[IndyAnne]

I've been going real slow taking apart the bath. I'm building a pile of stuff in the driveway, including a few dollars' worth of copper pipes. I've been real careful with the copper, thinking over the options of using it again, or going with some combo of PEX and copper.

The hot water heater works just fine once we get parked and take the time to heat up the thermalcouple. It worked very well on a couple of story weekends when I thought a storm would blow out the pilot. So, if I don't wreck it by removing it for the floor repair, I'll keep it for another season. Same for all of the appliances. I figure relocating the bathroom components to move the bed into the back is enough for this year.

The fun of the project is learning more about the mind behind the design. I have to say, I've found some stuff that I did not expect to find. It's hard to imagine what is previous owner cobbling together little fixes over time and what was Airstream originally.

I tell you, all that plastic and fiberglass in the original design was like love, covering a multitude of sins. After I ripped that stuff out, carefully cut away the drains and vents, and the water lines in that rat's nest of pipes and rot in the back end, I was temporarily stunned.

I guess this was the point of no return. I looked at the mess, took a bunch of pictures, and commenced to cutting out the pipes -- carfully to be reused.

I found the original seam of the rear 4 foot section of floor. This is the starting point of the floor replacement. The photo shows the rusty elevator bolt that I will address from underneath the trailer when I have constructed my safety system for elevating the back end on some planks, like I have seen others do. No jacks -- big ol' 2 x 12s cut on an angle so I can drive the wheels up onto the elevation, crawl underneath, and investigate the mouse nests, to which I will immediately introduce my cat.

I have the replacement panel set up to paint several coats of outdoor polyurethane and marine topside paint. I shall treat the floor like it will have to last forever -- or until the next owner gets it and sets up howling against all that I have done. If all goes well, that next owner will be some rising young'un in our household. Who knows, she may need it for a college housing, or we might eventually retire it to the back yard for our pool house.

So, here goes some pics with beginning mysteries attached. I don't know how to intersperse the photos with text. So, maybe I'll end up expanding my blog and send links to there for more of the details.

Thanks to the airforum folks for being so creative and willing to share from good (and bad) experience.

Here's a mystery. Since all of this interior skin, with the zolatone encrusted over with 40 years of road grime and who know what from the Michican woods, was covered with plastic bathroom parts from floor to ceiling, how did this hole get here? I speculate this is a factory event, before the bathroom components were installed.

What's more, now that I can actually see what was behind all of that plastic, I see some curious things, like in the photo with the gap between the fiberglass end cap -- which I ain't touching, not removing, no way. I wonder if there was a shortage of interior aluminum skin that day and they figured, what the heck? this is going to be covered in plastic anyway, so why bother?

Question is, I do not plan to re-cover this rear section with plastic. Maybe some kind of painted aluminum. But I was not planning to cover "over" what is already there, but, obviously, I cannot get to the rivets holding these lower panels without removing the end cap, which I already said I am not going to remove. There is just too much that could go wrong there. They do not make those anymore, I hear.

So, I'm already thinking, how could I manage this rouged-out finish that Airstream must have intended never to see the light of day? I mean, besides clean it.

But, how am I going to get those panels off to get to the framing, to see if any of the floor channels have survived the water damage. I see so much daylight from the clearing away of pipes and water lines, i just know I am going to encounter so much corrosion and dissolved aluminum, not to mention steel frame and cross members. And, -- OH -- the black tank and related parts... yuk.