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Old 08-06-2003, 09:31 PM   #21
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So, at this point the "Caravel Owners Club" has four members!

Rog, we traveled 1100 miles round-trip to get our Caravel and counted ourselves lucky! There's darned few up in the Northeast to choose from ...

Stef, I'll post a pic of my gaucho legs tomorrow. Your email address was bouncing on me yesterday, not sure why.

BTW, our first updates will be a small fire extinguisher, a permanently mounted smoke/CO detector, and (after I figure out the drawer slide problem) I think we are going to change out the current vinyl flooring to a wood-look vinyl or laminate. This is all pretty low-cost stuff and within my "handyman" skill level.

We're also thinking hard about where to add permanent organizers (for reading material, kitchen stuff, supplies, etc.). With 3 people in a 17-ft trailer you can quickly see the need for organization!

-- RL
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Old 08-06-2003, 09:55 PM   #22
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Pergo flooring in mine?

I'm not at all fond of the shag carpet in my '71 and would love to install Pergo. Problem is that my dinette sits at a slight angle rather than parallel. I dunno why it was built that way. Were the older Caravels like this?
Rather than trying to cut the Pergo at matching angles, might it be easier to install it under the benches then reinstall them?
Problems? Thoughts? Suffer with the shag?
BTW, my photos are at:
http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/bc/roj...tos.yahoo.com/

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Old 08-07-2003, 08:00 AM   #23
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Wink "Caravel Convention"

We still have the original tile in ours. Fortunately the pieces
are coming up on their own! We are waiting for our new
Armstrong Linoleum to come in. (Any day.) Its all one sheet
so it seems really practical. Just wondering what to do around the shower pan. How to join them. Wish I could take the shower pan up but I 'm afraid I'd break it.

I'd be afraid of Pergo because if you had a leak or water problem
it seems it would have more chance to seep through. The shag
carpet would have to go though.

As far as organizing- I've been amazed at the amount of usable
space in the Caravel. We're going from New Orleans to Santa Fe
in a few weeks so we'll see how well we do with space!

Heidi
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Old 08-07-2003, 08:19 AM   #24
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Pergo floor option

Rog, the dinette is very much at an angle in our '68. See pic. This is not a bad thing as far as laminate (e.g., Pergo) flooring goes, it just means a lot more cuts. Once you get the angle, it shouldn't be all that hard.

The reasons I wouldn't go under the furniture are that (a) it's a lot more trouble to remove & reinstall everything; (b) when you raise the gaucho to accomodate the Pergo, you'll find you have to raise other things, too like the wood shelf that lies above the gaucho. Especially in the kitchen, this looked like the kind of thing that would cascade into a whole interior refurb, which is more than I'm willing to do.

It's funny you mentioned this because I sat up until 1 a.m. last night figuring out exactly how to put laminate flooring in without causing a nightmare of problems. An example is the the drawers beneath the gaucho -- with a 3/8" floor in place, mine won't have clearance to open. But since I plan to re-build those drawers anyway, I guess I can deal with that.

In the next few days I'm going to look for a remnant box of laminate flooring in a warm wood color and put it in. I'll post pics as I do it.

Although some laminate floor manufs claim some level of waterproofness, I'm not going to include the bathroom. I'll use an edging strip to "step down" the floor from the new laminate to the old vinyl, at the bath doorway.

A rough measure of my open floor space (not including bathroom) is 28 square feet. That's about half a typical box of laminate flooring, so even with a LOT of waste (which is to be expected given all the tricky cuts), I should be fine with just one box. That's about $40-65 -- not bad.

Part of the reason that I need so little is that I will put the new floor only in the trafficked areas, directly over the vinyl. The vinyl already goes under all the furniture, and it's in good shape, so why remove it? The vinyl will serve somewhat as a floor leveller and waterproofer. But in your case, you'll have to take up the shag before getting started.
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Old 08-07-2003, 11:28 AM   #25
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This is really interesting. Your interior is much lighter than mine. Here's a picture of mine (with tropical dog-proof slipcovers). You can see there are two magazine racks, one next to the door, one to the left of the window. They look original to me, because there is a third little rack next to the reading lamp. I'll past a pic of it in the next message.
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Old 08-07-2003, 11:30 AM   #26
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I forgot to post the pic before I hit submit - duh!
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Old 08-07-2003, 11:35 AM   #27
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Here's the reading lamp racks. The wine boxes on the wall were a previous owners addition. We removed them because there's plenty of space for us so far. We aren't even using it all as it is. And we like the way that wall looks without the boxes on it. It has a beautiful woodgrain that I just love looking at.
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Old 08-08-2003, 08:43 AM   #28
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Adding drawer slides

Well, I ended up making a new drawer under the gaucho so I could have slides installed. In case anyone else is considering this, keep in mind you'll need to (a) build new drawers, because the old ones are too big to have slides mounted; (b) build a new sub-frame to mount the drawer slides; (c) if you want to keep the same "look", you need to pry the existing drawer fascia off the old drawer and attach it to the front of the new drawer.

