Big Red Archives - Build Your Own Adventure

Cargo Trailer Camper: Axle Lifting Blocks

One major difference between a cargo trailer and a manufactured camper is the ride height. Campers seem to sit high up off of their axles, making them look top heavy and downright dangerous to pull. Cargo trailers are made to sit low. This makes loading and unloading equipment or vehicles a breeze. I’m a huge fan of the low ride height and the look it gives to the trailer!

That is, until we traveled to an area with lots of hills and steep campsites. We live in eastern North Carolina, an area with no hills and lots of flat ground! When we were installing our waste and fresh tanks under our new build, I was a little worried about them hanging a few inches lower than the trailer frame. After a few local trips, it appeared that everything would be fine as long as we took our time getting in and out of each campground.

When we decided to venture further west from our home, we found out exactly why that extra height is needed! As most water front sites go, there is normally a grade change from the roadway to the campsite. Our site proved to us that we were too low on that trip. As we backed in, we scraped the outlet pipe of our dump tanks on the asphalt. We made it in, but it was a nasty sound and a terrible feeling to think that all that hard work could have been ripped out from under our build.

I immediately went online and began my research on how to lift our trailer. Facebook groups are a life saver in these situations. Several folks had added axle lifts and posted all the information needed. After figuring out what axles we had on our trailer, I ordered 2 7/8″ lifting blocks.

The install took about half a day and was fairly straightforward. I used our truck to pull the trailer’s front axle up on blocks high enough to get the back wheels off the ground. I unbolted the axeles and lowered them down with floor jacks. Once down, you simply insert the lifting blocks, bolt everything up and extend the trailer brake wires. Once the back blocks were installed, I repeated the steps for the front. After the install was complete, I backed off and admired my work.

I have to admit that I wasn’t as excited about the new look of the trailer, but after a few drama free trips, I can report back that it was well worth it. We’ve had the kit for quite a while now and we have had no issues! The peace of mind has been well worth the small price tag and half a day’s work.

Why YouTube??

Our family isn’t exactly one to share tons of information with everyone. It’s safe to say three of the five of us are introverted and the other two have their moments! So why in the world would we want to start a YouTube Channel and share things with folks we don’t even know? I’m not really sure I have a clear answer for you..

I think it started way back when I was a kid. My parents purchased a giant camcorder to record our school functions. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Any chance I got, I was holding this monstrosity up on my shoulder and trying to film anything I could. I remember watching music videos on MTV and thinking that I could probably make my own. I do remember having a buddy over and trying to make a few. We thought they were great, but I’m pretty sure they were no where close to it.

Then there was the Gateway Desktop we had. I couldn’t tell you anything about Gateway now, but at the time, I thought it was as amazing as a new MacBook Pro is today. This beast had music editing software installed from the factory! My brother-in-law and I became obsessed with mixing music imediately. I’ve always loved music, but this changed the way I saw and heard it for the rest of my life. I could imagine the wave forms in every song I heard on the radio. I could pick out exactly where I would cut it and start another song. We learned to blend the transitions and we would sit there for hours listening to our masterpiece! I still get pumped up thinking about it.

During high school and college, I spent lots of time filming wakeboarding trips with my friends. At some point, I purchased my own desktop and found Window’s Movie Maker. It was the most basic editing software, but that didn’t stop me from editing our wakeboard footage and adding music. This led to posting videos from local tournaments on a forum called End of Rope Gang. It was always a challenge to make my videos better and more exciting to watch. Unfortunately, my desktop and End of Rope are no longer with us, so all of those videos are just a memory.

This brings us to present day. Many things have changed since I was making wakeboard videos! We carry video cameras in our pockets and there’s a magic app called YouTube. If only it were around when I was in school!

As I’m sure you’ve seen or read, we’ve been camping for years. Like many RVers, we enjoy watching full time families travel and see the country. As a family, we have always dreamed of traveling further and more often, but maybe not living full time in a camper. The time came when we got a crazy idea to build our own camper. That idea led to the idea of creating a channel to share our build. Once the channel began growing, it really gave us a way to express ourselves creatively.

Editing videos and sharing our adventure has been almost therapeutic for me. I get lost in the editing process and picking music just like I did back in the day on the old Gateway. It’s a lot of work outside our everyday work life and school events, but it’s absolutely worth it. I enjoy the freedom to post whatever we want and to create at our own pace. It has been a great place for inspiration for myself and my family, and I hope that you find it to be inspirational as well.

Big Red Update: Sliding Barn Door and Paint!

Once our kitchen was mostly ready, it was time to tackle another challenge. Our bathroom desperately needed a real door!! For our first few trips we used a curtain to cover the entrance, making it way too easy for the kids to bust in at any moment. Not an issue for a mom apparently, but for this dad, I was over it after my first bathroom visit!

We knew early on that we needed to come up with a compact option for our door. Ashley also knew early on that she wanted a sliding barn door for the bathroom!?!?

There were quite a few challenges with a barn door. First of all, it uses rollers that are only held down by gravity to keep the door in place. Knowing how much things move when traveling had me questioning if we would find a door smashed through our refrigerator when we got to our next campsite.

