[A/S] Vintage trailers are getting new mileage

["ganderson35" <g_anderson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Vintage trailers are getting new mileage
In old rusty and moldy RVs, some are seeing cozy charm
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff, 2/26/2004

CAHOONZIE, N.Y. -- Michael and Sally Moskowitz's one-bedroom summer 
cabin is so small that when their sons' friends sleep over, they're 
assigned to a pop-up tent in the woods.


To accommodate their many visitors -- and to be hospitable hosts -- 
Sally Moskowitz dreamed of building several tiny guestrooms around 
the main summer cabin, tucked away in this tiny southwestern New 
York village, although she also knew the idea was too extravagant 
for their budget. But one summer day two years ago, one of the 
friends who'd been relegated to the woods came up with a solution. 
Christina Salway, a college student in Amherst, volunteered to 
single-handedly convert the family's dilapidated vintage trailer 
into a cozy guestroom.

Never mind that it was a flea-infested tin can filled with mice and 
mold and hadn't been used for nearly 20 years. Never mind that 
Salway, 21, had no renovation expertise, and though she had taken 
courses in architecture and dabbled in carpentry with her father, 
she didn't know a bandsaw from a jigsaw.

Salway, who has since graduated from Hampshire College, a small 
liberal arts school that attracts creative students with 
untraditional majors, may have been inexperienced but she was sure 
about one thing: The long-forgotten trailer was the future pied-a-
terre for the family. She persuaded her professors to let her make 
it her senior class project, and with a little coaxing the 
Moskowitzes got talked into it, too. Leaving such a complex job to a 
novice did give the couple pause, but they figured the condition of 
the rickety old trailer could only improve.

"It seemed like an easier temporary solution so we decided why not 
give it a try," said Sally Moskowitz, who like her husband is a 
psychotherapist. "Now we don't think it's temporary anymore."

The finished guestroom now parked on a snowy, wooded path only 300 
feet from the main cabin may seem, to outsiders, like just another 
sardine can-shaped aluminum-sided RV. But to Salway and its owners, 
it is a one-of-a kind getaway. From the wood dresser placed where 
the stove used to be to the faux vintage curtains and colorful 
matching upholstery, the new flat feels like a small room of a 
larger cabin. Benches can be pulled down to sleep six people, and 
the dresser found and refinished by Salway gives the trailer a 
cottage-like feel. Salway, who towed the trailer to campus so she 
could work on it there, tried to restore the vehicle to its original 
state, which also accommodated Sally Moskowitz's taste for retro 
decor.

And, it only cost $1,605.59.

Perhaps inadvertently, Salway is part of a growing group of 
enthusiasts spending time and money restoring and redecorating old 
recreational vehicles. Stars have lounged in lavishly decorated RVs 
while making movies on Hollywood sets, but RV specialists say the 
vehicles are becoming cool chill-out cribs for regular folk, too. No 
longer used just to criss-cross the country, creative owners are 
installing sound systems and computer hookups, and turning trailers 
into transportable studies, guestrooms, and pool-changing houses. 
The web is packed with e-magazines and sites dedicated to helping 
enthusiasts restore and decorate their rides.

They are people like David Osterberg, an upholsterer, and his wife, 
Leah Cohen, of Minneapolis who decorated their Dutch Colonial home 
with mid-century modern furnishings and now are happily doing the 
same to a 1966 26-foot Airstream trailer purchased last summer. 
Still a work in progress, the floors are being replaced, the walls 
have been painted lime green, and swatches of colorful fabric 
resembling vintage bark cloth have been picked out.

The couple became interested in purchasing a vintage trailer after 
upholstering the cushions of an Airstream owned by Renee Roels, 38, 
and her roommate Carrie Lewis, 36, both of Richfield, Minn.

Lewis and Roels purchased their Airstream after seeing it parked in 
an old field.

"We were not interested in keeping it authentic, but we wanted to 
have fun with putting fabrics in it that looked like they were from 
the 1950s and 1960s," said Roels, an art teacher. "The cushion and 
the fabrics kind of make it. The curtains and cushions take up so 
much visual space that we kind of focused on them."

