Finding the Road

The cabinets in a 1959 Shasta Airflyte are fabulous in the way mid century modern styling was fabulous. The edges are curved. There are scallops on the wall to wall shelf in the back that holds the canvas bunks. The cut outs for the wall to wall front cabinet are a swirly exercise in over the top beauty. We are saving everything we can. If there is a little discolored wood on the corners or edges from past water damage, so be it. We love the character. We don't want this trailer to look brand new, we want her to look loved.  The only cabinet that was not at all salvageable was the floor to ceiling closet. The pin hole in the roof just created too much soft and rotted (could go through it with a pencil) wood. We are completely rebuilding that cabinet from birch and poplar. So, let's take a tour of Connie's cabinets pre-disassembly in our 1959 Shasta Airflyte and see where we are today... Front cabinets. So much to love: the gas lamp, the chevron handles, the curves, the ...

When we first bought Connie in October 2018, we knew there was some water damage. A ceiling panel had been placed over the vent area, but we could see the water damage peeking out. The first front and back wrap panels were overplayed with classic 70s fake wood paneling, nobody uses that stuff except to hide misdeeds. Most of the wood edges had some discoloration. But we naively thought, a few panels and we will be right as rain. Then we learned about lifting the skins and the thunderstorm hit.  Since winter was approaching we stuck our heads in the snow and decided to enjoy our time camping with our trailer. A frame off restore in a snow bank did not sound appealing, or even possible. We loved every minute camping in Connie. I know a lot of people say they never use the stove, but in a colder climate, there is nothing like a fresh batch of blueberry muffins out of the oven with snow on the ground outside. Summer of 2019 was a busy time, our son was getting married and moving across...