I have an opportunity to buy an old, rank camper at my hunting club. The guy that owned it died on a business trip a few months ago and his family is just asking $300 for it. I'd get the camper plus use of the area it is sitting on. The guy built a wooden deck, a covered wood shed, a covered generator box, and wired everything up. All I have to do is to get the thing in working order.

So, I go and open up the camper to look inside and OMGawsh it's gonna need a lotta interior work ... The fridge has cartons of probably 6 month old milk rotting and spilling in it, it's probably infested with fleas and ticks, there is evidence of mice, the whole danged thing stinks.

Anyway, I thought I'd start a thread here of my project as it unfolds, will give me a place to ask for help and guidance. Please feel free to contribute ideas, I'm just now starting to develop a plan for it ... Here's what I think I'll do to start:

1) Toss a few flea/tick bombs in it
2) Check the tires and suspension, then tow it home for the summer. I'll have to put in on a storage lot near the house then bring it home to work on it.
3) Pull out all fabric materials and either clean or replace them (mattresses, cushions, drapes)
4) Pull the fridge out, dump the contents (while holding my nose), pressure wash it, chlorox it.
5) Put on a plastic suit and go inside, pressure wash everything
6) Chlorox everything inside then air it out
7) Pressure wash the exterior
8) Possibly paint the exterior walls
9) Clean and paint all exposed metal surfaces with Rustoleum

Again, guidance/ideas welcome ... Here are some pics:

Looking forward to seeing how it works out.

That's awesome! Not too bad for $300, gotta show pics as you restore it

I'll do it! I love a project and a bargain. Some say I'm cheap

Good luck.

If that's worse than you thought, then you haven't been inside many hunting trailers lol. Thing looks like it's in great shape. I'd start leaving the popup down when not in use for a while. Otherwise, clean her on up, If the cushions have zippered covers take them off and wash them. If not consider using a carpet steamer.

Any way to wash the inner foam or should I just toss and replace?

fleas and mice? I'd toss all fabric into a raging fire.

We have cleaned them before just taking a tub of soapy water and a tub of rinse water and doing it the old fashioned way, may be an easier way, like maybe a carpet cleaner.

I would replace all cushions and fabric. Then remove stove and fridge, take off all drawers, and cabinet doors, anything that can come out. Then figure out where mice are entering the cabin. Ticks, fleas, spiders can be removed with liberal use of foggers, thus the reason to remove all items you can from the interior. I restored a 32 foot bumper pull that had rotted floors and walls from a leaky roof. Took me 8 months of weekend work, but that thing was solid when I finished it.

I've seen a W H O L E lot worse than that. Looks like you got a good deal to me.

See if you can find a manufacturer's schematic of it. Use the heavy gauge steel wool mixed with insulation foam spray to stop up the holes. Spray the foam in the hole then jam the steel wool in using a screwdriver. do it several times. If the blade of the screwdriver can fit then so can a critter.

Hell, that looks better than josh1904's camper.

It's so bad, the Russian moved out.....

Be easy with the pressure washer. You can mess one up quick using it. You look like you got you're work cut out for you but ought to have something when you are done.

Id be careful pressure washing the inside..especially around the electrical.

Also, check those tires before moving it for dryrot, so you dont get a flat on the road.

Id also wonder about the roof. They can get leaky and I noticed he had a cover on the site.

By the way, the site, deck and electric hook up covers your costs. That camper is all gravy!
Fix her up and have a good time. I think you will like the hunting camp enviroment there rocket!

I think you made a real good deal by the way.
I had a nice newer camper hooked up to hunt out of for years and still had to battle the mice. They just are out there so always a factor.
The best thing was using one of those "sonic" plug in pest eliminators as well as plugging ANY opening like others here have recommemded with steel wool.

Yeah I'm concerned about the roof leaking. That's the one thing that could screw up this project. I'd like to be able to take it anywhere but park it at the camp when hunting or when not in use. A leaking roof would spoil any work I did inside

I would bet it leaks, campers that sit like that tend to develop problems from my experience. Its why so many build those roofs over them. I wouldn't have a hunting camper spot without one.

I wouldn't move it, take a generator and clean it good and do all you need to there. It may stink and have bugs but it appears to be in good shape from the pictures.

I bet some soapy warm water, chlorox, and bug spray would go a extremely log way here. Maybe something to plug those nostrils up. lol

Good luck with whatever you decide.

