Hi there, Della here to give you a rundown of all the details regarding the renovation of our 16ft 1983 Scamp trailer that we call Dusty. I did all of the research and designed all of the plans for this renovation to make our trailer completely off grid but done as simply as possible, and want to share with you how we went about this process in case you’re interested or to help out anyone who is planning to renovate a fiberglass trailer or other offgrid/ mobile living space. Along with simplicity, using the most sustainable options and reusing materials were other goals for this build

There isn’t a ton of info out there regarding fiberglass trailer renovation, especially if trying to do an off grid system, like there is for vans and RVs. A lot of the resources and products I used were geared towards marine use, since fiberglass trailers are more akin to boats than most land vehicles in a lot of ways.

We purchased our trailer in the Bay Area, so we were anxious to get it out of a damp environment to let it completely dry out, as it did have some water damage and lingering dampness in it upon purchase. Before beginning the renovation we took it to V&V Bros RV Repair Shop in Redwood City, Ca to get a complete safety inspection and to have trailer brakes installed. Luckily, Dusty had no safety issues so we were good to start renovating right away. They also did the wiring on our car that was necessary for towing. V&V Bros did an excellent job and their entire staff was extremely kind and knowledgable, we would highly recommend them for any trailer or RV needs in the Bay Area.

The Lining

In early February 2021 we drove down to the sunny and warm Coachella Valley to begin renovating. To start this process we ripped everything out of the trailer, even the ensolite walling. We definitely wouldn’t advise endeavoring to reline a trailer unless absolutely necessary, but for us it unfortunately was. Because the trailer had not been maintained well and many of the rivets were missing, water was able to come in through those holes and seep in-between the fiberglass and the lining of the trailer. This caused the lining to begin coming apart in several areas, and also caused the trailer to have a musty smell.

The thing about trailer lining is that it's not really insulative. There’s a lot of discourse on the internet and fiberglass trailer forums about reflectixs, r factors, leaving an air gap to add insulation, etc. But in reality none of these options really do much in the way of insulation, and due to the shape and composition of the trailer walls its not a simple task to add real insulation, especially without taking up precious vertical space. It can definitely be done, but this is not something I, as a complete novice, wanted to add to the already daunting list of things I needed to figure out how to do.
Scamp lines their trailers in the factory nowadays with a layer of reflectix and a layer of carpet secured with contact cement. So, I decided to emulate this formula, but opted to use Low-E brand insulation and 1/8th inch cork roll for the final layer. Low-E is a reflective insulation that utilizes closed cell foam in-between two layers of reflective material. It is manufactured using recycled materials, does not absorb water/ harbor mold, and is completely non-toxic. I didn’t like the idea of having carpet on our walls, and other options like vinyl were expensive and not very environmentally friendly, which is why I decided to go for the cork.

Honestly, we rolled the dice on the cork choice because I had never seen anyone use it as trailer lining before. I found it while looking into walling options used in other situations and came across cork wall tiles, but since I needed a larger format than tiles I went with 30ft rolls of 1/8in cork that was 36” in width from a website called Widgetco.com . I believe it took us about 3 rolls of the cork and the Low-E to reline the whole trailer. Cork is a sustainable option because it is the bark of the tree, so the tree doesn’t need to be killed in order for the resource to be harvested. Cork also captures a ton of carbon from the atmosphere which helps to clean the atmosphere, so it felt good to support that industry.

To line the trailer we cut the Low-E insulation to size using a utility knife, measuring tape, and a carpenters square to ensure we were getting straight lines. The thing about “straight lines” however is that that don’t truly exist in a curved trailer such as our Scamp, so this was extremely challenging. We installed both layers of lining with the original version contact cement. It’s super important to use the original formula rather than the water-based version as it does not adhere as well and cannot withstand high and low temperatures for as long. We carefully followed the contact cement instructions which has you paint both surfaces (we used a regular paint brush because this stuff melts foam ones) and then waited the suggested 15 minute period of time before joining them together. I would highly recommend doing a test swatch of the contact cement on every surface you intend to use it on to be sure that it does not damage the material. Once we adhered each piece we then used a J roller in order to apply enough force to adhere the surfaces together permanently. To finish up the interior we painted it a light peach color, one coat with no primer worked perfect for us.