The picture below shows the subframe I had to build. It's the lighter-colored wood (actually maple veneer plywood leftover from another job). Note the drawer slider mounted on the left side -- there's another on the right you can't see. Also note that the subframe doesn't fit square, because the original gaucho frame is not square. I'm finding that carpentry inside an Airstream is much like working on an old house!
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Old 08-08-2003, 09:04 AM   #29
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Adding drawer slides, part 2

Prying off the drawer fascia wasn't too hard, but you need to be careful. It's attached by the drawer pull, about 15 little staples, and a bit of glue. In my case, the glue had never really bonded so it didn't present a problem. I carefully worked a flat screwdriver into one edge and gradually pried the fascia off the staples. Go slow or you'll break the fascia.

This picture shows the new drawer box that I built, with the old fascia attached, and the drawer slide. Right now the only things holding the fascia on are the two screws which mount the handle. The fascia is so thin (about 1/4") that I am hesitant to risk putting a screw into it from the back, for risk of tearing out or poking through. I should glue it but I want the option of re-using the fascia again should I decide to change the drawer once more.

I also raised the position of the fascia by about 1/2" to allow opening the drawer without catching on rugs or the new laminate floor I plan to install later.

-- RL
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Old 08-08-2003, 09:17 AM   #30
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You probably could have made the drawerfront as well just by staining some high quality plywood of the same thickness. The end of the kitchen counter on my trailer was replaced by the previous owner, and you can't tell it's new. Now I need to replace the piece across from it (the end of the dinette seat next to the door) which is covered in chips and filler from previous repairs. Hopefully I will do as good a job as the PO did on the other piece. I'm thinking of these things as winter projects.

Good job on the drawers. I don't think I could have cranked out drawers as fast as that. It will be nice for you to not to have to yank on them to haul them out.
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Old 08-27-2003, 10:28 AM   #31
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Laminate flooring going in!

OK, as promised, here's a picture of the new laminate flooring going into the Caravel. It's not a terribly hard job, but the innate non-square-ness of everything in the trailer makes for a lot of nit-picky little cuts.

The white stuff is foam underlayment. You just spread it, staple it down, and trim the edges with a carpet knife. Total time: about 15 minutes. After it is cut you can pry the staples back up.

Notice I am installing right over the existing vinyl floor. This will add a level of water protection for the subfloor should a major leak occur. It's also a lot less work! You can see that I'm not going into the bathroom. Our shower curtain leaks too much for a laminate floor. I'll terminate the new floor end with a little threshold.

I worked from the rear corner by the heater, forward. There's a bit of trimming in front of the fridge to allow the access panel to open, but it's an easy straight cut. Then I worked toward the door, which requires the forward (dinette) edge of the boards to be cut at an angle of about 13 degrees. You can't see that in the picture unfortunately. That funky angled dinette of the Caravel is a challenge when installing flooring.

Note that I put the flooring pretty tight to the edges. The Uniclic brand instructions suggest 2 mm gap per meter, which is not much when you're covering the floor space of a Caravel, so I basically just cut it with a sawblade's gap at the edges. The 1/4" panel sidewall of the refrigerator cabinet flexes much more than is needed to accomodate expansion of the floor anyway.

The next cut is going to be the hardest one. The corner of the curbside dinette seat is tricky. There's a short cut at 13 degrees and a long cut on the board of about 12.5 degrees. This piece is going to look like a jigsaw puzzle.

To get to this point, I've expended about 3 hours (including patching injuries and drinking cold stuff), plus $90 in materials. I figure another 2-3 hours to finish, including the quarter-round installation and threshold by the shower. I'm going to lightly glue the quarter-round so that it floats just above the floor surface, because it can't be attached to the floor and the thinness of the cabinetry in some places doesn't permit nailing.

