Husband transforms old trailer into Barbie Dream Van

Ever wanted to be a Barbie girl in a Barbie world?

Well, lse Thalia Massey is actually doing it and living out her childhood fantasy in her own Barbie-inspired “dream camper van.”

The hairstylist and her husband Steven are currently traveling across the West Coast of America in the bright pink van.

Their van began as: “A quick, little fixer-upper just to go have fun.”

They named the Barbie-inspired van Daisy, which is a pink-and-white 1969 Cardinal travel trailer.

Steve got it for Ise as a gift for her 30th birthday after finding it on Craigslist.

Now, Ise and Steven renovate vans for profit and Daisy is their second project ever.

People who saw the pink van kept asking if they could rent her, so the couple began taking their van renovation seriously.

Fixing up another van, called Duke, a beachy, blue-and-white 1963 Cardinal — meant they later “ended up remodeling Daisy all over again”, as they learned so much that they wanted to improve on.

The pair, who have two kids aged 15 and 16, have big plans for their campervans and want to own 10 within ten years.

Steven advised: “You should start with the actual trailer first. Pretty much start with your base.”

“Start with your axle, your tires, your frame. Start with your frame, because the first time we built the whole trailer, the frame was actually horrible. We had to break it all down, do it all over again.”

The campervans now have a lot of special touches that Ilse and Steven handcrafted such as the iridescent epoxy walls in the bathroom that match Ilse’s car.

“My husband wrapped my car iridescent, and I wanted the bathroom to look like my car, so I tried to replicate that as best as I could,” Ilse told Insider.

Ilse painstakingly poured the epoxy by hand all by herself, one vibrant color at a time, truly a labor of love.

The colorful bathroom floor is the same as the couple’s other trailer, Duke.

Duke’s bathroom floor is also made of the same exact material used on Daisy’s ceilings.

The rainbow motif, bright colors and playful theme runs throughout the uniquely multi-colored van.

Daisy the van has a pull-out bar perfect for happy hour as well as faux stained-glass windows with daisies on.

The unique pink-and-white trailer is full of character as Ilse has thought of every detail, even the drawers have flower-shaped knobs.

She has also filled each drawer in the trailer with special stickers from Lisa Frank, Disney princess, or Barbie.

On Tiktok Ilse has nearly 26k followers where she shares car and van renovations and they

“We know why they’re there, but other people don’t know why they’re there,” Ilse explained.

“Each of the trailers is going to have little Easter eggs for other trailer.”

The couple planned to revamp Daisy for under $10,000 but for Ilse, renovation budgets are like wedding budgets — it’s hard to stick to them.

“Just the wood for the bathroom was $1,000 for the teak,” Steven explained.

“So by the time we did the teak, the epoxy, the bathroom, the construction, everything, we were looking at $5,000 into the bathroom.”

The pair have remained based in California.

Their first ever van was headed to Coachella music festival in Palm Springs, where Steven said: “That’s where it all started, yeah. It was a Coachella trailer.”

Ilse continued: “It’s just a vibe. It’s super cool. Everyone there is just happy-go-lucky, and they love the trailer, and it’s fun.”

Growing their van empire the couple recently, got hold of a third trailer to do up.

Ilse explained that: “Someone gave us a third trailer because she heard what we were doing. So she was like, ‘I literally have this in front of my house. You could totally have it.”

She added that it was the same brand as the other two trailers, just bigger.

They call their newest 1978 travel trailer Sunny.

Always looking to expand, Ilse wants to buy at least 23 acres of land and create campervans for rent.

“There’s a place out in Joshua Tree, and they’re doing the same thing. I spotted it, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is exactly what I want to do,’ so we definitely want to do that,” Ilse said.

She continued: “I want to do weddings and birthday parties and things like that. Just somewhere where people can go and camp out. That’s definitely a long-term goal.”

Eventually, the couple might also make a trailer their home, once their teenage children are older.

Once a month the couple takes a trailer out for a 24-hour ‘date night’ where they go somewhere beautiful that is also close to them.

“We just want to have a place where we can be outdoors and have fun, do old-school stuff like how we used to when we were little,” Ilse said.

“Eventually, hopefully, we’ll have grandkids, so we can have a place where our grandkids can go, just run amok and stuff like that.”

This story originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced here with permission.