For Christina Salway, the transformation of a small RV turned out to 
be no small undertaking. "It was terrible, an absolute abomination," 
she said of the trailer one recent Saturday as she chewed cheese 
fries at a local diner. "When we towed it up to Hampshire it looked 
like I was towing a moldy loaf of bread. It was completely green. It 
had been sitting under a tree for 15 years accruing sap and moss and 
mildew. It was so gross."

And it had mice. "They had completely dismantled the majority of the 
cushions and the burlap-esque covers that fit over them and had 
turned every drawer, cabinet, and cubbyhole into a nest," Salway 
wrote in her final paper.

After getting the go-ahead from her professors, Salway assessed the 
years of decay: Cabinets were sagging from the ceiling, the walls 
were warped from water damage, and there was a gaping hole in the 
roof of the vehicle, sparking Sally to vaguely recall it being 
smashed into a tree limb on the way back from a trip. The couple 
bought the used RV when their son John, 22, was 3. They traveled 
cross-country with it but were so bored on the road that when they 
returned, they parked it under a tree near the cabin Michael 
inherited from his family. And, that is where it stayed.

Abandoned no more, the new guestroom had to be appropriate for their 
sons John and Peter, 15, and the boys' friends, but also 
aesthetically pleasing for the Moskowitzes' more mature friends.

"During the week I would work on various drawings, and design 
proposals -- from finding fabric samples, to painting swatches, to 
surveying the floor plan. And during the weekend I would come down 
and [Sally] and I would sit down and look at the different aesthetic 
proposals and the different architectural proposals," recalled 
Salway.

The budget had to be tight because everyone involved agreed the 
couple should not have to shoulder the entire cost, since the 
undertaking was also functioning as Salway's academic project. That 
sent Salway, who paid some of the cost herself, searching in thrift 
and vintage shops in Minnesota where her parents live. There, she 
nabbed vases, art, fabrics, and trinkets similar to the more 
expensive furnishings in the Moskowitz loft in Greenwich Village and 
the cabin in Cahoonzie. Thanksgiving was spent in Minnesota, where 
Salway and her mother swiftly sewed pillowcases and covers for the 
bench cushions.

"We were up until 3 in the morning," said Salway's mother, 
Lynda. "We called the bedroom the sweatshop. She would cut and I'd 
sew. She had seen the cushions in Massachusetts and knew what she 
wanted, but . . . I hadn't set eyes on them. I didn't realize when I 
volunteered that we were talking about cushions that had depths to 
them. I do pillows but suddenly I am doing piping. But it was a 
bonding experience."

Months earlier in September, Salway's father, who is lovingly 
called "the driving fool" by his family, trucked it from Minnesota 
to Cahoonzie, which is 90 miles outside of Manhattan, to help his 
daughter tow the RV to Amherst; they parked it behind the school's 
woodshop. Salway was quickly schooled by the shop students or "wood-
tech guys," as she calls them, on how to use the tools. Soon she was 
standing on top of the vehicle sealing the leaky roof with tar. With 
the help of her father and a friend, she replaced the old moldy wood 
paneling and the floors, and tore out the stove unit. But one thing 
such a task teaches a beginner like Salway is that plans, even those 
so carefully laid out, rarely work out without a hitch.

For instance, who knew there would be carpenter ants?

"When I pulled out the cabinets there was a colony of carpenter 
ants. I pulled down this wall and it was like they all stopped and 
turned and looked at me. I couldn't deal," she said. She rushed to 
the hardware store and bought four Raid bombs, which quickly rid her 
of the pests.

The growing budget continued to be a problem, too. Grants were given 
and denied by a student group at Hampshire, the budget revised over 
and over, and the Moskowitzes committed more money. By December, the 
project was completed and the Moskowitzes got their first look at 
the finished product during Salway's gallery showing on campus.

"I love it," said Sally Moskowitz, who said her boys will try out 
the room in the spring.

Salway currently lives in Brooklyn and is working as a freelancer 
designer. She is redesigning a bedroom for a teenage girl in the New 
York area. Lessons she learned while renovating the trailer, she 
said, she uses on current jobs. Still, it's hard for her to believe 
she pulled off the RV transformation.

"I looked at it the other day and said . . . `I can't believe I 
actually did this.' So the rats, the mice and ants were all worth 
it," she said.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.