Follow Maxine’s makeover at @maxinetheairstream!
I was thinking of titling this post, “WE ARE INSANE” or “WHAT ARE WE THINKING” or “THERE HAS TO BE A PILL FOR THIS” but instead I went with “So… We Bought an Airstream”. What do ya think? A couple of weeks ago, Scotty and I took off on a spontaneous day drive through the hill country. On the way into the adorable town of Wimberley, we spotted an airstream for sale.
Scott and I have been talking about buying an airstream and fixing her up for years. Our dream is to travel the country with our dog babes for a bit, then set her up on a piece of land in the hill country where others can rent her out… along with a few other airstreams we renovate on the property.
I’m not sure if it’s the quarantine staycation we’ve been on for the past few months or perhaps just being more settled in our new house in Austin, but y’all, this is it. This is the time we get started on our dream. We didn’t end up buying that airstream in Wimberley (it was already sold), but it did set us out on a Craigslist search which led us to Rick, a super cool guy who runs a gorgeous wedding venue, Mae’s Ridge, in Johnson City, just outside of Dripping Springs. He bought a couple of vintage airstreams with plans to renovate them himself, but the wedding biz is taking up all of his time so he’s passing the dream on to us. (We’ll make ya proud, Rick, promise.)
We drove out to Johnson City, climbed into Rick’s super sweet Kawasaki golf cart adventure thingie (but what is this called and can I have one) and he toured us around their beautiful, massive property up a path to where the two airstreams live. I fell in love with Maxine from the get-go. She’s a 1966 Overlander who has liiiived. I don’t know nada about airstreams (besides they cute) and neither does Scott (should be fun), but we knew this was it. We called Rick on the drive home and told him we wanted her. We Venmo’ed a deposit and went out the next weekend to hand him a check and pick up the title. And her name? Well, she’s named after my favorite person who ever existed—my best friend/grandmother, Maxine Lowe. Maxine lives on in my heart forever, and now we’ll get to go on lots of new adventures together.
Rick is nice enough to hang on to Maxine until we get our backyard ready for her. We spent the weekend turning our fence into a gate and a patch of dirt/mud/our-backyard-is-a-hot-mess into a parking spot with the help of the very best quarantine-neighbors ever. (Seriously, y’all are the best.) Rick is going to hitch up Maxine next week and drive her over to her new home where we can squeal at her and laugh maniacally about the fact that we have no idea what we’re doing.
Thankfully, the airstream community is super tight, and we can’t wait to join them. Thank you in advance for all of the helpful how-to’s Scotty and I will no doubt be obsessing over. If you have any #vanlife or #airstreamrenovation Instagram accounts you follow, holler at us in the comments below. We’ll be covering Maxine’s renovation on her Instagram @maxinetheairstream so be sure to follow along.
One last thing – real quick – how do you renovate an airstream?
xo,
mel