I'll be camping again soon!

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To understand why this is so exciting, I have to take you back a bit over 3 years ago. My parents' neighbors had an old pop-up camper for sale for $200. It was in decent shape for it's age, they dropped the price to $100 for me, so I hand over the money and stared making plans. We repainted the inside, built a new table, put in newer (used) countertops. It was looking really nice...then a tree fell on it. One end was essentially broken off. The soft sides on that end were torn up and the mechanism that makes it "pop-up" was damaged. It still opens and closes but it's really hard and a second person has to manually push up on the one corner. It was going to cost $900 just to replace the soft sides...because of it's age I couldn't find anywhere selling just the pieces for that end so I had to buy all new for all the way around...which was NOT going to happen! If I had $900 to spend it would go for something a little more important. I looked for used ones but most were already torn beyond repair like mine were. So here we are, 3 years later and I was faced with fixing it or scrapping it for money. I discussed it with my older kids first since they actually did most of the work on it when we first bought it...and they gave up their swingset fund to get it. None of them wanted to get rid of it...no matter how many times I explained I didn't want to either but I knew I couldn't afford to fix it. But, typical mom, I had to figure out a way to fix it because I just couldn't break their hearts by getting rid of it. So...I finished pulling of the smashed end, I started ripping off the ruined soft sides...and that's when it happened! I discovered that the roof section is completely intact and the exact same size as the opening left after removing the damaged end. So I will lose a small double sized bed but I'm going to reattach the soft roof section to the lower edge of the opening and put tie straps along both edges to create the new corners. It might look like half a pop-up with an entire end missing but it will still sleep 5 comfortably...more if we squish. It will be good enough for now anyway and I just have to pay the registration fees and it'll be ready to go! Hoefully I can get a few days away by the end of the month!