Airstream Airbnb - Miss Penelope

What better way to celebrate our 29th Anniversary than to spend a few nights enjoying a new place and a new to us Airstream!  No, its not ours, but I treated my husband to 3 nights over Memorial Day Weekend in Stevensville, Montana in Miss Penelope - an Airstream Airbnb.

It was amazing to just go and chill, take in the beautiful sunsets, and dream a little about our own Airstream updates and dreams too!  

Miss Penelope is a 1976 27 foot renovated Airstream complete with a composting toilet.  This was our first experience with a composting toilet.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my personal favorite either.  I’m not sure we would like to change out the composting part of it.  Just my thoughts. 

Isn’t she just beautiful?

We enjoyed several grilled out meals just outside, coffee in the morning and some checking out the scenes in the Missoula area.

    

Oh, and stay tuned!  We also went and checked out the local Airstream dealership, too!  We almost drove away with a 70’s one we found in the back lot!  
 

Weekend at Dayo Reservoir

 

Summer and camping was calling us, so we found an opening at the Dayo Reservoir Campground in Weippe, Idaho.  Campsites have been difficult to get booked this year with all the restrictions in other states.  The last camping trip we took, we were one of the only campers from Idaho in the huge campground we stayed in.  It seems that since all of our campgrounds are open, everyone from all over the nation are coming here to camp!  We went on the Tuesday before we wanted to go camping, and found this spot!  We were pretty excited to get in!

This was our view, we had an end spot, overlooking the lake!  This campground was very basic - only water and electricity at the sites, and not showers, but we figured we could get by for a weekend.  (I could get by!  I love my showers everyday.).  Mr. Right promised I could have a shower in the Airstream, since he just installed a new water heater.  Of course, the minute we set up for the weekend, said water heater didn’t work!!  

For this trip, we brought my Grandfather’s rowboat on the top of the truck.  The kids had a blast going out fishing.  Thankfully, they’ve all become very strong swimmers, so we didn’t need to worry about them being out by themselves.  We could see just about the entire lake from our campsite, so that was pretty nice, too.

The views were absolutely amazing! Of course, having a campfire was pretty amazing as well.  The temperature was in the hundreds, but since we have air conditioning, we had a great time.

This little girl arrived with some young adults on Saturday mid morning.  They were more than drunk and saying they needed gas.   It was a strange interaction going on, but they suddenly left, and left this little girl behind.  She wondered around the campground for some time, and we decided to try to entice over, because she looked hungry and thirsty.  She drank 2 bowls full of water and 3 bowls of food.  Poor thing!  They came back later in the afternoon and picked her back up.  Such a weird thing to do!

Lots of fishing was done and fish were caught.  Mostly pan fish, but who doesn’t love pan fish for dinner?

Dayo also had a cute little beach with a dock where the kids went swimming for quite a long time to cool off from the 100 degree weather.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to Weippe to visit the visitor center that had information and paintings on the Lewis and Clark Trail.  

This was a covered porch outside of the local library that also had more indoors, but we just missed seeing that part of it.

Lewis and Clark first met the Nez Perce just outside of Weippe, so we did visit that meeting place.

A final sunset from our campsite!  Gorgeous!

1992 Land Yacht Before Shots Inside

A view from just inside the door towards the front

The outside of our 1992 Land Yacht looks to be in pretty decent shape, but the inside is something to behold!  We aren’t really sure how much is going to have to replaced, but there is a lot of water damage as well as a lot of rodent damage too.  The previous owners had some cats in here too, so we will be doing a lot of cleaning and ripping out.  This is definitely the good, the bad and the ugly of this RV!

Kitchen, which is to the left of the door

Middle hallway on the way to the back bedroom

The hallway leading to the back bedroom has a full cedar lined closet and a shower.  

This is under the bed on the passenger size.  

Just behind the dinette is a full size refrigerator.  

As far as we can tell, it seems that the refrigerator is working.  It’s not even that dirty, but will need a cleaning.

Back passenger side twin bed

We took the twin mattresses out right away, so you don’t see them pictured here.  The roof over them has been leaking on them as well as the bugs and mice had their way with it.  Gross!!!

Bathroom on the right side in the middle

The door right next to the toilet closes to shut off the bathroom, or can be opened wide to make the entire hallway into a bathroom that includes the shower across the hall.  It’s pretty large.

