We restore vintage aluminium travel trailers in a three-bay barn outside Wick Ferry, Oregon. Aurelio polishes the shell by hand. Sigrun builds the inside the way she would build a sideboard. From $95,000, seven to nine months each.
2027 build slots
January
No. 32
Taken
1959, 26 ft, for a vineyard
April
No. 33
Taken
1964, 17 ft, a first trailer
July
No. 34
Open
Arrives in the barn July 6
October
No. 35
Open
Arrives in the barn October 5
Polish reveal
Every shell arrives chalky grey. Aurelio cuts it panel by panel with a coarse compound, then a medium, then a fine, working round each rivet with a felt bob. We never lacquer: clear coat yellows and lifts inside five years, while bare polish waxed each spring only gets deeper.
Drag across the picture, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys.
Each owner gets real samples on a birch board in week two. These are the boards for our last three.
1961, 22 ft, lavender farm near Hood River
A pale room for a bright field. Birch everywhere, one walnut edge, and brass you are meant to touch.
Birch ply
12 mm, 13-ply, hard wax oil
Galley, wardrobe, bed base
Cork floor
6 mm tiles, waxed by hand
Door to bedroom, 118 sq ft
Undyed wool
Grey bouclé, 560 g per metre
Dinette cushions, bolsters
Unlacquered brass
Turned catches, left to darken
Every door, two wall lamps
We number every trailer we finish. Number one was Aurelio’s own, in 2013, and it still sits in the yard.
A lavender farm near Hood River
Bought out of a hay barn in Idaho with a soft floor and swallows nesting over the galley. The owners grow lavender and wanted a guest room that could move. New steel outriggers, a marine ply floor, 12 volt wiring with shore power, and every cabinet in birch with unlacquered brass catches.
The Oregon coast, all winter
A couple who wanted one warm room for storm season. Walnut veneer on the bedroom wall, a diesel heater under the bench, and wool curtains lined with felt, so the bedroom holds 64°F on a 38°F night without the heater running past midnight.
Full time on the road since 2025
Two people live in this one all year. Quarter-sawn oak worktops where hands land, a composting toilet, 400 watts of solar laid flat on the roof, and a bed that lifts on gas struts over a 30 cubic foot locker.
Three trailers share the barn, one in each bay, never a fourth. You get photos every Friday and a call at the end of each stage, and you pay for a stage only once you have seen it done.
Everything comes out. We photograph, weigh and number every part, and send you a 40 page survey with the frame rot marked in red.
Weeks 1 to 4
The shell comes off the frame on four jacks. The frame is blasted, welded where it needs it and galvanised. New floor in marine ply, sealed on all six faces.
Weeks 5 to 10
Dents worked out, tired panels replaced, new rivets set. Then six weeks of polish in three grades of compound, and no clear coat.
Weeks 11 to 17
Wiring at 12 and 120 volts, water, propane tested at 11 inches of water column, heat. Every run sits behind a panel you can open.
Weeks 18 to 23
Sigrun’s eleven weeks. Cabinets are built on the bench from full-size drawings, then fitted into a shell where nothing is square.
Weeks 24 to 34
Two nights parked at the barn, a 300 mile tow, a punch list, and a morning with us going through every switch and valve.
Weeks 35 to 38
Aurelio Quist
Fourteen years polishing the skins of vintage aircraft in a restoration hangar in Tillamook. He restored his own 1954 trailer in 2013, sold it to the first person who asked, and has done nothing else since.
Sigrun Tollefsrud
Built chairs and cabinets for eleven years before she saw the inside of a trailer. Joined in 2018. She draws every interior full size on the barn floor in chalk before a single sheet of birch is cut.
“A trailer is a room that gets shaken for an hour every time it goes anywhere. So every joint is glued and screwed, and every drawer has a catch.”
Sigrun, on why nothing inside is stapled
That is the price of a full restoration on a trailer up to 22 feet. Most of ours finish between $104,000 and $131,000, and the difference is almost always solar, a bathroom, or walnut.
$19,000 holds a slot. The rest is paid in five parts, at the end of each stage. Seven to nine months from the day the trailer arrives.
| Part of the work | Price |
|---|---|
| ShellStrip, dents, panels, rivets, six weeks of polish | $31,000 |
| Frame and floorGalvanised frame, axles, brakes, marine ply floor | $19,000 |
| Systems12 and 120 volt wiring, water, propane, heat | $17,000 |
| Joinery and upholsteryBirch ply, cork, wool, brass, to one drawing set | $24,000 |
| Shakedown and aftercareThe 300 mile tow, handover, a year of check-ins | $4,000 |
| Full restoration, up to 22 ft | $95,000 |
Not included: collecting the trailer, which we quote at $2.40 a mile from Wick Ferry, and appliances you pick from outside our list of six we trust.
Sample letters, written for this concept site.
“Our guests now ask to sleep in the trailer instead of the house. I have stopped offering the house.”
“Fourteen months full time and 11,000 miles. The only thing that has come loose is my husband’s patience with campgrounds.”
“Every Friday for eight months they sent photos of the week. I had them printed and bound, and it sits in the trailer now.”
Tell us about the trailer. We reply within a week, and if it sounds like a good shell, we drive out to see it before anyone talks about money.
