It’s Coming Home!
Suzanne sat on the porch with the dogs in anticipation of the homemade teardrop trailer arriving. It was early afternoon and she knew it was going to be coming soon. She was excited to watch as it was dropped off at our house. I was inside finishing some work things up but was equally excited. I heard the dogs bark shortly afterwards so I finished up quickly and ran outside. The first step of the dream of road-tripping across Canada and The United States had arrived!
This poor baby was hidden away for several years in a barn not used! Isn’t it fantastic! It is a little dirty though!
Does it fit?
We had already spent the prior couple days creating space in our garage for the teardrop trailer. We knew the trailer was going to be an extremely tight fit to get into the garage. So, we took that on as our first challenge. We pushed the trailer slowly towards the garage and with about 2cm clearance on either side it fit nicely!
What should we do with this teardrop trailer?
We then opened up the back and the side doors of the trailer to start checking it out. We had only ever seen the teardrop trailer in an old barn (with questionable lighting) so it was nice to see it in the sunlight. Suzanne had talked about different dreams and ideas on how to make it ours over the past few weeks. Also, we knew that our travels with this trailer would include our dogs, Maze and Nyx. Nyx jumped in right away but Maze needed a bit of help getting in there.
Suzanne and I spent the remainder of the evening pondering what we wanted to do next. It rained like crazy the next day so we decided to wait until Friday to pull the trailer out of the garage again to take another look.
The next day came and we got the teardrop trailer back outside in the sunshine. We started to brainstorm what we wanted to change, touch up, paint, etc. First thing we did was hose it down. After scrubbing and scrubbing we thought it was clean, and it turned out it wasn’t. We opened up the back and assessed the kitchen area. We decided that the kitchen area needed some help so we began to take out the shelves. My plan so far was to replace the particle board with some nice wood boards and sand down the rest of the other wooden areas. We also glued down parts of the side paneling to make sure no water could get into the back.
In order to help us think, we grabbed some lawn chairs, put them in the driveway, and sat back with a couple cold drinks. The dogs came out as well to help us sort out what to do next.
The Taillights’ Don’t Work!
We decided to make sure everything was good to go so we connected it to the hitch on Suzanne’s Mazda CX-9. Not much of a trailer if you can’t tow the thing! Everything went well until we hooked up the electrical to test out the turn signals and brake lights. They didn’t work!
Our son and his friend, thankfully, went to work on this to see if they could fix the issue. They looked underneath the trailer,checked the wires coming from the back of the vehicle and even tried to find something in the manual. Eventually, Connor’s friend found out that there was a fuse that was not working in the SUV. They put a new one in and VOILA, lights working! Such a simple thing but we were grateful it was solved relatively quickly. One less major thing to worry about – and a BIG win for the kids. That seemed like enough for the day so we put the trailer to bed and we followed suit shortly thereafter.
Suzanne and I went to Lowes early the next week and began to look at some paint colors for the outside. While we were there, I picked up some black paint for the front platform section of the trailer. We had removed a bin off of the front so a nice new coat of paint shined it up. While I was painting the front platform, Suzanne tackled the top vent to make sure there was going to be no leaks once we took it on the road.
We started really being able to vision what this trailer was going to become. It appeared that things were moving along pretty good so far!
Now the big question, what color should this trailer be?!? Make sure you join our Facebook page to join in on the conversation! Everything Dog Facebook Page
We love your road trips! Make sure you visit some of our past trips! Roadtrip to Huntsville / Road Trip to Prince Edward County
