things.  Previously, if we were telling people how to get there, it was something like - don't take the left turn after the RR tracks - go straight-ish down the road to the end.  Now, we're all official & stuff with a street sign for our road.  I'm thinking the sign might have happened 'cuz the woman from the county who had to come out & find our land so that we could get a proper street address had to make 3 tries before she found it - haha!

Our good 'ol fried Mr. Donkey was also there to greet me upon arrival, but this time with our fence in place between he & I:

And - I also found piles & piles of mysterious animal poop!  I wasn't sure what it was at first - I thought maybe the Wild Hogs that we hear are around.  But these piles were BIG.  So I took some close-up shots so I could look them up online (don't worry - I'll spare you all the close-ups).  I ID'd 'em last night as just boring old COW poop, so apparently there's a spot back by the creek where cows can get through.  That doesn't both us one bit, as when the tax man decides to come by & he sees cow pies, he'll be leaving our agricultural exemption in place, which saves us many $1,000's in tax $$.  WIN for us!!

MOO!!!!!!!!

Options & Alternatives

We got a few more options from the Architect today working toward getting some square footage economy to the floorplan, though with everything we're looking for, it's proving to be a challenge while keeping rooms good-sized.

Here are 3 of the options that we're going to have further discussions about.

Option 1:
This one is the most similar to the original floor plan, but trims a bit of square footage out where we felt we could trim.  But it's still pretty big:

Option 3:
This option trims out a bit more square footage, which also shifts the layout around a bit.  We're not sure we like this layout as well for the 250 sf. it saves.......



Option 4A:
This one is the biggest departure, as it moves the storage area into a basement.  Up North, this would be a no-brainer.  But in Texas, with the water table as it is & the lack of expertise in building basements, it does admittedly have us a bit queasy thinking of the possibly high likelihood of everything in the storage area ending-up drenched - EEK!  Heck - up North many basements leak &, in theory, they know how to build them......let alone in an area where they do not.  This one isn't, yet a "no", but may be after further evaluation.....



So, we've made a bit of progress - have some more questions to ask & discussions to be had before we decide which of these will be directionally where we're headed.

Then we can get back to figuring out the outside design, too!!