Thank you friends!!! I have to say it has been quite trying at times, and I'm sure the guilt over spending so much would have overtaken me if it weren't for the support and camaraderie here on the forum. My husband made a "wild" guess at how much we've spent and he threw out $10,000!!! I was aghast and began adding it up: new fridge, oven, furnace, water heater, axles, tires, disc brakes/ actuator, flooring, windows, cushions.....ummmmm.... yeah well, not quite that much!
Anyway, back to where I've been:
So I had now a new b/w tank box made and needed to install a new plywood subfloor in the most sound way possible (without removing too much).
BTW this is when I get a tad manic and start taking on to many little projects at once: refurbish oven, take apart rear compartment door, take off skylights for new screen, take apart vent/hood/fan (oven)... I overwhelm myself easily -OCD- But see, I couldn't move forward on the plywood install alone and hubby gets busy and wants me to research all techniques till the death.. which I did anyway,.... so with 15, or so, open-ended projects spilling all over the garage, I POR 15'd the frame after scraping as much of that darned foam insulation off that I could. BTWagain, the frame that was covered with the foam was pristine! ( I feared the worst with all the warning of moisture retention and that foam.)
My husband is a finish carpenter (though this project was never on his list - it is alas, mine.. so no super cool cabinetry is coming- but a new dinette-which comes later) and he wanted that rear piece put in in one piece because it would be stronger.
I resigned myself to removing one side of banana wrap (which really intimidated me) and doing the partial clam-shell technique. The subfloor was of no use as a template so my husband made a flexible jig out of wood that he used to find the curves. He got the curve of the inside u-channel and added the width of the channel to get our template. I took a picture of the jig with my regular camera, and the film still sits on the counter - sorry. But I'll post it later.
So, my husband, 14 y/o son, and myself set out to do the clam-shell with 8 y/o daughter watching baby in bouncy seat 10 feet away. Not a great place for impressionable children but, we believe in suffering...and struggling... and swearing..oh.. The clam-shell began pretty smoothly.. son on bumper with cinder blocks, husband pushing, me guiding.. and running to the garage for lube . We ended up using a block of wood and a sledge hammer that we borrowed from the neighbor, broke, and had to pause for a trip to the hardware store. But in the end we had a solid rear floor from which to begin anew. The location of where to drill for the bolts, through trial and error, came with me removing some belly pan and drilling from underneath.
I am SOOO glad that part is over!!
With a new floor I turned my attention to the walls: Mold, who knows what... disgusting. The first go around I sprayed bleach and ran out. Then I followd up with this soap (pic below) that I absolutely love!! It smells awesome and it worked like a charm!
I neglected to take a picture of the banana wrap as it is when the belt-line trim is removed. I was appalled to find no caulking or anything under the trim or along all of the vertical slits in the wrap. The plywood sits right next to all those slits just beckoning water to rot it. It is NOT a good thing.
I had removed one side of the rear banana wrap and decided to put in a new piece as the old was badly corroded and on the verge of snapping at the bends.
On the advice of the forum I went to www.metalsupermarkets.com and found a "local" dealer in the bay area to purchase my belly pan and wrap aluminum.
I had my sheetmetal guy cut the new wrap and installed it myself... which was NOT an easy task, and I didn't do that great of a job. If I had more time and less pressure from the weather... and more $$ ... I might have started over. But I left it.
When removing the furniture I noticed dead ants, big ones, inside many things. And dead was a good thing. But then they had a re-birth and there were tons of carpenter ants pouring out of the walls.
After much stress and research I decided to go with poison, eventhough I am a strictly NO- poison type person. I bought the disk type units and powdered stuff which I sprinkled in a barrior all around the ground outside the trailer.
My neighbor came over and asked if my Airstream had died .
After about 3 months, the ants were all dead and haven't been back.
part of a DISASTERIOUS trip (cue rattle snakes, wasps, coyotes, skunks....) to Malibu Canyon St. park last year involved ants..... millions of them ALL OVER the outside and inside of the trailer. I had inadvertily had parked on top of an ant hill when we pulled in the previous night. It looked like someone had spraypainted stripes on the outside when I first pulled up. The inside walls were moving there were so many ants.
Anyway - long story short, we bombed the trailer to kill them (after a night killing them with duct tape).
i couldn't figure out why the tenters around us had put white powder around their tents. I later found out that ants don't like Borox powder - I bought three boxes for the rest of our trip. Our new rule, when in the desert communities, we make police outlines around the trailer jack, stablizer jacks, electric/water hoses, and tires. Haven't had a problem yet.... knock on wood.
