(DailyExpertNews) — The ability to wake up in a different place every day, live and work in some of the world’s most beautiful places and feel absolute freedom – it’s no wonder many people dream of a life on the road.
Dreaming of a different life
Oliver says we all long for the open road.
Kate Oliver
Growing up in the Midwest, Oliver felt out of place. “I never really felt like I was fit, and I didn’t have an easy childhood,” she says. Instead, she retreated into her imagination, calling the local library her “escape.”
“Initially it was all fiction, then one day I was wandering around and I found books on architecture and interior design, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, those are real places, they exist somewhere with people in them,'” she says.
“There was something in those pages and photos that I could imagine myself in. Obviously the photos had been staged, and my nine-year-old mind didn’t know that, but there was often food on a counter and I imagined the whole scenario before that happened. I thought: I want a life like that, full of meetings.”
She got that different lifestyle—albeit in a very different way from what she’d imagined, by looking at those library books.
“What if we sold everything?”
Oliver and her wife wanted more for their daughter. On the way they found it.
Kate Oliver
In 2013, Oliver and Prasse started talking about the future. They wanted something more for them and their four-year-old daughter, but weren’t sure what.
“For six months, we sat drinking tea every night and talking about what that meant,” she says.
“We never really came to a conclusion, but one morning in January 2014 I came across some photos of a band on tour. Someone in the band apparently had a child and took their child on tour.”
It was a light bulb moment.
“That was it — I thought, I know we don’t have a van, but that’s what we have to do. I texted my wife at work and said, what if we sold everything, bought a van and traveled — and she said yes.”
That, as Oliver says, was that. The next morning, when Prasse left for work, Oliver went to work and planned their lifestyle change. In 2014, she said, “It wasn’t really common — life was nothing.” She also admits, “We didn’t know what was coming.”
The grind of building a house
Some people live permanently on the road, others park in their yard.
Kate Oliver
Because from photos on Instagram, turning an Airstream into a beautiful home looks pretty glamorous. In fact, Oliver says, it was hard, not always pleasant, and hard work.
“We were hoping to find a really cool vintage Airstream and maybe paint it a little bit,” she says. After several months, they found one that seemed to fit the bill – but then they took it home.
“When we started with the basic research, we said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a much bigger project.'”
Mice had chewed through the electricity, meaning the whole thing had to be rewired. The interior also needed a lot of work.
“Within a few months we had the whole thing down to the chassis and shell,” says Oliver.
“You could have your feet on the ground, but still in your trailer.”
‘Sweat, tears and curses’
Oliver’s book travels across the United States and meets people who have renovated their own vans.
Kate Oliver
Oliver had no experience at all with renovation or construction, but Prasse did — her mother is an electrical engineer and she learned it from her “fix it” family. Love for sculpting also meant being good with her hands and having an eye for what worked.
In her book, Oliver talks about the physicality of work — hard manual labor that changed them physically. That she enjoyed it came as a surprise, she says: “Once I got into a flow, I really enjoyed the physical labor, and I was amazed at how well our strengths and weaknesses played out. Where I had no strength , did, and vice versa.”
Today, people looking at their finished products or flipping through Oliver’s book won’t see the “sweat, tears, and swearing,” she says, in a van rebuild — not least because of all the layers of work.
“Normally, a contractor building a house has someone come in to do the electrical work, plumbing, drywall, custom cabinetry, or custom furniture,” she says.
“We all do that.”
The one thing they don’t do anymore? upholstery. “We like to use the power tool, but when it comes to the sewing machine, we need professionals,” says Oliver.
The difficult start
Oliver and Prasse renovated 12 Airstreams, including three in which they lived.
Kate Oliver
It took a year to renovate the van they were going to christen Louise. During that time, they sold their house and moved into the van, creating their home the way they lived in it. Eighteen months later they were on their way. They traveled across the United States in Louise, lay in the desert and next to the ocean, living the van’s dream.
