Project Archives - Build Your Own Adventure

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: New Tires!

How much can be said about tires? For most folks, not so much. However, If you are a member of a camping group or forum online, then you know the controversy surrounding them.

The tires that were on Big Red when we brought it home were the originals! They looked fantastic for nine-year-old tires, but that’s where tires will get you. Sitting out in the sun takes a toll on any tire. With the original owner only using the trailer for one season of racing and not so much after that, it just made sense to replace them.

After much thought on going back with 10-ply or upgrading to 12-ply, I did what any over thinker would do. We had Blacklion BF155ST 14-ply tires installed.

These tires are rated at 3,640 lbs. when used in a dual axle setup. They max out at 110 psi of air. That’s more than enough for our trailer and it sure gives me peace of mind when towing. The treads look like something off of a tractor trailer and the sidewalls appear to be made of titanium because I rarely see them flex. We’ve already put thousands of miles on these and they still look brand new!

Tires can be as controversial as what motor oil you are using. One thing I can tell you though, is that when maintained properly, they will normally last longer than you think. With all that said, you will be much more confident and comfortable towing with well maintainted equipment and that makes for a much more relaxing trip!

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.

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!

What Have We Done?

So, we did a thing. Kind of a crazy thing. Not super crazy, but definitely kind of crazy. We talk about doing crazy things all the time. But they are mostly just pipe dreams, escapes from reality. Then we go back to our normal life and mostly forget about those dreams.

But not this time! Maybe it’s an early mid-life crisis. Maybe the residual effects of quarantine. Whatever the reason, we went for it this time. We bought a giant red cargo trailer and we’re going to turn it into a camper!

We love camping. We started camping several years ago in a tent. That quickly morphed into a pop-up camper, then a travel trailer. We bought our current camper about a year and a half ago, brand new. It is big and beautiful, has a great layout and all the comforts of home.

So why in the world would we want to get rid of our big, beautiful camper? Why would we want to start from scratch with a cargo trailer that has no windows, no plumbing, no bathroom, no kitchen? I told you we did something crazy.

We have a really nice camper with a not-so-nice monthly payment and a lot of debt. We’ve been wanting a toy hauler, an RV with a garage and ramp so we can take our toys- golf cart, bikes, kayaks- with us on our great adventures. But they come with an even steeper price tag, and some of them are not built as well as you would think. Also, we wanted something we could tow with the truck we already have, and many of the RVs we like are just too heavy.

So we decided to start from scratch and make what we want. We paid cash for a cargo trailer that in its previous life was used to haul race cars. It is the perfect size for our family of five, and not too heavy that our truck can’t tow it. It’s basically empty inside, which is both exciting and terrifying. It’s like a blank canvas, just waiting for us to use our creativity and elbow grease to turn it into a masterpiece. Or we just make a giant, expensive mess!

I have faith in us, though. My husband, Adam, is very handy and loves a project. He just got done building his dream barn and is ready to move on to something new. My in-laws are like the handy man dream team and they are always willing to lend a helping hand. The kids and I don’t have much knowledge or experience, but we are excited to do our part.

We plan on filming and blogging this entire project. I’m sure it will have its ups and downs, so follow along with us! It should be an interesting experience, if nothing else!