This is what I'd do, too.
Also, skirt it with plastic sheeting and toss a couple of those bug bombs underneath it.

looks like a fun project!

What are the roofs of those things usually made with? Could you not just find the leaky spots and fiberglass over it?

The Roof is usually rubber based, you can use Dicor lap sealant to seal any leaks and maintain the roof from leaking. Seal any joint or cracks, a well maintained roof will be a patchwork of Dicor

Fixing the roof wouldn't be hard at all. Sno Seal it. I believe that's the stuff.

And I throw moth balls underneath mine during the summer. Seems to keep the critters away. And something else I have found to work over the Summer Months, is buy some cheap dryer sheets and spread them throughout the camper. Keeps bugs and other stuff out. It really works.

Dryer sheets couldn't hurt the smell.

I'm thinking about ripping out that table and replacing it with a folding table and a couple of chairs. That would give it a lot more room.

Also I'm wondering what is below that lower bunk bed. Maybe I can rip that open then make it storage space ?.?

Old camper than 'Huntress and I bought years back had the sleeper/table removed and a dinette set in its' place...we took that out and rebuilt benches and a convertible table back into the original footprint.

Wow ... I just got off the phone with an old friend. He saw this thread (he's not a member, just reads the forum) and knew my handle. This guy was close friends with the owner of the trailer and helped him build the deck, gen house, wood shed, all that stuff.

It sure is a small world

Rocket I think the water tank will be under one bunk bed, and youll have storage under the other.

Also, that table top comes of and lays there in the middle of the dinette area and turns it into a bed, so keep the table top at least to use like that.

I agree with N2. I wouldnt move it, Id just clean er up real well and I think youll have a great little camp, with room for a guest or two.

Congrats! It does look like a good little project, and will give you something to do, as well as get you there to get some scouting in too!

You going to have a good time with the camper and the new club. I thought about checking out that club but I was too cheap to pop the $1,000.

Not to hijack, but...


When I was in Puerto Rico, in '82, I wandered into Old San Juan one day, just looking around. Ended up going into a jewelry store and buying some stuff. The clerk I dealt with was an American girl, few years older than me. During the course of my conversation with her, we discovered that 7 years earlier, when she had been in the USAF, she actually worked for my Dad...she was undergoing a lot of different things at the time, and it was my Dad who pushed for her discharge for the good of the service. Contrary to what you'd think, she was actually very appreciative that he had done so, and applied her employee discount to my purchases!

I've seen a bunch of pictures over the years, from my Dad's early days in the AF when he worked on the flightlines. One picture, in particular, shows a group of 14 men posing near an F-100, at Eglin AFB. My Dad told me that all of the men in the picture except for him and one other guy were killed one day in an accident on the flightline that involved an aircraft exploding. The two of them were walking away from the airplane when the explosion happened, and the other guy had turned back towards the plane to say something to one of the crew still working around it. He caught a piece of shrapnel dead-center in the face. Dad told me that a long series of operations had been necessary to even begin to get the right side of the man's face to actually face "forward" again. That happened around '63-'64. In 1986, I was working patrol with the Andalusia, Al Police Dept, I stopped a car for speeding on the south side of town. I had never met the man, and the only pic I'd ever seen of him was before the accident that disfigured him so badly, but the nature of the scar and disfigurement made it immediately obvious to me who this man was. He recognized and remembered my last name, from my nametag...he was on his way, all those years later, to a surgical center for his 30th operation.

Last year, I left the rig I'd been on for 15 years to start on a newbuild drillship. One of the Captains on the ship was retired USCG. In talking to him, we discovered that his best friend, who is retired now and living in Oregon, was my CO in '83 onboard a ship I was stationed on at the time.

Yep...it's a small world!

Well how about that ... I found some info online about this camper and it confirms that the beds fold out and the camper can sleep 6

I was sitting in a jeep in Cambodia in 1970 when a truck pulled up and stopped to asked directions. I had a Confederate flag on my boonie hat, one question led to another, he was my second cousin. We were both at his grandfather's funeral the year before.

A brief update ... price is $400 instead of $300 but that's ok. I've got the scoop on the camper from two guys that knew the man that owned it. The roof does not leak, they put roofs over all of the campers out there. He died last September and up to that point everything was working. This might just be a cleanup only project ...

