I spent most of the day Monday thinking about the camper. Upon arriving home my wife and I make a descision. We will offer $350 for the camper and would consider going up a little but if she is firm with $500 we will walk on the deal. Our reasoning is 350 gives us a little room to begin immediate repairs, such as tires. We also believe it is a fair price considering the amount of work to be done. It's settled then, we make the offer.

I call Debbie and leave a message on her answering machine. The kind of long winded rambling message of a crazy person. I was wanting to make sure she wasn't insulted by my offer and that it was strictly based on the amount of work to be done. I actually ran out of time and had to call back to make sure I had left my phone number. It's true I am a crazy person.

I received a return call a couple of hours later and the verdict was in. She had talked to her ex and they were willing to sell for $350. She knew it needed work and that they were not going to be doing anything with it. I think she was a little happy that another family would get some enjoyment out of it also.

I set up to return the next Saturday and pick up the camper. In my world now known as The 350 Special! Stay tuned and I'll fill you in on the trip to pick it up.

Sunday arrives! After Church my wife and jump in the minivan and head off on our journey to Clarksburg. It's about a two hour trip and seems especially quiet as we have left our 3 boys at home to fend for themselves. As we pull into town, we see the trailer parked in the back of a yard next to the railroad tracks. I exclaim, "There she is!"

We pull into the drive and walk up to the trailer. My first instinct is that it's not as bad as I thought it might be. Debbie comes out from the house and tells us to take our time to look it over. We take a brief look at the outside and then venture in. The spot in front of the door is pretty bad. We step over that and take in the rest of the interior. Everything is actually really nice. The cushions on the couch and the dinette are in really good shape. The cabinets and paneling are actually pretty attractive for a 1981 trailer. The cabinets are a lighter brown and not the dark walnut color that often makes campers of that era seem so very dark. There is a bunk that folds down and again the cushions are in nice shape. Above the sink is some pretty hideous wallpaper but that can be changed easily enough. Now on to the bathroom. There is a small tub (I'm quite surprised by this as I thought it would be a shower over the toilet type of arrangement for no bigger than the camper is) and a shower. A toilet, small sink and a closet round out the bathroom area. The floor in the bathroom is also pretty bad. It feels soft and I can only assume there has been a fair amount of water leaking at some point. I begin to investigate the cabinets. Most of the latches are broken and will need to be replaced. I find the fresh water tank and pump. Looks to be in good shape but no way to tell at this point. The fuse panel also looks ok. The wiring everywhere looks to be in good shape, no cracks or blacks spots. There is a prewire hookup for an air conditioner and a breaker labeled for it, which is good news if I would like to add one in the future. Stove and fridge also appear to be ok. The floor of the storage area under one of the dinette seats is also in pretty bad shape. Looks like I have got my work cut out for me. We find in one of the cabinets all of the original owners manuals on all of the items in the trailer as well as the trailer itself. Jackpot! This makes me real happy because I like to have documentation on the different items. Never having owned a camper before this helps me feel a little more secure in figuring out how the mechanicals work. My wife likes the interior (curtains, cushions, cabinets and such are all attractive and in good shape).

Now to check out the exterior. The bumper and hitch are rusted but solid and little tlc would go along way here. The siding also looks ok - actually pretty good for a 25 year old trailer. I notice the little dripledge/gutter over the doorway has a crack in the center of it-probably the reason for the bad spot in front of the doorway. I look to the back to inspect for the damaged floor in the bathroom. The underbelly is covered with a sheet of tin. It is rusted on the edge under the tub. Insulation is pulled out and the flooring feels like sawdust. Fiberboard! ARGHH! The absolute worst for a situation with a leak. Probably means a floor replacement in the whole rear of the trailer. There are also a black and gray water tank that look to be in good shape. No visible damage to them. The tires had tread but dryrot was evident and will need to be replaced but I expected that.

