Tour a Sustainably Restored Vintage Airstream Built for a Family

Renovating an old Airstream trailer was a (massive) undertaking for Siya Zarrabi and Kristen Sarah, the two Canadians behind travel blog Hopscotch the Globe. The couple spent months renovating theirs before driving it all over the United States and Canada. Total cost? Just over $54,000. We asked them how they did it so you can make your dream a reality, too.

Kristen and Siya live in their 1976 Airstream Sovereign, which they’ve named Luna (it has its own Instagram account), most of the year. They've renovated more than once since buying it in 2017 to accommodate their growing family — they've since had a daughter, Kai, and adopted their rescue pup Atlas, who all live in the trailer together. Since they often pack up and leave at a moment’s notice to explore somewhere new, they have a practiced routine for getting everything secured for the road and then set up (and cozied up) once they park and settle in.

Life on the road as a family of three — plus Atlas — has been a wonderful lifestyle, Siya says. “When Kristen first brought up (the idea of) the Airstream, it felt right,” Siya says. “It gave us freedom. We’ve always loved having a home and having stuff in drawers — we don’t like living out of hotels all the time, we did that for years and years. But we didn’t like that our home was stuck to the ground. The Airstream gave us both things — to have our things and take it all with us.”

Kristen and Siya bought their Airstream off of Craigslist for about $10,000. Renovating it required a major overhaul: they took it to an RV shop and gutted it, which involved detaching the shell, re-welding the frame, installing new subfloors and fresh propane lines and replacing the tires. And that was just the start.