Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — From being able to wake up in a different place every day, living and working in some of the most beautiful places in the world, to feeling absolutely free, it’s no wonder so many people dream of life on the road.
American Kate Oliver has not only made life aboard a travel trailer a reality, but has also turned it into a business.
Oliver launched The Modern Caravan, a company that took her across America while repairing old Airstream travel trailers.
Now, Oliver has published a book called “The Modern Caravan” as a reflection on life on a travel trailer, taking a look at the lifestyle of people who have refurbished their trailers and giving advice on how to refurbish them.
another life
Growing up in the Midwest of America, Oliver has always felt like I didn’t belong. “I never felt like I belonged here, and I didn’t have an easy childhood,” she says.
Instead, Oliver escaped into her imagination, describing the local library she was visiting as a haven.
Oliver was interested in fantasy books, and then one day she found books on architecture and interior design, and she said, “There was something in those pages and pictures that I could imagine myself in.”
Oliver got a different lifestyle—albeit in a somewhat different way than she had imagined—by looking at those books in the library.
“What if we sell everything?”
In 2013, Oliver and her wife, Elaine Brass, started talking about the future, and they wanted something more for themselves and their 4-year-old daughter, but they weren’t quite sure.
One morning in 2014, Oliver stumbled upon some pictures of a band on tour, apparently one of the band members had a child and was taking them with them during that tour.
Then Oliver texted Brass and told her, “What if we sold everything and bought a trailer and drove away?” Her wife said yes.
The next morning, Oliver went to work to plan a lifestyle change.
In 2014, the life of travel trailers was not uncommon.
And unlike the glamorous Instagram photos, turning a travel trailer into a stylish home is no easy task.
After 10 months of searching for a vintage travel trailer, the couple found one that seemed to fit their means, and once they had done the basic exploration, they found this to be a much bigger project than they had previously thought.
The electrical wiring and interior design of the vehicle needed a major revamp.
Oliver had absolutely no experience with renovation or construction, unlike her wife.
In her book, Oliver talks about the strenuous physical exertion that transformed her physically.
People who watch the modified trailers’ final look or browse through their book won’t be able to see the “sweat and tears” that Oliver says were part of rebuilding the trailer.
A contractor who builds a home usually has someone to do the electrical, plumbing, drywall, custom cabinetry, or custom furniture, but Oliver and her wife do it all.
The only thing they haven’t done yet is upholstery. “We happily use power tools, but when it comes to a sewing machine, we need professionals,” Oliver says.
hard start
It took a year to revamp the trailer that the couple named Louise. During this time, Oliver sold her house and moved with her wife to the trailer, which became their home.
After 18 months, a couple traveled overland across the states in Louise, where they lived in the desert and by the ocean, to live the dream of life on the road.
While on the road, the couple realized they could do business with trailer refurbishments.
The idea was simple: they would take their trailer to the customers’ homes, where they would modify the customers’ trailers similar to theirs.
Nowadays, with the Trailer Life movement and companies offering similar services everywhere, the competition would have been tough, but in 2017, it was even easier.
“This way of traveling was in its infancy, and not many others were doing what we were doing,” Oliver says.
The couple had traveled across the states, by this time aboard their second modified trailer, to clients’ homes where they worked on modified trailers.
Interestingly, most of their clients were women.
However, in her book, Oliver talks about misogyny and homophobia at work.
In fact, one of the experiences she had with her wife caused them to abandon the business model of visiting clients at their place of residence.
In early 2019, a friend told them about a new trailer for sale, and the couple immediately said they wanted to buy it to refurbish and then sell it.
Indeed, they sold the new trailer to a woman in order to park her car on her land, as a way to live in peace and unity and to go deeper into herself,” Oliver writes in her book.
During this new chapter in her life, Oliver was asked to write about life on the road.
So she and her husband took their third newly restored trailer and spent the year in the US, photographing people who lived in modified trailers. They were already talking about the prospect of settling down with their daughter, when the pandemic hit.
Oliver says COVID-19 has changed the course of their plans.
“We were back on the road when the world closed. The camps were closing and everyone was saying go home, but for backpackers, where is home?”
Indeed, the couple parked their mobile home in Brass’s parents’ backyard in Kansas, stayed there for a few months, and then decided they needed a studio to do renovations for their company.
“Staying in my in-laws’ backyard wasn’t an option, so we decided it was time to settle down,” Oliver says. In June of 2020, the couple moved into a home in the Midwest.
The path for Oliver is clearly life, and she wants to bring that life to the projects she’s working on for other people. So how do you pack someone’s core into a carriage?
“I can’t design for someone if I don’t know who it is,” she says, “I love to have really intimate conversations – starting with how they live now is very important – and for clients who want to use the cart as a home, it’s important to get a sense of how they work and move through the spaces.” .
“I want to know what they do at work, what their style of work is. Do they prefer sitting on the sofa, at the desk, do they need a separate workspace?”
Once they talk about needs and style, Oliver moves on to the design stage, and the pair add their signature touches like frosted glass doors separating the living spaces, and plenty of walnut to bring the outdoors inside.
Oliver describes herself as a firm believer in the power of being out on the road.
“When I first came out, and I was so far away from the Midwest and all that I grew up in, I could breathe and see myself for the first time,” she says.
She continues, “I could see who I was because I had the space and time to think about it. I think a lot of people think it’s an escape from reality.”
“I went to escape from my life that I didn’t want, I think people are going to find themselves out of it all. I think we need to sit in that calm,” she says.