Oops We Did It Again; So Long Trophy Trailer!
Only a few short months ago, I shared the story of our Trophy Trailer and our plans to renovate it. Well, like we often do, we’ve changed our minds. Life changes, circumstances change, and minds change. At least ours do! I am fairly certain that many of our family and friends probably think we’re a bit “flighty” with all of the decisions we make and then sometimes un-make! I’ll talk more about that in a bit but let’s talk Trophy, shall we? Should It Stay or Should It Go Now? We really did have great intentions for this trailer of ours. When we first purchased it, we were sitting in a completely different place. Literally, we were sitting in Colorado waiting for our next great project! Travelling for longer periods of time and exploring the country was our goal and the Trophy trailer would suit those goals nicely. It was big enough for Warren to have a workspace while we were on the road and we would have plenty of room for the two dogs as well. We went to work on the renovation in the fall of 2019. Basically, we gutted the entire interior of the trailer. We had to. We needed to locate and fix all of the active water leaks before we could do anything else. I worked on tearing everything out that I could on my own. Warren would handle some of the bigger demo stuff for me and then he began working on fixing and sealing all of the leaky places. We did as much as we could before winter weather arrived and then we had to cover up the trailer and wait for Spring to arrive so we could jump back into the work. Best Laid Plans But then remember, stuff changes! At the beginning of 2020, you remember all the way back to that time, don’t you? You know, when everything was still “normal”? We began to contemplate selling our home. You can catch up on that development here. That was just one more decision of ours that has probably contributed to our “flighty reputation” with family and friends! Selling our home meant new projects to get the house ready for market. The Trophy trailer renovation was no longer our only project and therefore no longer took precedence. The trailer then sat. It sat through all of the remaining home renovation. It sat through the sale of the home in the fall of 2020. And it sat at a storage facility until we hooked it up and towed it to southwest Missouri several months later. Yep, Missouri and yep, that’s “a-whole-nother” story and decision! A Renewed Hope For The Trophy! Once we got the Trophy back to Missouri we began to get excited about getting back to the renovation. We had projects to complete in our new house but the house was completely livable as it was so we decided to put everything into the trailer project. Well everything when we weren’t out on the lake, that is! But there was one constant conversation we kept having regarding the Trophy. Now that we had moved to Missouri, we didn’t really see much of a need or even an interest in leaving our new home any time soon to travel the country. The Trophy no longer fit our original purpose for it. But we were torn. We had so many great ideas for what the Trophy could be and we weren’t eager to give up on those plans. We originally agreed to complete the project, maybe take it out on one or two trips and then sell it. Perhaps get a smaller trailer later for shorter trips back to Colorado, etc. Real Life Happens We proceeded on the remaining work needed to completely seal the trailer from leaks. Windows were removed and re-sealed. All new weather stripping was added to each window as well. All new rubber trim was installed to the exterior. The roof got a fresh coat of rubber roofing material to finally make her water-tight. Oh and new paint and graphics were added to the exterior as well so she looked great from the outside and she was as dry as could be on the inside. Summer arrived and it was lake weather (and hey, too hot to work in the trailer anyhow) so we shelved a lot of the work to enjoy our first summer on the lake. By early July though we had another more pressing issue to deal with. Warren’s dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Warren would end up spending nearly two months of combined time in California helping his parents with medical appointments initially and then helping his mom with various tasks after his dad died less than two months after his diagnosis. Family needs came first and it gave us some time to reevaluate our priorities and ultimately the projects we had lined up. Sealing The Deal With so much time away from home and multiple projects now lining up for Warren, we decided to kill the plans for the Trophy trailer. There were just too many things going on and if we could find someone interested in taking on a project, we had a sweet water-tight trailer just waiting to be fixed up on the inside. And after only a few short days on Craigslist, someone wanted her! It was very sad to see the Trophy rolling away from our house. Again, we had big plans for it and thought we would have had the chance to take her on at least one trip! But she went to someone who really seemed to like her and so we were happy to know that the Trophy would get all fixed up eventually. And we could now move on to the next project…home renovations, again! Followed by a new garage build, a project car finally brought to life, and an old truck needing some love! Oh and work on Warren’s dad’s old Cheetah boat;
