didn’t know what we were looking at. We
didn’t even test the furnace or the appliances.
We took Jed on his word (luckily, his word was
good, though it took us a while to figure out
how to light the furnace), hooked the Bigfoot
up to our borrowed E-350 van, and camped in
the trailer all the way back to Colorado.
Our last step before renovations was
upgrading from our Forester. The Subie had
been our trusty camping vehicle for years, but
it wasn’t designed to haul the Bigfoot and all
our gear, so we traded it in for a 2013 Chevro-
let Silverado 1500 with a towing capacity of
7,500 pounds. Our newfound power made us
cocky, though. After hooking up the Bigfoot to
our new truck and pulling onto College Avenue
in Fort Collins, we heard a colossal screech—
we were dragging the trailer down the street by
the chains. The Bigfoot hadn’t seated properly.
Some burly fellows arrived (classic Colorado)
and helped us free the trailer from the bumper
and place it back onto the hitch ball, and we
learned two lessons: Always hook up your
chains when towing, and triple-check that your
trailer is connected correctly before setting off.
Despite our early mistakes, we were under
no illusions about how much work our Bigfoot
would need. A cosmetic overhaul was a must,
and the 41-year-old trailer needed a few fix-
tures to bring it up to modern standards.
The Bigfoot’s layout and structure made
renovations easy—fiberglass trailers are well-
built and resilient. Ours is made from two
large pieces of molded fiberglass joined at a
seam. This prevents common roof leaks and
other problems that come with more tradition-
ally constructed campers.
Allie likes to get things done, and Joe’s a
perfectionist, so there were many “this is fine”
versus “we have to do it right” debates, but
we found the answer was always somewhere
between those two points. In all, we spent
about 10 weeks (working around our full-time
jobs) between bringing the trailer home and
moving in for good.
There’s always a balance to renovating an
old thing. How can you make it functional but
maintain the old, cool aesthetic? What was
essential to update, and what could we leave
original to keep costs low? In some ways, we
were lucky—all the appliances could stay. The
fridge looked almost new at purchase, and the
41-year-old stove still works well. Our oven isoriginal, too—that’s a unique feature to our RV; these days, many trail-
ers come with a microwave instead, which we wouldn’t use.
A lot of our work was simply to make the Bigfoot look nicer. We
wanted it to feel like home. The prior owners had installed weird lami-
nate tile as a backsplash above the sink, and someone had inexplicably
painted the ceiling pink. We removed all the cabinets, doors, hinges,
and light fixtures, removed the tile and installed a peel-and-stick sub-
way tile backsplash, and then painted the ceiling and cabinetry white.
We definitely underestimated how time-consuming painting 100
square feet of ceiling would be. There are a few different materials on
the ceiling that take paint in different ways, plus your arm starts to hurt
after a while! We painted one wall orange because we liked the aesthetic
with the wood and the vintage trim, and it turned out to be almost the
same color as the stripe on the outside of the camper. We didn’t plan it,
but somehow it aligned in our subconscious.
The old seat cushions were well past their prime, so we tossed them
and ordered custom-cut memory foam that we upholstered ourselves.
And after a few months of growing sick of making the couch into a bed, weBelow: One major perk of the Bigfoot is its layout, which positions the bathroom at the back.
Many RVs put the latrine in the middle. Left: We love using our Kelty low “loveseat” to make a
homey vibe when we’re outdoors. Inset: The 1981 Bigfoot logo.May/June 2022 47CO
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