The second problem was figuring out how to fill the gap around the doorway but leave enough space to let the door slide freely. This would also keep nosy children from peeking through the gap!

But the problem that stood out the most for me was that I had never built a door! Like every other part of this build, I was going to wing it and hope for the best.

I jumped on Amazon and ordered this barn door kit, a floor guide and a handle. Then I went down to Lowe’s and picked up the lightest and cheapest trim boards that I thought could be strong enough to build a door. Luckily, we had collected a few free pallets for our build, so I decided I would use those to give our door a nice contrast to the white wood trim boards. With my trusty pocket hole kit and a miter saw, I got right to it.

I have to admit that when I started this build, I really didn’t care for woodworking. There’s something about sawdust that reminds me of beach sand. It gets everywhere and it drives me crazy when it gets in my sandals. 😆

Much like the beach, once I got over the sawdust, woodworking is actually pretty awesome. It’s a beautiful thing to take a few straight pieces of wood and create something functional. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m pretty happy with how our barn door turned out!

Like most other processes during our build, I learned something new, and I have so many ideas on how to build a better door if I ever need to. As for filling the gap between the wall and the door, well I just used standard trim around the doorway and spacers on the mount to adjust the slider out enough to keep the two from touching. It works like a charm!

While I was working on the barn door and also what seemed like weeks after, we were painting.. Probably the most boring and annoying process to me, but it had to be done. Ashley really took control of the painting and knocked most of it out while I was working on other parts of the trailer.

As with any paint project, the hard parts were the fine details and trim work. We are so lucky to live beside the best caulk installer there ever was. My dad came in and caulked all the trim and any other areas that needed it. What a difference that made! Overall, the paint really turned the look of our build around. Instead of looking like the inside of a cargo trailer, it was actually starting to look like a real living space.

Starting a build is a huge undertaking that can really make you question if you have lost your mind. When you get to certain points of your build that really change the look, it gives you a new level of confidence you need to keep going. It’s all about breaking a giant project down in to smaller pieces. Just remember that each small piece is part of a giant puzzle that has to work together. In other words, be sure the run all the wires before the walls are up..

Check out our barn door video by following this link.

Blog Update!!

It’s been nearly two years since our last post…. I would say it’s time to catch up on this blog!

We are obviously way behind on our cargo trailer build updates and all the other events that have taken place during that time. Our plan going forward is to post a mix of past and present day events. I want to fill you in on what it was like to build each part of our camper conversion and I also want to keep you up to date on what we are working on these days. This revival is going to be a team effort. I hope Ashley and I can offer different perspectives on our projects, travel and maybe thoughts about life in general.

Buckle up and hold on tight, because you have a lot of catching up to do! In the meantime, check out our YouTube page for updates on our projects. Also check out MomFeedsFive.com for Ashley’s awesome recipes and helpful tips on feeding our busy family.

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!

And So It Begins…

Do you see a common theme here at our house???

Our new trailer’s name immediately became Big Red, for obvious reasons. It’s been a few weeks now since we brought Big Red home. We have all kinds of ideas for him. We’ve got floorplans drawn and tape on the floors of the trailer laying out our ideas. We’ve got all kinds of stuff we can’t afford in our online shopping carts, and we’re constantly scouring online marketplaces looking for deals. We’ve been watching YouTube videos and hitting Facebook for more ideas and inspiration. It’s been really fun and exciting.

The actual work going on in Big Red right now, maybe not so exciting. But they are essential, important things that must be done before all the exciting stuff can happen. And, if you ask Adam, he’d probably say that this stuff is pretty darn exciting, too!

Adam washed and buffed the entire trailer right away, because that’s just what he likes to do. The transformation was pretty amazing, though, if I do say so myself. Big Red’s coat shines like a Thoroughbred in the sun now.

We (well, when I say “we”, I really mean “he”) took all the plywood walls and ceiling out of the trailer, so it’s down to just bare aluminum and steel. It was pretty tough work getting all that down, especially in the miserable heat and humidity of July in eastern North Carolina. But we powered through, excited to see what was underneath. We found a lot of rust, but Adam say’s it’s not too bad, mainly surface rust. The bones of the trailer are still in good shape.

We painted rust converter on all the steel inside the trailer to seal and protect it. It was so hot the day we were painting that the sun would dry the converter before it even had a chance to react with the metal. We had to come back out that evening after it cooled off to get it done.

We had a nice summer thunderstorm one evening, which we were grateful for. We desperately needed the rain, and it cooled things off for a little while. However, it did lead to a very disappointing surprise. We went inside the trailer to make sure it hadn’t leaked anywhere and we found little drops of water all over the walls. The roof was leaking! Adam got on top of the trailer the next morning to see what was going on, and it seems that the water puddles on top of the roof and then seeps in any cracks it can find. Mainly the cracks are in the seams where the roof meets the walls. So Adam’s working on a plan to get those cracks sealed up and find a way for the water to drain off the roof instead of puddling up there. I guess we’ve got another project to add to the list.

We’re still very early on in this big adventure that we’ve taken on, and we’ve got so much work to do. But it’s been so exciting to just imagine all the possibilities and to come up with ideas on how to make everything work together. It’s like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces. I can’t wait to show you guys what we have in store!