I’m really not fond of the old mid-60s cabinets. They might have been peachy in 1964 when our Dot was all shiny and new but now 40 years later they’re nasty. Maybe not on your trailer, but on mine, eww. I tried to get with the program and learn to love them at the beginning of this second remodel.
Before our beautiful new Ikea kitchen
But then I pulled the refrigerator, that had died, and the oven, that had died and took a good look. Ick. I might have been able to do something with the cabinets but honestly, why? I wanted more counter space, storage and modern conveniences. I wanted all the cool widgets and thingamabobs that I have in my home Ikea kitchen. I just wanted all this in my vintage trailer. So I yanked ‘em. (Before anybody gets mad at me, I offered my old cabinets to the local Airstream community for karmic points only, no vintage parts were dumped before their time. Hey, we have old Land Rovers and Jaguars we know how this works.)
However, this along with an amazing Ebay find precipitated a major attack of ship-fitters disease (and this is a Land Rover based explanation which makes it even better). Anyone know what that is? It’s a bit like pulling on a single piece of yarn and unraveling a sweater factory. But I digress.
What did I find on eBay? A perfect bathroom from a 1965 Airstream Globetrotter.
JACKPOT!
Why jackpot? Because my trailer has a full tub? And that is just FREAKING INSANE in a 19 foot trailer. In 1965 Airstream came to their collective senses and put a reasonable sized bathroom in the rear of this petite trailer without changing the dimensions. In other words, if I could get the single-piece-8-foot-wide-noodle-wiggly-molded-fiberglass bathroom from the wilds of Kentucky to Northern California it would be a simple process to install the bathroom. Now, lets just say that shipping a bathroom across the country during that summer when gas prices were going through the roof was painfully expensive. It was also an adventure that culminated as Chris and I rescued the bathroom intact out of the San Jose Yellow Freight yard trash bin because they thought it was, and I quote, “crap”.
But I digress.
Using this new bathroom gave me about two whole extra feet of counter space. Yippee!!!
Here is the old floorplan with the ginormus bathroom followed by the new floorplan with the bathroom cut back to a respectable size for a small trailer. I mean really, a full bath? C’mon!
As was 1964 Globetrotter layout
And this is what we are most delighted with now. I went from about 36 inches of counter top to nearly 6 feet since I also made covers for both the sink and the oven and created a full-length cubby under the countertop and above the sink cabinet (this is my floating counter) for storage of the crap that you usually have on top. I totally rock.
The final plan after the remodel
The next set of posts will walk through the details of how we laid out and installed the kitchen cabinets.