One important note on this renovation, when you take all of the fiberglass furniture out of a fiberglass trailer there is nothing to support the structure of the trailer. This is probably okay for a few days, but since we knew this would take us a while we used ratchet bars (made for truck beds) to support the trailer. We utilized them vertically to create tension between the roof and the floor. You can also do this with 2x4s or other pieces of scrap wood.

The Escape Hatch and Windows

Next we replaced our roof vent. The old one was too small to be an escape hatch, and the escape window we have in the scamp is broken, so we needed to replace it in order to have a way to escape other than the door. Our Scamp has the older style jalousie windows that are super hard to replace or find parts for, so we didn’t want to attempt to replace any of them. We ordered the roof vent from the Scamp website, but there are tons of options online other than Scamp. We had to cut a larger hole in the roof to install the larger vent which was very scary for us, and it was something we did early on in the build so we didn’t feel very confident in our abilities yet. So I asked my dad help us with that one. We riveted the roof vent in and used butyl tape and lap sealant to seal it all up.

Old vent out, markings for where we needed to cut for the new vent are visible

We also replace the front and back fixed windows. Scamp didn’t have the exact size of our existing windows on their website, so we brought the old windows to a plastic fabrication store and they cut new plexiglass windows to size for us. Then, we installed the new windows with beading and lockstrip we bought from Scamp as well. After we drove the trailer around a bit to let the window settle we then sealed the joint where the beading comes together with silicone. The window project was the most difficult part, it took three people to install them and we attempted to install them several times before we were actually successful. A lockstrip tool is absolutely necessary for this process, so don’t try to get away with not ordering one like we did at first.

Right after taking out both front and back windows

Flooring

Before starting the flooring I derusted the parts of the frame that are visible inside the trailer underneath the cabinets and painted it with Rust-olem paint. After this we installed engineered hardwood flooring from Lowes. We really wanted to use cork flooring, but couldn’t find a good source that wasn’t extremely backordered or super expensive. So, we went with the engineered hardwood which was the next best option sustainability wise. The trailer previously had hardwood flooring in it, but it was extremely warped so it needed to be replaced. For the flooring project Scobie had some time off work and decided that he wanted to take on the task for me, so I was hardly involved in it other than deciding what materials we would use. While Scobie was outside working on the floor our next door neighbor saw him and offered to help him out. Our neighbor had installed almost the exact same flooring in a large part of his house, so he knew exactly how to do it and had a miter saw which made the process much easier. So, I don’t know much about how that project all went down, but I know our neighbor used basically the same method you would use for a house. Cutting a piece to size and then placing the left over piece in the next spot. We used the vapor barrier underlayment that was recommended to us by the hardware store staff. We chose to put flooring throughout the entire trailer, so under the bed, inside all the cabinets, etc so that the inside of our storage areas would feel nicer and not seem unfinished. We owe a huge thanks to our neighbor, without his help the flooring project would have been much more difficult and would not have turned out as nice as it did.

Electrical

The next project was inspecting all of the wiring and removing all of the old light fixtures and old 12v appliance connections. There were 4 light fixtures in the trailer previously that were powered by a 12 volt battery system and a solar panel on the roof that we decided to remove. The system that was installed before was extremely unreliable, and we wanted to keep all of our systems simple and modular, so we opted to use a GoalZero 1500x Yeti Battery and Boulder 100 solar panel instead of anything built in. We can always reinstall a 12 volt system or solar if we want because all of the wiring is intact, but for now we haven’t found that we need it and like that we don’t always have to park our trailer with solar panel needs in mind. We use USB string lights to light the trailer and USB light bars that are mounted under our overhead cabinets to light the stove and sink areas.

Fiberglass work

Since we removed all of the light fixtures and other unnecessary appliance control panels from the fiberglass furniture pieces, there were holes and other preexisting damage that needed to be fixed. We also removed the old exhaust outlet from the furnace that was in the trailer at some point (when we got it the furnace was already gone) so there was a large hole in the side of the trailer.

To fix the holes in the interior fiberglass furniture and the tiny holes in the ceiling from removing the solar panel, I used Bondo fiberglass filler and the Bondo finishing putty. Because the holes in the interior pieces were small and not structural Bondo worked just fine, but for the large hole in the wall on the trailer I used a marine fiberglass repair kit from West Marine. I haven’t yet finished the cosmetic part of that repair, but do plan to paint it in the near future to finish the project and make it look nice.