-- RL
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Old 08-27-2003, 11:24 AM   #32
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Thumbs up

Lookin' good! Good luck on all those under-dinette cuts. Looks like a real headach to me. BTW, it looks like the previous owner laid vinyl down over the edge of the shower pan, if yours was originally like mine. This is how my floor terminates. I appreciate the little extra border to catch splashing from the shower.
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Old 08-27-2003, 11:56 AM   #33
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different showers

Interesting, Stef -- my shower is a bit different. Mine is shaped the same on the outside but you can see mine has a circular interior. The PO cut the vinyl to butt up against the pan. I think the extra edge on yours would be nice to have because there's always a puddle right there after a shower, and it would make re-flooring easier in that area.
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Old 08-27-2003, 12:26 PM   #34
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rluhr-
Mine looks just like yours. Same color and all. We just
put new flooring in last week. We ripped out the old VAT and went down to the plywood. We were able to slide out the old tiles from under the shower pan. (Quite a feat) The now flooring slid under about 2 inches and we silicone caulked it. Looks nice I must say. I'll post a pic when I get home. We took out all of the furniture, water tank, pump, etc. Huge job.



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Old 08-27-2003, 02:15 PM   #35
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Heidi and Rluhr - How interesting, I wonder why mine is different.

I just went to the picture archives
http://vintageairstream.com/archives/%2768Caravel.html
and the one one there looks like yours.

The sink top looks different too, but it's hard to tell from the angle.
Here's a pic of ours. Is your bathroom sink like this? Do you have a medicine cabinet above the sink?
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Old 08-27-2003, 07:02 PM   #36
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Stef-
The faucets for my shower are on the other side of the lav.
Up against the closet. No medicine cabinet nor does it look like one was there. Was your trailer made in California by chance?
Maybe thats why.

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Old 08-27-2003, 08:52 PM   #37
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I'll bet it was made in CA, since it was originally sold to someone in OR. That would be the logical place for it to have come from, and would make sense of the different bathrooms. You'd think they would have used the same suppliers either way.

The medicine cabinet is molded of very lightweight stiff plastic, which is getting kind of brittle and warping out of shape. Still works though, and it has a little built in light, which is handy.
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Old 08-28-2003, 08:26 AM   #38
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Bathroom cabinet

Mine is pretty much like yours Stef, but the P.O. removed the center faucet and put in a more modern single unit on the right that controls the shower with a pull-up handle. My sink is only slightly different and I have what appears to be an identical medicine cabinet.

It's really true that there are no two alike!

On mine, the lower door to the bathroom cabinet (just below the sink) seems to be delaminating along the top edge due to shower water. I will probably replace it over the winter with a solid wood door to match the living room cabinetry, and coat it with spar varnish to resist the moisture.

By the way, the laminate floor is done except for one piece which I'll put in today, and a couple of small edging strips. Next project is to rebuild the other under-bed drawer and replace some latches that aren't holding up.

I'm also going to mount a discrete little digital temperature gauge near the front wall (the outside temperature probe will go out via the white water tank dump in the floor below the dinette), and a battery meter somewhere.

If I can figure a neat way to gauge the white water tank level, I'll add that too. Last week we spent 8 nights on the road camping (mostly in Acadia Nat'l Park) and it was annoying suddenly running out of water without warning. There weren't any hookups and so running out of water meant hitching up and towing the trailer over the faucet. Since almost always boondock, gauges for everything are becoming priority items for us.

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Old 08-28-2003, 10:59 AM   #39
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Those are great ideas, be sure to let us know how they go (you'll have to start a new thread, this one's getting big!). I wouldn't mind having some guages myself. Although we always stay in campgrounds, we've been boondocking quite a bit in tent spots or places that don't really have hookups even though they say they do (an extension cord outlet nailed to a tree 60 feet away is NOT a hookup in my book).

As for the bathroom cabinet door, the previous owners showed us a trick, they keep a medium plastic shopping bag under the sink and lay it over the top edge of that door and then shut the door. Keeps the door dry. You'd think with all that plastic AS could have made a plastic door as well. Your idea for a matching, varnished door will look good, I think!

Good job on the laminate, especially with all those angles. You inspire me! Maybe I will cover up that yellow honeycomb vinyl in mine yet!
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Old 08-28-2003, 12:10 PM   #40
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Dear Caravel Club members-
On my fresh water tank there is a guage. It consists of 2 parallel
copper pipes-one at the top level of the tank and one at the bottom. they are connected vertically with a clear plastic tube with a little red ball in it. The little ball sits at the level of the water. It is visible between the front gaucho and the credenza.
I dont have a dinette. I guess I got a water guage instead.
Its cute tho.

Heidi
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