This is the nightstand in the back between the twins.

A better view of the bathroom.  The cupboard space is pretty great.

This is where some of the leaking is occurring above the beds.

The original tv in the bedroom over one of the twins

A view to the back of the RV from the kitchen.

Original remote included!

Chairs behind driver and passenger seats.

These chairs are not attached and seem to be in pretty good shape.  I think once it gets warm, I should be able to power wash them and let them dry.  I may have to make slip covers, but it’s just one less item to completely replace.

Pantry between kitchen and bathroom on driver’s side

The pantry has had shelves added to make it better storage.  Other than cleaning, and possible painting, this area I would like to keep as is.  Everyone needs storage in an RV!

Another look at the toilet with that door opened up.  

There it is, a look at the entire RV on the inside before we get to work on it.  We will be working on this over the next year.  Hopefully less than a year, but you just never know! Stay tuned, for updates!  

A Working Water Heater

This was hard to show in a picture, but there is a real flame going in the water heater, and better yet, nowhere else!  Everytime we used the water heater, it worked fine, except there were flames coming out of other places than the pilot.  We were having black stains up the outside of the Airstream.  After much searching, we could not come up with a new regulator for it, which Mr. Right was positive was the problem.  A search on the internet, came up with the idea to take the entire thing apart, clean it, and reassemble it to fix the problem. 

That's exactly what Mr. Right did, he took the water heater components apart, cleaned them and reassmebled them and Voila!  It works just fine with no extra flames!  The best thing, it was a free fix!  That's something that doesn't occur very often!

Pre-Ownership

I was doing some remembering where we have come from on our renovation project of the 1963 Ambassador and getting together a digital album of our progress, and thought that I would share with you what things looked like before we started.  The pictures that I will be sharing were taken over Labor Day weekend 2007, before we were able to purchase the Airstream.  We went out on a whim to where a friend had said she had seen it.  The owner of the vehicle was nowhere to be found, but the Ambassador was open, so we went in (it was on the side of the road in a junkyard) and checked it out.  We also took several pictures, so we could dream and wheel and deal on it.

This is a look from the front to the back bathroom.  Please note that some brilliant soul put in blue shag carpet.  The shag was so high that you couldn't open any of the bottom drawers under the bed!  Seems like a waste to me!Ok - I have to say that after going several years of camping without any toilet or tub, I was quite excited with the toilet area and took several pictures.  Yeah for us, the toilet worked!  Mr. Right keeps saying that he is going to replace it and put in a normal (if you can call it that) size camper toilet, so it is higher for him, and therefore more resembles the throne that he enjoys at home!  For my part, I'm afraid this adjustment, just may make me need a step stool to get on, or have my feet dangling!So I was so thrilled with the throne, I had to take a picture of the toilet paper, too!  God only knows how old that toilet paper is or where it's been!This is the louvered window by the door, where someone thought they could break in.  I would say they weren't all that successful, as they only got through one of the pieces of glass and the original rivets were still there!

And of course, the front goucho is still here!  Many of the older ones, don't have the goucho still in them, so we knew we had a decent find.  Please note the matching blue curtains that someone specially ordered for the Airstream from Sears.  A couple of the originals were in unopened packages on one of the shelves.

Hope you enjoy the before pictures.  I have many more to share, so please stay tuned.  You might want to "follow" to the right, so you don't miss anything!

Plumbing

Last year in the rush of getting our newest Airstream on the road, I didn't take pictures of the end and finished products of what we had done.  Then came winter, and who wants to go outside and take pictures?  Now that the weather is taking a turn for the better and the snow is melting, we are getting out to our beloved project and getting it back into order for camping as soon as possible.  So today, I am sharing the plumbing.  To the gentleman that asked more specific questions last year, I apologize for the delay!