I modified some of the existing fiberglass furniture to work better for our purposes. For the cabinet where the stove is, I added a large shelf so that it wasn’t just an open space with no storage. To do this I utilized a small lip that was fiberglassed into one side of the cabinet and added a cleat at the same height on the other side so that it could hold a shelf. I also cut the two overhead cabinets so they were no longer divided into three vertical sections. The old pantry cabinet was built out with wooden shelves, but they were super water damaged, so I removed those as well and we opted to use a wire rack instead so that it was adjustable for any future needs we had not yet considered.

Because the interior pieces had visible repair work I had to paint them in order to cover it. After much research I decided to just use regular interior white matte paint to repaint the fiberglass pieces. I know that will upset a lot of fiberglass trailer enthusiasts, but I wanted the interior pieces to look more like wood and have a matte finish so using interior paint gave me the look I desired. I sanded all of the fiberglass down well first and used a primer before painting, and added polycrylic sealant as a final layer. So far the paint has held up really well and looks brand new still after almost a year, but only time will tell if the paint choice was a mistake or not.

Once all of the fiberglass pieces were done we reinstalled them with rivets, acorn nuts, and rivet caps from the Scamp parts store that prevents them from leaking or rusting, making sure to seal well with silicone.

Woodwork

I refinished 3 of the existing cabinet doors in the scamp and built 5 new cabinet doors for some of the fiberglass cabinets. In the initial renovation I removed the screen door wooden components and stained them to match the rest of the wood and then reinstalled it. But within the first month of living in the trailer the screen door frame broke, so I then rebuilt the entire thing from new wood, using the old parts as templates. I also used this method to remake the two wooden cabinets that are over the bed. The existing cabinets were made of particle board and were also water damaged, so I remade them out of 1 inch project panels from the hardware store. My mom and I painted some designs on two of the upper cabinet doors and I may paint more fun things on other cabinets in the future.

I also added countertops to the stove and sink cabinets made out of leftover flooring planks we had from the floor install project and finished them by adding 1 inch corner molding to the front section of each cabinet. I adhered the countertops to the fiberglass with contact cement and clamped them in place overnight.

Plumbing

We kept our water system very simple by removing the old large water tank that was under the bed and the electric tap and pump. We opted to use a foot pump system and four 6 gallon water jugs so we wouldn’t have to use electricity to access our water or move our trailer to fill up water. I built a copper tap using copper pipe and sharkbite 90 degree fittings. I cut the pipe into three pieces using a pipe cutter and attached it to food safe pex tubing to connect the pump, tap, and water container. To purify our drinking water we use a Berkey travel size water filter that goes in our pantry cabinet on the wire shelving. We don’t have a bathroom in our trailer and are completely happy with that choice. In the future we would maybe consider a composting toilet, but so far we haven’t been in a situation where we needed to use the bathroom and didn’t have the option to.

About a month and a half into living in the trailer I accidentally snapped our propane line while setting up camp one day. Right before we left we realized that the propane line was bent pretty badly in one section, so we knew we would need to replace it soon and planned to do so. But, it snapped before we had the chance so we had to go without using our indoor stove for a while. Once we got to a family members house following this we laid an entire new propane line using soft copper coil. We cut the line with tube cutters and used a flare tool to install the hardware that connected the line to the stove and to the propane regulator. Then we installed a propane gauge and used Teflon tape to ensure a good seal.

Exterior pieces

We were lucky that the trailer came with an existing awning, because those things are expensive. But, while we were taking it down to remount it part of one of the brackets broke. Because our awning is super old we weren’t able to find brackets that worked with it, so we had to forge our own. The brackets for our awning were comprised of two pieces, one was a bracket that had been manufactured (the ones that broke) and one was a piece that looked homemade out of aluminum tread plate (seemed to hold up well). So, we decided to make new brackets out of aluminum tread plate to replace the broken one. We cut the brackets to size and our awesome next-door neighbor helped us out again, he drilled holes in the appropriate sections for us and also used one of his machines to bend it to the exact right angle.

Remounting the awning was another task that required three people. It took me, my dad, and Scobie all working together to reinstall it. We used new bolts, nylon nuts, butyl tape, and silicone to remount and seal up the new hardware.

Pulled out all the ladders for the awning install

We also installed new LED tail lights following the “Scamp Makeover” video from Elsa Rhae and Barron’s YouTube channel. I used a plastic welding kit to modify the existing taillight housings to fit the new LED lights, All credit for this idea goes to them. I also added a separate license plate light to be sure we were following all lighting requirements for safe driving of the trailer.

