Vintage Travel Trailer Lighting . . . Improving on the Original

We own a 1968 Ken Craft Travel Trailer named Aqua Betty.  I wrote about her in my first entry on this blog.    She is very original and usually I am a stickler to staying with the original elements if we can.  But in Betty's case, I really did not like the original ceiling lights in the kitchen and eating areas.  I am not sure you could find more vanilla or plain lights if you tried.  Also, the bottom glass disc would not stay straight in the metal enclosure.

So we set out to find some vintage lights that would fit the space. We needed lights that were very shallow and that were wide enough to cover the current spot as they did not stain the wood under the lights.  We needed two matching lights and of course we wanted to find a good value!

We try to hit the Restore stores when we go out thrifting.  I always look at the lighting section to see if they have any interesting lights.  In January, we went to the Restore Store in Baraboo, WI and imagine my excitement when I ran across a very large, shallow round light in excellent vintage condition.  Now if there was only a matching one . . . oh wait, there is . . . oh darn, it is missing the screw top to keep the glass piece in place.  So I looked around hoping the little screw top just fell off and I was right, it was laying on the shelf below the light.  So we had a matching pair, in the size and depth we needed, wiring was in excellent shape and they were a great value at $5 a piece.

So this past weekend, after our first camping outing of the season, we installed our new lights.  I just love them and they fit perfect and are just the right depth and width.


Before -  light over kitchen sink

After -  light over kitchen sink

Before - light over eating area

After - light over eating area

I usually don't mess with the original design of vintage things, but this was a good lesson for me that there are times you can improve on the original and be very happy with the results.

Rebecca

Adventures in Vintage Camping

We are going to kick off our blog with Aqua Betty, our vintage camper. Aqua Betty started her life with us as Ugly Betty. We got her on eBay from a couple in PA in 2007. We live in WI so we had to travel about 900 miles to pick her up.

She is a 1968 Ken Craft and is 26ft long. She has had a pretty interesting life. She spent a good portion of her early years traveling throughout Mexico and the Southwest as home to a preacher and his family. They lived in her 24/7. She was then sold to the couple in PA and they used her as a weekend camper for many years.

When we got her she had a big brown stripe and horrible green indoor/outdoor carpet. The biggest issue was that the wife of the couple decided the camper smelled musty and put an entire box of moth balls in her about 2 days before we picked her. Then shut her up tight as a drum. She even went as far as to crush the mothballs and sprinkle them in every conceivable place in the camper. When we went to pick her up we about choked on the smell. The husband said that he told his wife "not to do it". We wish she would have listened to him. They told us everything worked so we took her to the camp ground near their home and camped in her that very first night.

Our first evening of camping in her was not a pleasant experience. First off, things did not work as they told us. We could not get running water, the toilet didn't work and the smell, oh the smell. Luckily there are windows by each of the twin beds so we both slept with our noses pressed against the window screens just to get through the night. The next morning we called ahead to our next stop and made hotel reservations.

We had her stripe painted aqua, replaced the floor, got new mattresses, new foam and fabric on the benches, new window treatments, a new toilet installed, and all her plumbing redone. But most importantly we removed every stinking bit and piece of the moth balls. They were everywhere. We had to rip out all of the insulation because it was full of moth balls. Honestly it took us almost a year to get all the smell out. It seemed to finally go away when we ripped up the old vinyl floor and installed the new floor.

Now she is Aqua Betty. We took her to the Vintage Trailer show in Montello, WI last year. It was fun to drive in and hear the positive comments. It was a real treat to visit with other enthusiasts and to show her off.

We still have work to do on her. She does not have the original Aqua frig so we want to get one that we can make look vintage. We need to fix a couple of spots in the wood that got wet and damaged before we got her and we want to have her white part repainted. But for now she is one sassy vintage camper and we enjoy camping in her very much.

Livin' the vintage life in our vintage camper

Rebecca