• Building A Horse Trailer Bar

BUILDING A HORSE TRAILER BAR

TRANSFORMING MAGGIE

The paint on Winston The Photo Booth was barely dry, but we felt a need to add a mobile bar to our fleet (of one). A local Craigslist find looked promising in the photos…however, the old saying “good from afar, far from good” turned out to be true. Not saying it was rusty, but if my primary health care provider worked on Saturdays, I’d have been over “tout suite” for a tetanus shot.

Next up was another Craigslist beauty. This one was perfect, if a little far away. Two-horse straight-load trailer from the early ’90’s. Nice condition and the price was well below anything else out there (#underpriced). I emailed the seller and he gleefully informed me that 3 people were coming over to see it in the morning and it would probably be gone before I could get there. I thanked him for getting back to me and asked to be informed if it didn’t sell. Of course it sold… it was worth twice as much.

Back to the drawing board and the money we had taken out of the bank for the first trailer visit was starting to be frittered away on tacos and beer.

Backstory:

During this period our eldest son was making the transition from sucking the lifeblood and cash reserves from his loving parents, to creating a future self-supporting life for himself, on the other side of the country. In other words, he had graduated college and got a job on the West Coast. Unable to transport his impressive collection of stolen beer signs and garage sale furniture, he started to sell it on Facebook Marketplace, with remarkable success.

So I had never used Facebook Marketplace before. It had horse trailers and the bonus of being able to troll the seller before inquiring about the trailer. Mr. Zuckerburg now has me tagged as a rancher and knows more about me than my parents… but hey it’s free. So a quick search and up pops Maggie, a 1973 Lanes Trailer in Emory, TX…perfect.

GO TO THE BLOG

TIME TO GET TO WORK

When we got Maggie The Mobile Horse Trailer Bar home, the pop-up Texas thunderstorm made her all shiny and brought out her natural patina. I seriously considered just hitting the rust spots with Naval Jelly (it’s a rust sealant, not something for your belly button), and some clear coat. She would look awesome, but we needed a match for Winston.

Maggie was in great shape and required far less work than Winston. The only structural modifications needed, was to open up the windows to create a serving hatch. We cut the metal away, and Joseph P. did his magic to weld it all together. No pirate episodes on this build, although he did get zapped pretty good with a bad ground on the MIG welder (I did laugh at the time, but feel remorseful now… it was funny).

Although we had planned to add wood panels to the side of the trailer, we loved the galvanized steel that was already there. It would have been easier to just paint the steel, but we decided to keep it and buff out the white rust.

PUTTING HER ALL TOGETHER

So with 10 days before her public debut at the City of Heath’s Annual 4th of July parade, Maggie was ready for painting. Two coats of primer and two top coats of enamel. The hardest part is always cleaning  up after using oil based enamel. The original trim went back on within a few days of painting and we spent a day adding solid cedar plank and flooring to the interior. We painted the company logo on the rear door on July 2, dropped both Winston and Maggie off at the event site on July 3 for styling and were ready for a great July 4th event with a few hours to spare.

Special thanks to Joseph P. (Chief Metallurgist and Electrical Conductor), Suzanne B. for not complaining about me smelling of paint for days at a time and her constant support and Brendan B. for his impending college career and future self-sustaining lifestyle. Special thanks to Connor B. for his insight into Facebook Marketplace and his ability to provide a happy life to his dog Koba.