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Welcome to DIY Diary. Each entry covers a new home improvement project. Here, actor, musician, and podcaster Tawny Newsome tackles gutting a vintage Airstream in a desert-inspired makeover.
It was a case of serendipitous timing when Tawny Newsome spotted a sprawling property in Southern California, about 50 miles outside Los Angeles. Before the pandemic, Newsome—who voices the Beckett Mariner character on Star Trek: Lower Decks, plays the ambitious helicopter pilot on Netflix’s Space Force, and cohosts the Yo, Is This Racist? podcast—intended for the property to become a remote mountain escape from her hectic city life. But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, she got rid of her LA home and went all-in on rural living.
“We started investing in the compound, as we call it, as a destination for people to come, especially when things were really scary,” Newsome says. “In the early days of the pandemic, we were able to be a safe space because we had all this outdoor space and there were no people around. My husband and I realized we needed different kinds of guest accommodations and sleeping areas.”
She started searching for a vintage trailer to renovate and found a gutted 1969 Avion Travelcader on Craigslist. She paid a tow truck company to bring it from south of San Diego—despite the fact that it was not really towable. “I can never move it again because it’s not really in any sort of travel shape,” Newsome says. “But we got it here. We were in the early days of lockdown so we were really just renovating it with things we had on hand, like scraps of lumber and pieces of tile we hadn’t used on other projects.”
By May 2020, the renovated trailer was ready to welcome guests, like some of Newsome’s bandmates from Chicago, who could quarantine there while they waited to see if everyone was healthy and could share space. “We made a record, [Material Flats], out here because they were able to have that space away from the house to stay in,” Newsome says. “It became a really useful little addition to our property.”
See how Newsome embarked on a myriad of DIY projects, from a striped accent wall to practical storage solutions made from an IKEA bed.
The inspiration
Newsome had to rely on the materials at hand during the lockdown. “[The paint] was literally leftover from all kinds of projects that we had around,” she says. “When we first moved in, we painted something purple. Then we had an orange leftover from something else.”
Luckily, these supplies matched the vibe of the South California landscape thanks to leftover paint in earthy tones, a dose of greenery, and light wood. Newsome also wanted to go back to the roots of the vintage Airstream by implementing retro touches.
First step that brought this inspiration to life was the stripe wall. Although Newsome did want to create an ombre effect originally, she quickly realized that blending wasn’t her strength and she embraced the stripes with gusto.
To make a striped accent wall, you’ll need:
Step 1: Freshen up the wall
In place of a typical primer, Newsome chose a plain white indoor paint that’s still visible on the top half of the trailer wall. “It was the paint that when we bought the house, this was our living room color or whatever [the people who owned it before] had left us,” she explains. “We used that to prime the entire inside of the trailer because it had a lot of markings on it.”
Step 2: Improvise when necessary
Since Newsome was using the vibrant paint she had on hand, she considered mixing them for more of a gradient effect. “We tried to do an ombre sunset wall,” she says. “And it was so not good. It was so messy and bad.” To pivot, she decided to mix a paint colors and apply them as stripes that were done with the help of painter’s tape. “That color is a result of it being a huge mistake at first and me being like, Oh, crap, I need to cover this,” she says.
Step 3: Use foam rollers
When she contemplated going the gradient route and mixing the colors, Newsome originally used a painting brush. But after scrapping that idea, she reached for “regular foam rollers” for a cleaner, more even finish. “I measured out equal thickness for the stripes and used painter’s tape, and then used a ruler to cover any of the messy brushstrokes I’d already done.”
Step 4: Install wallpaper
Elsewhere in the trailer, Newsome installed colorful, floral wallpaper from Jungalow to serve as the backdrop for the bedroom space. That was one area Newsome didn’t paint with that all-over primer, instead opting to wash the wall before applying the wallpaper. “That wall material is almost like a composite,” she says. “It’s really thin and because it’s original, in some places, there were long gashes. We used fabric-like tape with a rough, paintable surface on the outside of it.”
She taped up those splits before cutting the wallpaper into strips. Since the wall is curved, lining up the pattern took some patience.
Step 5: Build a bed platform
As for the bed platform, that was the product of several two-by-four and two-by-six slats of wood that Newsome had laying around, topped off with “probably a three-quarter inch plywood top on top of the slats.”
“It’s literally a four-foot platform—almost like you’re building a pallet or something, just with slanted wood going horizontally,” Newsome says. “We left the exposed front part open so we can slide those vintage filing cabinets in there for under-bed storage. We use the filing cabinet like a drawer—it’s not structural, it’s not load bearing.”
To make the sleeping area extra cozy, Newsome and her husband built a frame to create a privacy wall that obscured a portion of the bed for added privacy.
Step 6: Invent a desk and closet
This is the part where Newsome truly tapped into some DIY creativity. She built a closet-desk-storage area out of pieces made from an old IKEA bed that she had ripped apart, completely repurposing the wood as raw material. Newsome installed a tension rod and used neutral wood from a butchers block to create contrast and a snazzy storage area. Green metal cabinets with brass handles added a touch of vintage and a burst of color.
The desk trim is a piece of bendable, wood-look trim from an ’80s banquet-type seat that Newsome had on hand from another project.
Step 7: Update windows
On the exterior, Newsome replaced the window panes with new plexiglass, ordering standard size sheets and cutting them to fit. Once all the painting, wallpapering, and general construction had wrapped up, it was time for Newsome to bring her retro-yet-futuristic vision to life with decor.
Up next, see how Newsome tackles a kitchen counter and improvises with record liner notes when the psychedelic wallpaper she ordered didn’t show up.
