Vintage Shasta Phase Two: Gutting & Painting

I cannot even begin to explain to you how excited I was to have this amazing little camper in my possession! I had been dreaming of this, planning and designing in my head for close to a year. To further amp my anticipation, the following month had me immediately leaving for work trips, as well as an incredible Ireland adventure, which meant the camper would have to wait. When I returned from my trips, I dove head first into this camper and spent the next few weekends with various power tools and paint brushes in my hand.

Demo Day!

The very first thing I had to do to start work on the camper was to completely gut it. I unleashed my inner Chip Gaines and went to town. These little campers may seem small at only 13 feet, but holy moly, was there a lot of stuff to come out of that camper. A lot of it needed to be carefully removed so that I could use it later, but there was a decent amount that went right in the trash as well. I didn’t really feel like I could sleep comfortably on a 60 year old “mattress” that had been used by so many people…

I will admit that this was not a complete demo day, as much fun as that would have been to smash things. The kitchen area and closet were all pretty structurally sound, so I left those in place as much as possible and worked around them.

Once it was completely empty, I removed all the cabinet doors and drawers, and spent probably three days just cleaning. It sure had accumulated a lot of dust over the last 60 years!

Painting

The back corner had some damage due to a previous leak. I wanted to make sure mold wouldn’t be an issue, so after the leak was sealed, the first coat of paint for the entire camper was Kilz primer. This also helped block and seal odors, cover the stain that was left, and give me a foundation for the paint colors.

The hardest part of this whole process was probably deciding paint colors. While I knew what colors I wanted, getting into the nitty gritty with paint colors is intimidating! It always goes on a different color than what you imagined, and the lighting is always different than in the store. I went back and forth trying to find the exact color teal that I wanted. I finally found a piece of fabric that I knew I wanted to use for the seat colors, so I was able to take that to the paint store and just have them color match that exactly.

Painting took DAYS and I was so over it by the end. I completely underestimated how long it would take to paint the interior of a tiny 13’ trailer. I was playing the “do I really need a third coat of paint, or can I just get away with this” game. Luckily, my mom came to visit that weekend and helped me power through.

The paint job made SUCH a difference. It went from feeling like an old, dirty, outdated space, to one that I was really excited to spend time in. I mean, just look at these before and after photos! Is it even the same camper??