This is the underside of the kitchen sink plumbing.  I think the question that was asked, was how did we used the PEX plumbing on the sink drains.  For the drain and the vent, but for the clean cold and hot water, we used the PEX.  Here's the PEX behind the drains.  On of the PEX travels along the floor along the wall to the tank under the goucho.  The hot water PEX travels the same way to under the bed in the middle where the hot water heater is.Here is a picture of the drain pipe.  The white elbow is the pipe that goes to the vent.  Originally, we had it piped out the roof, but on one of our ah-ha moments, we realized that we could used a house construction in wall vent cover, so we capped it off next to the bunk bed.  Eventually, we will probably vent it under the sink, but right now the damage is done with the hole in the wall.Finally, the PEX was also used  for the toilet.  We did learn a hard lesson and added the main in water source tube to have a valve that could be turned off when we are out of the Airstream.  Unfortunately, on our second day at WBCCI International in Madison last year, the tube that my husband has used on the toilet burst and we flooded the Airstream.  (The tube was not PEX, or the wrapped hose that you now see coming in - an effort to save money that didn't pay off!)  The PEX is the blue tubing and the wrapped plumbing tubing is the clear looking stuff.

One of my favorite features of the toilet is the kitchen sprayer for flushing out the toilet.  I'm not sure why we don't have this great feature in our house bathrooms, but it is so nice to be able to get the toilet clean without touch it!  I think that Airstream was extremely genious in this invention.  It does seem to be overkill, since the toilet can be flushed with water, but I made sure that it was put back in on the redo!

I didn't include the pictures of the bathroom sink plumbing, but that is similar to the kitchen, in that we used regular plumbing for the drainage and PEX for the water in.

The Maiden Voyage of the Pooper!

Each year, my husband and I have spent our anneversary weekend together in a Bed & Breakfast alone.  For the last few years, we have been going to Airstream Rally's that happen to be on the same weekend, without our kids.  The first time we went Airstreaming alone, we felt sort of strange, not really knowing what to do with all the space and not having to share with the kids (OK 16 feet of Airstream can seem large when you are used to sharing with 4 kids and a dog!)  Soon, we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves immensely.  Last May, we decided to take out the 1963 Ambassador for the first time to a a rally.  We had just installed our batheroom toilet, black and grey water tanks, and the tub and shower, so we had yet to work out the kinks.  Funny enough, my husband had no intentions of using the bathroom that weekend, but I did not plan to spend my "honeymoon" weekend with no showers and a pit toilet!Here we are (the second one in with the tan Suburban) at the Marshfield Rally last May.  Very nice facility, just missing nearby bathrooms with flush toilets and showers!

Needless to say, we did have some very intense discussions that weekend, and after some discussion with other Vintage owners, we I decided to try the toilet out and even had a grand plan for a shower!  As it turns out, my husband thought that if we just never used the bathroom, we wouldn't have to worry about leaks, or messes!  I on the other hand, have issues with using port-a-potties on a romantic weekend!  All this being said, my husband figured he didn't need to try the bathroom out before our trip, or even warn me that I wouldn't have my own bathroom because it wasn't going to be used.  I left on the trip thinking that since we went to the work and trouble of installing them, I could use them!  See what happens when everyone assumes!  I guess after 14 years of marriage, we still have some things to work out!

Use of the toilet went fine (more on that in a minute).  The shower on the other hand, was a fiasco.  We had a hunch that we didn't have enough grey water tank to hold a shower and dishes all weekend, but hey, you have to try sometime.  Some of the Vintage guys showed my husband how to have a "convenient" leak in the tank, so that it would slowly drain grey water and not over fill. (Before you have a heart attack, we were at a fairgrounds and it was only grey water!)  So, on Sunday of the rally (really I think I was very tolerant to go with no shower from Friday - Sunday!)  I told my husband that I would be taking a shower.  Yes, I didn't give him much choice.  I figured "sink, or swim, buddy!"  As soon as I started my shower up, water was spraying all over the camper (indoor plumbing had some leaks!)  While my dear husband is holding towels over the spray, I took the very quickest shower I could.  Much to our dismay, we got a knock on the door!  My dh answered and found that all the men were gathered around our back end chatting with their morning coffee and noticed our "leak." 

My husband quick shut the valve and immediately, I was standing in ankle deep water!  At this point, I'm trying to get soap out of my hair and tried to convice my husband to open it back up!  Unfortunately, the coffee clutch didn't leave, so my shower ended abruptly!

So, we poked  around after the rally, not wanting anyone to witness our first dump!  We eventually had to do the inevitable - DUMP!  We had all the hoses, the water to flush the toilet with and my dh even had the rubber gloves for handling everything.  (I was thinking raingear myself, but stayed clear!

