What started out as a quick prettying up of their retro caravan turned into a major rebuild and renovation for the winners of The Block season two when they ripped off wallpaper and discovered the walls and some of the frames were riddled with rot.
Serial renovators Alice and Caleb Pearson originally gave themselves one month to renovate their classic 1980s Zephyr they picked up in Nelson a few years back so it would be ready for the Christmas holidays.
That quickly blew out to three months and so did their loose budget of about $3000.
“We thought we were just going to go in and paint everything and make it pretty and then we ended up having to take out all of the cabinetry and everything to remove all the walls and we had to go through all the wooden framing,” Alice said.
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They fell in love with the New Zealand-made Zephyr caravans while living in the South Island in 2019. Alice had spent hours trawling Trade Me and Facebook Marketplace and when they found the one they wanted, bought it for $5200 within 24 hours.
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Although they thought they had done their research, they had missed some of the tell-tale signs such as the bowing wall.
“Honestly we just didn’t know what we were looking for at all and I think once there are signs – any sort of sign of water damage the problem with that is that it normally means it is quite extensive.”
With their dreams of taking their four young children on a summer holiday slower evaporating as they struggled to get hold of any builders to help them in December, Caleb spent time learning the ins and outs of reframing and relining and putting down a new floor on their holiday home-on-wheels.
Before: After stripping off the wallpaper they discovered rot in the walls. There was also carpet on the floor. Photo / Supplied
After: The renovated caravan has a summery feel with Alice choosing to use adhesive stick-on tiles on the floor and a vinyl wrap to cover the existing benchtops. Photo / Supplied
“We’ve got the skillset in terms of building and painting and everything you need to be able to do the renovation, but it’s a completely different ball game because you’ve got a caravan.
“It’s created to be a moving home and how it’s built is not the same as how a house is built. So even the skillset we had, because we know how to renovate it, was what materials to use or how to attack certain problems that arose – one of the major ones being leaks.”
They ended up ripping out all the cabinetry in the caravan and once all the structural work was completed, reinstalled the freshly painted cupboards and beds.
Not only were they conscious of adding too much weight to the caravan, they had also been advised that it would hold its value better if they kept the original cabinetry.
“Because it was our first one we really wanted to keep the workload as simplistic as we could, and we knew we could get a really nice finish just doing paint which was a lot easier. The other thing was we really actually loved the layout of our caravan, so we didn’t want to change it at all. We had used it enough to know that it really worked well.”
Before: The caravan had the original white exterior with distinctive blue strip. Photo / Supplied
After: The caravan was sanded back and painted using brushes and rollers. Alice even painted the word Zephyr back on herself. Photo / Supplied
The rebuild took Caleb an entire month before Alice got stuck into painting the entire inside and outside of the caravan.
As costs started to build, Alice opted for a few cheaper options including ready-made curtains that cost $225 including hemming and adhesive floor tiles for $195.
The new upholstery was achieved by using a “very simple” approach by putting some foam they already had on MDF board and then stapling the material on top.
She splurged on a mix of brass handles for the cupboards and wall knobs costing $579 and what she describes as pretty but impractical bronze and glass lights for the inside of the caravan which, with the exterior lights, cost $583.
The total renovation cost came to $6280 and excludes the $5200 they paid for the caravan in 2019 as well as earlier work they had done to the chassis, brakes and warrant of fitness upgrades which they estimate was about $4000.
“That’s $6000 worth of just materials, but if we were to consider the amount of time that we spent on it – I don’t even know. We don’t time ourselves.”
And while Alice has ruled out probably making any money on the project, the goal is to at least break-even when they eventually go to sell. Similarly renovated caravans are selling for $17,000 to $22,000.
“... I think that is a win because it is a vehicle that has got us away on holidays and we’ve been able to explore the country and it won’t ultimately cost it. I think that’s a win, but it’s definitely not a way to make money.”
The current two-berth caravan is a squeeze for the family of six with two children on the beds, two on the floor and Alice and Caleb in their not-entirely waterproof awning when they were away over summer.
Once they recover from their first caravan project, they plan to have a go at another one better suited for their large family so they can continue to holiday in a range of different places that are relatively affordable.
“Eventhough we had challenges, I think it is very rewarding and we really enjoy the lifestyle that caravanning offers in terms of the experience. We love that we can travel to different places and that we can just pack up and leave quite easily because the caravan has got our sleeping bags, our clothes, our cooking things are all stored in there.”
Alice is still keen to do up another retro caravan because they like their large windows and spacious layout, but will be more careful about recognising any tell-tale signs of leaks and rot including checking whether the caravan has been stored undercover.
Buying a caravan can be quite high risk as there’s not as much safeguarding around buying a leaky caravan as there would be a leaky house, she said.
They also plan to take their time and make it more of a passion project to do when they have free time rather than setting for themselves a rather stressful timeframe.
“We hit our Christmas holidays extremely tired, there were a lot of very late nights and things to get it done in time. That side of it was quite taxing I guess, just the amount of time and the fact that we had given ourselves a deadline.”