Marc
You finally got a thread going...good for you, I'm subscribed!!
You have a fine trailer there, nothing unusual for a '68, and I'm enjoying this thread and my coffee too. I bookmarked your source for local aluminum and the cutting of it. Good for you for insisting you want that trailer. Feel like you don't know what you're doing? Me too! Plenty of folks here learning as they go. We're here to help and share the obsession. Keep us posted. Go girl!!
I put my pictures up on an online album, and label them as I go. It helps me remember what I'm tearing out. There are a few good ones, I use Flickr, Webshots and then I upload high resolution photos to Snapfish to develop, since they are the cheapest that I can find for prints from online. It's easier than managing a website. We luuuuuuuuve pictures.
PS I PM'ed you.
ingrid
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ingrid
1967 24' Tradewind #19104 ~ Forums #4449
Oops... a little out of order, but "Doin' the full monte" reminded me of something I should pass on:
My husband is in carpentry, so I left the cutting out of the subfloor, for bathroom plumbing, to him (naturally!). And I implored on him, that it needed to be exact... there were 4 holes to get just right - dump valve, toilet flange, vent, and wiring for level sensor - he said, "of course!"... And I second guessed his every move, and suggested jigs made from cardboard, and I cried when he put saw to wood, and then.... he did it!!! And it was alllll good. Perfecto. If you look closely at my before pictures, in the plumbing section- there appears to be little, if any wood around the dump valve. Some of it was rotten, but a lot of it was cut - OUT!! It seems somewhere along the line, that mess of plumbing required a huge void of flooring. I wanted it to be clean, water tight, and well, "just right".
So, goood, it was all fine. Until I began replacing the bathroom components. When you put the black tank in it's box, there is a certain degree of play, front to back and side to side. At the time, I didn't think about the toilet's location being affected by EXACTLY where I put the 'template' of holes. The holes, in relation to each other, were perfect (yay husband), but the bunch o' holes were toooooo close to the tub. So when replacing the toilet, that has a side flush, I realized it touches (within 1/16") the tub and you almost can't flush it !!
If anyone can learn from this silly (because I made it) mistake, than YIPEee!! I probably could change toilet$, but "not now" was what someone said around here.
After working on my Ambassador for months now. I have a very good appreciation for the AS designers.
Sure there are issues and we all deal with them. But there is a lot going on in these tiny little homes, so much to think about. One item affects the next.
I'll be amazed when/if I finish and it is actually livable! ;-)
The PO had informed me that there were some leaks - of course, when I picked her up the skylights were open, as were some windows, and the compartment doors had been installed incorrectly, all of which contributed to some significant water damage.
Also in need of replacement were all gaskets, vent covers, and two windows which were plexiglass. So I immediately got on the waiting list at VTS for the curved corning window and decided to think about the flat one later. I replaced the door gasket right away, but it has never fit very well at the top. I am a little too chicken to try the door bending option (I made a half hearted attempt), and I don't want to un-rivet, etc... so I am adding a layer of gasket where it doesn't meet the jam, and we'll see what happens.
I removed the old cracked vents (see pic!), bought new ones from VTS and have installed them over the months. I re-painted the refer and stove vent covers as they were salvageable (thankfully$$). And lastly I un-goooooed the skylights. Someone had put a 1 1/2" wide slop of vulkem all over and around the skylights. For this, I used a heat gun, plastic scrapers, fake credit cards I get in the mail (very handy), and some nasty Jasco stripper - which all together worked great. I re-applied a neater strip of vulkem and that's done.
Still on the list is marker lights and seams. And finish the caulking of the windows.
I will do a separate post on the window install!
Anyone using Alcoa gutterseal? I find it very weird stuff, and don't like it. It has this weird quality to it, you can't run a finger on it, and it leaves little air gaps, bubbles, etc. It doesn't give a very clean look, for me. In fact, it reminds me of the leading in stained glass. I'll take a picture to show what I'm babbling about .
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. We ended up using a block of wood and a sledge hammer that we borrowed from the neighbor, broke, and had to pause for a trip to the hardware store. But in the end we had a solid rear floor from which to begin anew. The location of where to drill for the bolts, through trial and error, came with me removing some belly pan and drilling from underneath.
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