Triple T: Trophy Travel Trailer; The Introduction
So, we bought a travel trailer in the summer of 2019. And not any old trailer, this was a Trophy! What, you’ve never heard of a Trophy travel trailer? Yeah, neither had we. But the guy we bought it from said it was the “Cadillac” of travel trailers in its day! We weren’t sure what he meant, but if he was referencing to how she rides, he was right! This trailer is the smoothest thing we’ve ever towed! So yeah, there’s that one thing the guy was right honest about. TIME FOR ANOTHER RENO It was about time for us to dig into another project. After 4 years, The renovation of our home in Colorado was pretty much done. Unbeknownst to us, the house wasn’t really done, but who knew? That’s another story you can read here. Anyhow, we had begun to talk about travelling a bit more. We’ve always wanted to explore more of the country and we love road trips. Since Warren owns his own consulting business, he can work from anywhere. To save money on travel expenses, we wanted a trailer big enough to provide a mini office for Warren and room for our 2 dogs to come along. We had already, years before, completed the renovation of a 1991 Lance truck camper. The camper was great but it was far too small for longer trips. We sold the camper in early 2019 for more than we had originally purchased it for. The family who bought the camper was excited to find one that looked so good and was affordable. Take a look out there at what older campers go for and take note of their typical condition; you’ll soon see why this family was excited to find our camper! PIECE OF CAKE Given our experience with renovations, we felt confident we could find something to fix up in the world of used travel trailers. And true to our nature, we wanted something old, with character. We had once purchased a brand new toy hauler trailer; long before we figured out buying new stuff didn’t work for us anymore. While we got a lot of use out of that trailer, we were disappointed with the quality of its finishes. When we tried to sell the trailer, we were even more disappointed. We were barely able to sell it for what we still owed on it. So this time around, finding something older that we could fix up, made the most sense to us. THE “CADILLAC” OF TRAVEL TRAILERS Warren found the Trophy on Craigslist. He was pretty excited about it because he loved the shape of the trailer. Not the shape it was in (cause that was nothing to get excited about), but the shape or profile of the trailer. It looks distinctively vintage. The Trophy is a 1979 and the trailer itself is a total of 31 feet long. Once we saw the trailer in person, I was not a fan. It was big and while not horrible inside, not so great inside either. The guy we bought it from talked about how much he and wife loved this trailer, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course they had to begrudgingly sell it because they were moving, otherwise they would never be letting go of their “baby”. You know the line. Say anything to make these people think they are getting a steal of a deal on the best thing ever! And the guy said there was only one water leak. Yep, got it, one leak! BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! BE THE FIRST TO BUY THIS TRAILER AND WE’LL INCLUDE… While I was not a fan, Warren was all about it. And I was playing hardball on the sale. I really didn’t want this trailer. And while I was throwing out all the reasons I didn’t want it, the guy said “What if I throw in that truck over there too?” Seems the guy was trying to off-load anything and everything he could before their “big move”. One mention of a free truck in the deal and I knew I had lost this war. Warren’s face lit up as he walked over to the truck to give it a looksee. We then bought the trailer along with a truck that couldn’t get out of 2nd gear, thrown in to sweeten the deal! Yay! The good news is that we found someone later to buy the truck which lowered the overall cost of the trailer, so I have to give that one to Warren! STALKING THE RARE TROPHY TRAVEL TRAILER As soon as we purchased the Trophy, we tried to do some research on the Trophy brand. The interior had obviously been modified and we were curious about what it may have looked like originally. If we could find some images of it, we may be able to bring back some its original character. No. Such. Luck. We found only one old set of pictures of another Trophy the same age that was once for sale. The inside was in even worse shape than ours and the layout was different, so it was a bit of a bust. It may have been the “Cadillac” of travel trailers, but the brand was obviously not so memorable or it is truly a rare bird. I’d like to think that it’s really, really, rare; makes for a better story! ONE THING ALWAYS LEADS TO ANOTHER, ALWAYS Shortly after we brought the trailer (and the truck that could only go about 40 mph) home, we started to contemplate what all we would need to do with the thing. There was that ONE water leak we knew we needed to address but we weren’t sure how much we wanted to tear-out and how much we wanted to keep. We knew that the ugly commercial grade carpet had to go so that was the first thing we pulled up. And what do you know, there was now clear evidence on the subfloor that