Rolling Runway: Renovations Part 1

From start to finish, it took us 10 months total to renovate Silvia into the beauty she is today. We were working weekends only from October-April and then anywhere from 3-6 days a week starting in May. I am just going to blog the basics of what we did but if you have more questions you can always email us at shop@rollingrunway.com! Our biggest resources were airforums.com, airstreamguy.com & just learning as we went. We used Pinterest for the design process. 

Part 1: Gut/Clean Interior

We started the process by gutting/cleaning the interior. Since the airstream was mostly gutted, this part wasn't too hard but very satisfying. There was a ton of trash inside including a bag of dog food & random playing cards everywhere. We did have to get Kendall's dad to cut out the pipes that we didn't need & sink/toilet. He also helped with pretty much EVERYTHING and I think he loves Silvia as much as we do. After we finished cleaning up the inside we used a mixture of bleach & water to wash the interior walls. Silvia had been sitting in the woods for 15 years, with 3 of the windows broken, there was dirt & mold all on the inside.

Part 2: Strip Exterior

This was probably the worst, most boring part. In the earlier years of Airstream, once they aluminum was polished to a shine, a clear coat was put on to preserve the sine. Sounds nice, right? Wrong. If you don't maintain it, it "burns" in the sun & turns white and/or dingy. Which basically defeats the purpose of aluminum making it not shiny. We followed airstream guy's recommendation of "stripping" the clear coat with furniture/wood stripper from home depot. Basically you brush on the stripper, wait 15 minutes & then rinse/scrub/scrape it off. We did this in the dead of winter. Not fun. You also have to do it 2 or 3 times on each area for it to be effective. Side note: we did this part second because honestly we had no idea how to start on the inside since our floor was rotted through in the back, wiring had to be redone & we had leaks. After we finished, we originally thought maybe we should have saved this part for last because it's only cosmetic. But looking back, we were kind of glad we did this step first since honestly it's hard & not fun but once we finished the inside (the most rewarding part) we were basically done because we did the outside first. 

We also filmed the first few weeks of our renovations & put it on YouTube! 

xo, Morgan Paige

NYC // Day 1

Last weekend I went to NYC for the first time with some friends and had the best time! I'm already trying to figure out how to go back because 3 days was definitely not enough to see everything that I wanted! 

Thursday, mine and Abby's flight was earlier than our other 2 friends so we navigated ourselves from La Guardia to Manhattan (only one bus ride-that we bought the wrong ticket too, and subway ride later) and began our day! We picked up the keys to our Airbnb but couldn't check in yet so we dropped off our bags and wandered around and found Chelsea Market within 5 minutes. Chelsea market is an enclosed shopping and dining center and we absolutely loved it. 

First stop, Amy's Bread! It was on my personal list of places I wanted to visit and it did not disappoint. The blog I found said to try the vanilla cake but they didn't have it that day so I settled for red velvet and Abby got vanilla/chocolate polka dot cake! It was a great snack while we waited on our friends to arrive and such a cute little place. 

Chelsea Market is full of shopping with a unique market place in the back with different jewelry and vintage items, a flower stand in the middle of the market and different gift shops throughout. They also have stores like Anthropologie where you can try on glasses and take mirror selfies. 

Morgan & Asha finally arrived and we decided to head to Corner Bistro, an "NYC institution" apparently. We all had the burger and it was amazing! Corner Bistro is really small and cash only and was the perfect little spot for lunch.  

After lunch we could finally check out our Airbnb, which I was so excited about! It was in the west village and it was perfect! It looked exactly how it did on the website and we felt like true new yorkers staying there. Somehow I didn't take pictures of the last bedroom or the kitchen and bathroom but honestly the kitchen and bathroom weren't much. I'm not complaining, they were just very "new york" aka tiny. Like so tiny you couldn't brush your teeth or wash your face in the sink without the bathroom floor getting soaking wet. But other than that I loved it! Sign up for Airbnb here // click here to see our exact apartment!

After settling in the apartment, we walked around the west village more. We were honestly all in love with the west village. If I were to move there that's where I would live! We found Carrie Bradshaw's stoop right away too! After Carrie's we changed and went to dinner but unfortunately I carried a smaller purse at night and didn't want to take my huge camera. 

We ended up not eating dinner until late night where we found this most amazing pizza. Bleeker Street pizza. We might have gone twice even. Also, this picture doesn't do it justice but it was true greasy NYC pizza. 

Stay tuned for day 2! 

xo, Morgan Paige