While on the road, they realized they could turn renovation into a business. The idea was simple: travel in their Airstream to the customers’ homes, where they would work on site and do Louise-style transformations from old jalopies into sleek campervans.
Today, with the spread of the ‘van life’ movement and companies offering transformation services everywhere, it’s hard to make a name for yourself. But in 2017 it was easier.
“We were in the right place where the travel lifestyle was taking off, not many others were doing what we were doing, and Instagram was about organic growth,” Oliver says.
They traveled across the United States—by then in their second refurbished Airstream, June—driving to customers’ homes and setting up their vans on the spot. Interestingly, most of their clients were women — paired up but “with their husbands going along,” Oliver says.
Looking for safety
The book follows from residents such as mountaineers Gabi and Brandon.
Kate Oliver
However, it was not the dream they expected. In her book, Oliver talks about experiencing misogyny and homophobia at work. “Sometimes we want to think we’re more progressive and accepting than we really are,” she says.
In fact, it was a horrible experience that made them decide to give up their business model of visiting the customers on site.
“When we started out, we wanted to infuse our love of travel with the company and said we wouldn’t enter into contracts for more than two years because we wanted to evaluate whether it worked or not,” Oliver says.
“We knew before we went to that last job that it wasn’t very sustainable – we were working insane hours, homeschooling our daughter, working all the time. We weren’t exploring. This wasn’t the way we wanted things to be. to do.”
Around the same time, in early 2019, a friend informed them that a new trailer was up for sale — the couple immediately said they wanted to buy it and do it themselves.
“We were going to flip Airstreams: buy them, renovate them and then sell them – it felt better and safer,” Oliver says. They named their new vehicle Hope. They eventually sold her to a woman “to park on her own land, as a way to live in peace and solitude and grow deeper within herself,” as Oliver writes in the book. Their next Airstream? Hawk, where she wrote it.
Of living in a pandemic
Owning a van is your chance to express your personality, Oliver says.
Kate Oliver
Because, just as they started this new chapter, Oliver was asked to write about life. So they hopped behind Hawk’s newly restored steering wheel and spent the following year in the US, photographing people living in renovated Airstreams. When the pandemic hit, they were already talking about a possible settlement, with their daughter ready to start high school.
“Covid really forced the hand on us,” she says. “We were on our way again when the world stopped. Campsites closed, everyone said go home, but for nomads, where do you go home?”
They parked in the backyard of Prasse’s family home in Kansas and stayed there for a few months. Then they spoke. A studio was a necessity to carry out their renovation work, they decided.
“Staying in my in-laws’ backyard wasn’t an option, so we said, okay, it’s time to settle down,” Oliver says. On June 4, 2020—she remembers the date instantly—they moved into a house in the Midwest.
Almost two years later they are working on their 12th vehicle.
Matching personality with van
Some keep their vans on their property, as a fuller expression of themselves.
Kate Oliver
For Oliver, the path is clearly life — and she wants to bring that life to the projects they work on for other people. So how do you capture the essence of someone in a motorhome?
“I can’t design for someone if I don’t know who they are,” she says. “I like really intimate conversations – some are ready, some are not. We start with how they live now. That’s crucial – for clients who want to use it as a home, it’s important to get a sense of the way they work and move through a space so they don’t feel like their movements have to shift.
“I want to know what they do for work, what their style of work is. Do they prefer to sit on a couch, at a desk, do they need a separate workspace?”
Once they have discussed the needs and style, they move on to design. The couple’s signature? Frosted plexiglass doors separating living areas, and plenty of walnut wood to bring the outside in.
Oliver is a strong believer in the power to take to the road.
“When I first went out, and I was so far from the Midwest, everything I grew up in, I could breathe and see myself for the first time,” she says.
“I could see who I was because I had the space and time to think about it. I think a lot of people think of it as escapism – I went to escape my life I didn’t want, and found the life I did [want]† There is so much that distracts us, and we lose sight of ourselves very easily.
“I think people are going to find out who they are, away from all that. I think we need to sit in that silence.”