I return to look at the damage in the entryway. The vinyl is torn here so I pull a little back to investigate further. Sawdust! More fiberboard and it too is in pretty bad shape. I can feel the tin underbelly from this spot. Looks like a replacement is in order here too.

We probably should have been running for the van at this point but for whatever reason I had a good feeling about this camper. I felt like with a little work (OK maybe alot of work) that I could make it into something we could have fun in. I also felt that the repairs wouldn't be cost intensive just labor intensive. We decide to do a little investigating on floor repair as well as the cost of tire replacement. We let Debbie know we are going to think about it and look into the repair cost of some things.

We jumped into the van to head home and discussed the camper the whole way! Would our family fit into it? It is small, but no smaller than our tent and we squeeze into that. Do we want to take on the repairs? yes, I'm capable of doing the repairs. Do we have time to do the repairs? Not really but Lisa just started a new job this year and won't have vacation time built up so I will take one of my remaining weeks and use to repair the flooring. Is it worth the cost? After seeing what some of the campers sell for on ebay and in our local shopper we believe we would be getting a good deal. We'd like to negotiate for a better deal though and I say we should offer a little less. What will the neighbors think? Hey the neighbors are the ones who told us about it. Will the kids like it? LOL, of course they will! Fighting over the bunk is the concern! Can our van pull it? Not sure yet but we have a backup plan that involves my mother-in-laws Dodge pickup truck.

All in all it seems like a good deal so we decide to sleep on it and give Debbie a call tomorrow.

About two weeks ago my next door neighbor told me he was going to look at a camper. Someone his brother-in-law works with had gotten divorced and was looking to sell off a trailer they no longer used, nor needed. It was an older one but it was also pretty cheap. He was set up to look at it on Saturday. I told him if he wanted someone to ride along that I was game as it is about a two hour trip from our little town.

On Friday he tells me that he and his wife are not going to look at it because of the sleeping arangements. They were hoping to find one with a bed, not couches and dining tables that convert to beds. He asks if I'm at all interested in seeing it as he could pass along the number of the folks who own it. He shares the details on it. It's about a 17 footer and an 80 something. Was used at a campground on Lake Mattoon for quite sometime and has now been sitting in a backyard of Clarksburg, Il for a year or two. I'm told that there are some bad spots in the floor by the entry door and around the toilet but that overall it is in decent shape. The best part being they are only asking $500. Now we are talking a language I understand. Cheap! I talk to my wife and we decide we will make the trip and take a look. We obviously are not expecting much but after tent camping for the last several years it would be nice to move into a travel trailer and what better way to do that than doing it for not alot of money. We call Debbie and set up a time on Sunday to make a date with destiny!

A little background on my wife and I. We have been married almost 15 years. We have 3 boys: ages 13, 10 and 5. We have tent camped several times the last couple of years but sometimes wonder if we could get away for a few more weekends if the prep work of tent camping wasn't quite so much. Right now we are so busy with sports and such with the boys that getting away is such a luxury that it would be nice to go on more of a spur of the moment. Not sure if this ever happens but it sure sounds good. My wife grew up camping in pop-ups with her family and has many fond memories. I grew up with an assortment of second hand tents camping out in cornfields and woods. We simply hope to share and make memories now with our family!

Please check in tomorrow as the trip to check out this 1980 something camper begins.

Hello and thank you for visiting 350 Special. This blog will be about my restoration project of a 1981 Coachmen Crestline travel trailer. My goal is to record a diary, if you will, of my restoration of this camper. I am not an expert, nor have I ever owned a camper yet alone fixed one up. So you will probably see my mistakes and things I should have done differently. Hopefully you might chime in with some advice or an encouraging word. I have been helped many times with reading and seeing pictures of other projects in progress and my hope is this blog may in turn help someone in their own version of the great fixer-upper! Starting tomorrow the journey will begin of how I came to be the owner of this fine piece of camping machinery! (Can a trailer be machinery? Hmmm not sure.) So please stick around and follow the progress and the story behind the 350 Special!