About to begin plastic welding the tail light housings to accommodate the new fixture

To go along with our new windows, we installed a gravel shield and hardware kit that we purchased from Scamp to protect our new front window while driving. We drilled the holes in the trailer and mounted the hardware with rivets. We weren’t able to use rivet caps to seal these ones because of the tolerances in the hardware, so we were sure to just use extra silicone to seal them up well.

The last thing we did was remount our spare tire. The trailer came with a spare tire mounted on the back below the window with carriage bolts, washers, and nuts that went through the fiberglass hull. We were skeptical of this setup, but since I held up well for the nearly 40 years the trailer existed before we got it we decided to just go with it for now. We took the tire off, cleaned the area, and replaced the rusted hardware with new pieces. Then we sealed it all up with silicone.

The two holes in the center between the lights are where we installed the new hardware to hold the spare tire

The Wood Stove

I purchased a wood stove from gstove-usa.com and a roof exit kit from cubicminiwoodstoves.com . Because one company uses metric and the other uses imperial the pipes did not fit together. To remedy this we bought an exhaust pipe piece meant for a car and then went to an exhaust pipe shop to get the piece expanded to a custom size to fit the larger pipe.

Once we had all the parts needed I started building the fireproof box. I framed out a three sided box with 1x3 and secured all the joints with corner brackets and ample wood screws. Initially I was going to use hardiebacker for the walls of the box, but was afraid it would crumble after seeing the material in person. So, I decided to add plywood to each face of the box and tile it instead. I had access to a bunch of little tiles and leftover tiles, so I smashed them all up and did a mosaic technique. I accidentally used masonry mortar for the bottom section of the box, but realized my mistake and went and bought thinset mortar to use on the rest of the box. So far we have had no issues with the tiles staying adhered, but if we have any problems I will update this blog post and spill the tea. This also goes for any other renovations we did that we determine were not worth it or didn’t hold up well enough.

Once the box was tiled and grouted we installed the wood stove. I watched several YouTube videos to get an idea of how to do this. The videos from Brandon Lasprilla and Elsa Rhae and Barron were the most helpful, so I used the methods they did. Big thanks to them all for posting the process, it was extremely helpful to see it done by someone else with the same kind of trailer!

I first determined where the pipe would meet the ceiling, and found the exact center of that spot. Then I used a compass to trace out a 5 inch circle, and then a 7 inch circle (the minimum circumference recommended by the cubic mini exit kit literature). Then, I drilled a hole in the exact center from the inside to the outside. After this I went up on the roof and used that center hole as a reference point for the compass in order to trace another 7 inch hole on the outside that lined up with the interior markings we made. Then I drilled a larger hole that would accommodate the size of my jigsaw’s blade, and used the saw to cut the hole. We checked that the size was right, and then used a file and some sandpaper to smooth out the edges. After that was done we attached our roof flashing with 1 inch self taping roofing screws (ones with a nylon washer) and ample high heat rated silicon and put the stove and pipes in place. We used one screw about every one inch or so to ensure a tight seal. We found that because there is a small seam in the insulating pipe in the exit kit it doesn’t make a perfect seal with the roof flashing. So, we added more of that high heat rated silicone to seal the junction where the stovepipe and the flashing meet and have had no issues with leaks since!

To finish it off we used 1 inch metal pipe clamps to secure the legs of the wood stove to the base of the box. I used a diamond tipped bit to drill through the tile, and then secured the pipe clamps with bolts and nuts incase we needed to removed the stove for any reason.

The video below shows the entire process of the wood stove project, plus some of the other repairs I touched on in this blog post

Final Thoughts

So there you have it, the complete rundown of all the things we did to restore and convert our trailer into a tiny offgrid mobile home. I have a lot of other fun projects I want to do on the trailer, but for now we just want to travel and live in it for longer to see if there are any other changes we would like to make. I hope that this post was interesting or helpful to you, and if you have any questions about anything please don’t hesitate to reach out via the contact form on our website. We had a lot of help from people on the internet, friends, our neighbor, and family with the project and would love to be able to pass it on and help anyone else out there with some of the knowledge we gained from this project. If you are remodeling a fiberglass trailer, or any kind of tiny home, we wish you the best of luck!

The video below shows the majority of the trailer renovation talked about in this post, plus talks about how we chose our trailer and why, plus some other fun stuff.