My husband and I just aquired a 17 ft 1984
Bigfoot on Friday. This is our first trailer project - we were avid tent campers before our baby was born in January, but now we have to realize that tent camping in Canada with an infant might not be such a good idea and makes the season awfully short...
We will be travelling with two adults, our son and our two dogs.
So here is our new aquisition:
So far, she looks like she's in pretty decent shape, structurally sound, no visible water damage and everything works. The only thing is that apparently the pilot
light of the
furnace sometimes gets blown out when the fan starts and the gas is low... we'll have to look into that.
We still have a bunch of things we want to do of course. Here's the long list:
- replace the flooring. Right now there is carpet over an old vinyl floor. The carpet is done and the vinyl is ugly, so we want to rip both out, inspect the actual floor beams and lay a new floor. We're still undecided whether we want engineered hardwood or black and white checkered vinyl. We like the look and feel of hardwood, but are worried about the dirt and water.
-
paint the panels white, replace the plastic corner mouldings with aluminum.
- replace the cabinet and drawer doors for wood with a flat surface. We want to replace the knobs for sure, not sure if we can still use the original latches on new doors.
- either re-laminate the table / counters and mount a new ledge or replace them with multi-layered plywood. Does anyone know why that little area on the back right corner of the counter is raised and what's underneath it? I love the look of this, but could only ever find a supplier in Germany:
- re-upholster the cushions with a lighter and friendlier fabric that is easier to clean (washable and easy to vacuum the dog hair off it).
- sew new curtains.
- get rid of the little beige/brown top curtains. We suspect that the ledge they are attached to is structural in parts (e.g. for the bunk), so we have to come up with new solution to hide it.
- replace the
light fixtures with LED
- install marine
battery
- install
solar panels, possibly replacing the antenna which we're not using. Have to look into that.
I'm sure everything will take longer than expected and we'll learn a lot about our little trailer in the process, but that"s all part of the fun
. Looking forward to showing our progress and learning lots!