Here you see my dh getting everything hooked up.  You will notice that the valve is more under the Airstream than most.  My dh moved it in, so one of kids wouldn't accidentally play with it and dump it out on us.  (We found out at International Rally, this didn't work to our advantage, because when they came to dump us, they didn't realize the pan needed to be further under there, and we had to smell black water (that's putting it nicely) all week long under our Airstream!Everything went really smooth until just after this picture!  (By the way, we had an audience too, so they thought the whole thing was hilareous!)  The dh washed everything out, but as he went to fold it all into the PVC pipe under the Airstream, the other end splashed him with the washout water!  I did start to laugh, but tried very hard to keep it to myself as he went into the Airstream to fully change his clothes.  (I think he was thinking that a shower might have been a better idea at that point!)

So there you have it, our Maiden Voyage of the Pooper!  Hope you enjoy!

Plumbing

We used the Pex plumbing to run water to everything in the Ambassador.  We didn't really take a long time to decide this for several reasons.  The first was that the only copper tubing had cracks everywhere and was even not attached in places.  Secondly, we both thought that the Pex looks better and cleaner.  Also, because the Pex is flexible, we were able to put it everywhere, without making extra joints.  We figured, the less joints, the less leaks we would have.

Initially, we fretted about the Pex tool that would cost $100 to clamp the Pex, but my husband found that one of his CV Boot Clamp Pliers worked for it.  (This was a tool he had in his posession for working on cars, but one could be found for around $30.)  We were very excited about this savings.  Although my husband did think he'd get more use out of the Pex tool, it was nice to not have to spend as much on the tool as we would on the tubing.  All tubing was purchased at Menards.  If you watch sales, you can get some good deals.Here is another vew of the plumbing.  This is in the closet.   To the left is the toilet - if you see that tan line of fiberglass, that is the black water tank.  It is enclosed in a step under the toilet and into the back sink cupboard.  To the right, you can see the original water heater.  It works and fires, but needs a replacement controller, but does work in the mean time.  That's our next project at some point.

Just to give you a picture of what the plumbing from the kitchen sink looks like (and also under the tub & bathroom sink.  We really didn't change anything as far as the original.  Where the pipes were bad, or disconnected, we just bought the same to replace it.  We tried to use as much of the old as possible, to save money and the environment!  You can see that under the sink, the white is the new and the black and grey is the old.    The only thing that we did change was the exhaust on the kitchen sink.  Instead of running the entire pipe through two beds and out the roof in the original spot, we used an inwall cap to vent it inside.  Because it is used for nothing other than the kitchen sink, there really is no smell and the hole that leaked buckets of water in the ceiling was able to be capped off permanantly.  The cap is just on the inside bed in a corner.  You can't find it unless you are looking.  I hope this answers any questions that people had about how to do the plumbing.  Please leave a comment if you have questions or comments.

Warm Weather Prevails!!

We waited all winter for the warm weather so we could work on the camper, and then when we finally got the warm weather, we had to halt work for the black water tank to get finished by the fiberglass company. Unfortunately, he had a very important order for the Military that took priority over our poop tank! I guess we can't blame, him but what was really a couple of weeks seemed to be years! So Ta! Da! The black water tank is finished!!

Now that the black water tank is finished, my husband made a new floor over the tank to set the toilet on. He then tiled that and put the rest of the bathroom cabinets in. He even put a seal around the tub, cut the dreaded hole in the new floor for all the drains and everything.

The fiberglass company is working on the grey water tank now. We are praying that he can get that done quickly, as we want to try everything out for a trial run for Memorial Day weekend! I know, we have lofty hopes, but it seems to be going together fast.
Now everything has started to get fastened down and finished. On Saturday and Sunday, I spent the days stripping the last of the furniture that hadn't been done and then staining it all, while my husband started to get everything screwed in and in place. Above you can see that he screwed the bed into the wall after sealing all the seams on the floor with silicone.

Over the weekend and on Monday, we were able to get the following attached and in place:

• Beds
• Bathroom Closets
• Electrical Box
• Tub
• Tub wall
• Vanity
• Overhead mirror
• Built, stained and installed a new kitchen wall between bedroom and kitchen sink.
• Kitchen pantry
• Goucho
• Shelf behind goucho
• Door-in-a-door clasps put back together
• Upper Kitchen cabinet installed

We are really booking along right now, and will get up pictures as soon as we have time to breathe! My biggest fear was that we would go really fast on getting everything together, and I will be in a crunch to get the curtains made. My fears may be realized at this pace!