Month: November 2020

Jordan Lake- Poplar Point

Our awesome site at Poplar Point

We’ve made a lot of progress in Big Red over the last several weeks. The kitchen is coming along, and we put most of the wall panels up and painted them. It’s actually starting to look like a camper inside, and we’ve been itching to take it out of town for a few days. Our buddy Eric has been wanting Adam to detail his camper, and he happens to live just a few minutes from Jordan Lake- a perfect excuse for a camping trip!

We all took a day off from work and school so we could spend an extra day away. We loaded Big Red up with all our camping supplies AND all of Adam’s detailing equipment, and we headed towards Raleigh at rush hour! Thankfully, traffic wasn’t too bad, and we got to Jordan Lake- which is about 20 minutes outside of Raleigh, North Carolina- just before dark. It had been several years since we had camped there, going way back to our tent camping days! There are several campgrounds around the lake, all of them state-owned. We tried one we hadn’t been to before, but had been highly recommended, Poplar Point. We were not disappointed!

The Lake!

The campground felt huge. It is pretty densely wooded, and the winding road through the campground seems to go on forever. There are several different camping loops off of the main road. We stayed in Loop F, which has about 60 sites, 20 or so that are waterfront. Our site, F45, was not supposed to be a waterfront site, but the water levels were so high that the lake had crept out to about 50 feet from our site! It was an awesome site, probably 80 feet long, with a few little steps leading down to a separate picnic area. There were trees all around us, and especially that first night, we felt like we were alone on the lake.

Friday morning, we lounged around, enjoying making coffee INSIDE Big Red for the first time! We walked and biked for miles around the campground, enjoying the wonderful fall weather and the beautiful views of the lake and falling leaves. We left the campground and explored a bit that afternoon, forgetting just how close we were to civilization!

Camp kitchen setup!

Adam’s sister and her family live only about 20 minutes from Jordan Lake, so they came to visit us Friday evening. I enjoyed cooking dinner for everyone on my new Blackstone that Adam got me as an early Christmas present, which I absolutely love! The boys got an awesome campfire going, and the adults spent the evening laughing and reminiscing by the fire while the kids ran and played. It was a great night.

Saturday morning, Adam left for his detailing job and the kids and I got caught up on some schoolwork we missed on Friday. We spent the afternoon with my sister-in-law and nephew, and when Adam got home we made an easy dinner on the Blackstone. We enjoyed one more relaxing evening, knowing we would have to pack up and head home in the morning.

The kids having fun at a nearby park.

When we left on Sunday, we promised ourselves that we would be back soon! It is a beautiful, serene area, on the water, close to friends and family, and only a few minutes from the big city. It was the perfect weekend, and we can’t wait until the next time!

Big Red Update- Flooring and Bathroom

Okay, guys. It’s been a while. My life has been taken over by public schooling in the time of COVID-19. But I don’t want to talk about that today. Today, I want to talk about Big Red!

Since you last heard from me, Big Red has undergone quite a transformation. He has new flooring, which really took him from looking like a cargo trailer to looking like an actual camper. We went with vinyl sheet flooring because we thought that would be the most simple, affordable, and durable option. And it looks amazing! After looking at several options, we finally decided on a gray/tan wood-look flooring, and I couldn’t be happier with the results!

After the flooring went down, Adam started working on the bathroom. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to build a bathroom from scratch. Luckily, Adam did, because he built a bathroom in his barn last year. But putting a bathroom in a trailer proved a lot more difficult than putting a bathroom in a building. It took a lot of time, patience, and money ( a lot more money than we thought!), but I think we’ve finally got it mostly figured out. It’s still not 100% done, but it’s pretty close, and everything works!

Just laying out the components of the bathroom proved to be quite a challenge. There is a storage area with an exterior door located in the front corner of the trailer, which is where we wanted to put the bathroom. So we had to work around that box when trying to lay it out. We also knew we wanted a shower big enough to actually use comfortably, which takes up a lot of valuable square footage in such a tight space! We tried probably a dozen different configurations before we finally settled on the final layout. But we finally figured it out, and we’re quite happy with the results.

Adam framed up the walls first and we started to get a sense of the space we were working with. We got a great deal on a corner shower pan on Marketplace, and we used waterproof sheeting from Lowe’s for the shower walls. Once the shower was in place it started to feel like a real bathroom!

We bought this toilet from Amazon, which is super nice, and has a porcelain top that feels like a real residential toilet. We wanted to put the sink in the corner of the bathroom so it would take up less space, and Adam’s parents found us a tiny cabinet to use as the base. We had the great idea of using a stainless steel mixing bowl for the sink, but so far we haven’t quite figured out how to make that work! I’ll have to update you later on the progress of the sink…

Adam and his dad did all the plumbing work. This proved to be a bear of a job and I was glad I was not involved in that. Trying to get all the plumbing to the tanks and making sure everything drained properly took a great deal of planning and ingenuity, especially considering the low ground clearance of the trailer. Adam spent hours laying under the trailer in awkwardly uncomfortable positions, and I’m afraid he may have suffered permanent damage to his back!

We used thin paneling sheets for the walls, which are very lightweight and don’t look half bad. We tried whitewashing for the first time, and I think they look pretty good. You can still see some of the grain from the wood, but it is light and bright inside. We are planning to install a sliding barn door, which I am super excited about. I think it will be very functional in the tight space, and it will give it that farmhouse feel we are looking for.

Even though we’re not quite done, I’m amazed at how we were able to take a blank slate and design and build a whole bathroom that (mostly) works! I have to give all the credit to Adam. He has spent hours and hours working so hard to build a functional space for his family. It may be a luxury to some, but for our family, having a bathroom in the camper is pretty much a necessity. We are so excited that it’s done and so happy with how it turned out!