Well it doesn't look like I can easily move this thing so I'm gonna try to find a way to clean it up on site. I've got a 1KW gen I can take plus a pressure washer which I really need for certain parts. Problem is the water source for the PW ... Does someone make a filter I can put on a hose to put in a creek for the PW water source?

Fine just like it is.

Any ideas on the pressure washer?

Just wrap some screen around intake and tie off with wire. Make a float out of a milk jug so the intake stays out of the mud. Use a couple of bamboo sticks, make a "X", hang hose over it, this will anchor it in one place.

Thanks Glen

And we're off... First day. Cleaned out all the junk, pulled apart all cushions and pulled down all drapes. Set everything up to get the full force of a couple bug bombs

Plastic around base, bombed underneath too

Lmao. It took me a minute to figure out that's a chair. At first it looked like you got awefully violent with some type of animal.

Haha! Just an old beat up chair

Went to Gates Cleaners and asked for advice on the cushions. Very helpful folks there. I took all the covers off the foam and washed them with Tide in cold water. I went to a laundromat so I could use one of those large load washers. This weekend I'll tackle cleaning the foam with warm soapy water. Dang these things stank

Man, you are going to have that thing to nice for a hunting trailer.

Thanks, if I can get rid of the smell it will be very nice. Structurally it's in great shape

If you permanently skirt the bottom I would recommend some packs of rat poison from Tractor Supply. It's the best I've found and comes in a box with several packs in the box. Seems like the packs may be red and white with black writing on them. I open a couple and sprinkle some granules around and throw 2 or 3 unopened under my cabin for the critters to snack on.

I hadn't thought of permanently skirting it but that sounds like a good idea ... for the varmint control and for keeping cold wind from blowing under it during the winter. I'll look into this ... Thanks

do not store corn in you camper

hahaha

Or just outside within 10 feet of your camper....like my lease partner did year before last.

Can you not find new foam somewhere and cut it to fit?

Yes but everything I've found is very expensive ... Several hundred dollars to replace it

Found this method, gonna try it plus it's almost FREE!

If it truly had fleas in and around it, I'll give you a tip. Bug bombs will kill the adults, and some may render the eggs and larvae dead too. But there's no chemical that will kill pupae. So if there are pupae there, they will hatch out to adults. They hatch out when they sense warmth and vibrations, ie when your are there working. So I'd bomb it several times after you get done working there before you leave.

I've bombed it 2x so far. The cushions are in a storage building, hoping that a disinfectant/vinegar wash will take care of them.

Sounds good. Fleas can be extremely frustrating to eradicate.

I believe it. I'm not really sure it had fleas in the first place, I'm just being careful. The foam cushions smelled like bug bomb before I started so I know the guy hit them at least a few times with a bomb

I wonder if you could use "Kid and Pet Odor" eliminator to soak it in, and/or Borax to kill mildew.

Close up camper and boil about a 1/2 quart of white vinegar till its gone.

Not a bad idea

Today I was able to find out a little more about Tim Brown, the guy that owned the camper and dies last September. I talked to his father on the phone for a bit and we settled up on the camper. Evidently this man was a great guy and a great friend to have. Just posting this pic here in his honor ...

Just talked with my friend that gave me that pic. This picture was taken about 12 hours before he died. RIP Tim Brown ...

Wonder what it would be like to be on a hunt with him? Not before - but next season. He might show you where to get the buck he always tried to but never could. Might also walk you off a bluff in the dark.

roadkill sounds like your next story!

That's cool. My wife and Tim's sister were best friends growing up.

Anybody know what happened to Tim? Disease? Accident?

Massive heart attack. He was TDY on a job and was supposed to meet his crew early in the AM. When he didn't show up they went to his room and found him

LOL That's what I was thinking

This weekend was cleanup time. I loaded up a generator, a shop vac, and a pressure washer and hauled them to the camp. I brought a full 35 gallon water tank plus 10 extra gallons of water for the washer. I thoroughly cleaned the inside with the shop vac then I pressure washed the outside and the deck. I also replaced the door latch, I removed it last time I was at camp and had it re-keyed.

Pics follow:

Moving right along ... I've replaced the bunk cushions with new ones I found at Mattress Firm. They didn't quite fit but I managed to trim them ...

I've finally hooked up the gen this weekend. I've got power ... running water, lights, and an A/C unit!