'70s Trailer Boasts Drop-Down Terrace and Swiveling Kitchen, Is the Perfect Vacation Home

This is George Clarke's personal static caravan, a restoration process that was featured on the first episode of the long-running series George Clarke's Amazing Spaces on Channel 4. The renovations show kicked off in 2012 and is still airing as of this writing. For U.S. audiences, this makes it almost as successful a series as the Kardashians, who, whatever your feelings about them, are a rare example of longevity in reality TV.

This static caravan conversion is the project that started it all, if you will. As such, it had to be the most in every sense of the word: the most unlikely candidate, the most ingenious layout, the most creative in terms of space-saving solutions, the most satisfying result. It was all that, and so much more. It's still all that because George still owns it, though we assume he's no longer using it with the kids because they're grown up now.

For the conversion, George and the producers picked a 1979 Ace Excellence static caravan that was one foot into the grave. Take that in the most literal sense: they bought it from a Cumbria company that specializes in the transport, disassembly, and crushing of old, whether end-of-life or uneconomical-to-repair, touring and static caravans.

Before sending these travel trailers to that big farm in the sky, specialists here comb through every unit to see what can be salvaged, re-tested, and resold. But you get the idea; this is the place where old travel trailers go before they die.

Consequently, George got his future vacation home very cheap, for just £300, which is $374 but at the current exchange rate. He and his old friend and partner Will Hardie of Studio Hardie would work together not just to bring it back to life but to transform it into a modern vacation home suitable for kids and adults alike.

Both George and Hardie described the project as a restoration, but technically, it was a full build. Because of the state of the caravan, Hardie decided to keep only the exterior for its vintage vibes and create a completely new interior with a completely new layout.

In its finished form, the 30-foot (9.1-meter) trailer can sleep two adults and three children, with each kid in their own bed, and features a large, glass-wrapped living room, a full kitchen, and a wet bathroom. Its interiors are vibrant and cheery but not in a visually overwhelming way, but its strongest suit is that it packs incredible features.

For instance, the U-shaped bench seating in the living room is also a bed, a wardrobe, and a bathtub. That's not some sort of typo, and neither are your eyes deceiving you. Under one section of the red-orange bench hides a movable bathtub you can enjoy while the kids are running out and about. Another section is a pull-out that transforms the space into a queen-size bed, while the third section hides a mini wardrobe underneath.

The entire length of the trailer drops down at the press of a button, slowly but surely. This opens up the interior space, extending it into the outdoors – including the kitchen, whose main unit swivels outside so you won't stink up the place when you're cooking.

Before you move to the sleeping area, there's a small wet bath with a shower and toilet and a drop-down sink just outside the door. The brief for Hardie asked for a modern family home that wouldn't lack creature comforts, so he decided multi-functionality was the way to go.

Another way of achieving that was by liberating living space through the creation of a different layout. It isolates the sleeping areas on one end of the trailer and creates clear divisions between them for privacy. The kids, for example, sleep in three-cleaver bunk pods, while the parents get a small bedroom with a queen bed and some shelving.

Like the living room, the bedroom also opens to the exterior, which makes the compact footprint feel much less so. At least in good weather, it does.

George calls this vacation home the "big tin can," but there's nothing about it today that justifies the comparison. The total cost of the conversion was £38,000 ($47,300), which George admits wasn't cheap but "totally worth it." It's easy to shrug off this kind of investment when you're someone as famous as this architect slash TV presenter, but the context is that he still calls it "my favorite place in the world."

Money issues aside, this conversion is absolutely gorgeous, so we can all enjoy it, at least visually.