A Newlywed Couple Hack Austin’s Housing Market by Fixing Up a 1971 Airstream

The truth is, Rose Ballard was joking when she sent a Craigslist ad for a 1971 Airstream to her husband, Paul Suttles. 

“We’d just gotten married, and we were thinking about our next step and how to transition out of renting in the volatile housing market in Austin,” says the interior designer, principal of Rose Ballard Studio. “I happened upon a trailer listing and sent it to Paul, half-kidding.” 

But joshing around small-space living is a dangerous game when you’re married to an architect. Paul called her bluff, and days later, the newlyweds were the owners of a tarnished silver camper shell.

The trailer would eventually be polished up inside and out and christened the Silver Armadillo, but when it came into Rose and Paul’s lives, it was in rough shape—and the couple didn’t even have anywhere to put it. “We just said we’d figure it out—and we did,” says Rose. They had the ’Dillo towed to a “junky, rugged,” empty lot outside of Austin and trekked back and forth from their rental apartment for months to tinker away.