Full Renovation of Stella the 1984' Excella

[ctaulborg]

Hello! I just joined the forums but have been long using it as a resource and thought I would share our renovation experience. My wife and I purchased a 1984' 31' Excella about a year ago, took it on some trips out west from Kansas (Arizona, Colorado, Utah) with our young children (now 3 and 6) and are loving the experience.



The previous owners had done some cosmetic changes, including changing out the rear bed area with a full king platform and mattress, painting the interior walls, replacing curtains, and installing floating wood floors. We stripped the original goucho to the frame and put in new foam and fabric, which helped with smell, but did not do a lot in the way of comfort. We had also replaced the toilet during our "Out West" trip because of smelly issues (the new floating floor that they had installed was thicker than the original flooring and the old toilet couldn't seal properly resulting in sewer gas venting into the cabin - we replaced that bathroom section with vinyl and a new a toilet for good measure and that took care of the issue). We also replaced the tires and brakes before going through the mountain passes of Colorado.

However, because our 30+ year old trailer needs a bit more "love" (she's very smelly, has soft spots in floor, shows obvious signs of water leaks/damage, et cetera), and because we love projects like this, my wife and I decided to go all in and do a complete overhaul. As so many have done before us, I wanted to share our experience with the hope that someone might find the information useful, and also so that we can benefit from the broad experience of the members of this forum.

Day 1: Our First Challenge - Getting her up the driveway
We live on a hill. Let me rephrase, we live on a ridiculous slope with a driveway approach angle that from day one was the bane of our existence in trying to get our airstream near our house:



When we purchased the airstream, we knew it was unlikely that we would be able to park it at our house because of this. I was completely new to trailering at that time, and every angle/direction I attempted resulted in the rear of our long trailer bottoming out in the street/driveway (the street runs downhill at an angle opposite of our uphill driveway. Suffice to say we ended up puting it in storage about 5 minutes from our house.

Finally, a year later and after we had mentally committed to doing a full renovation and enlisting the help of our kind neighbor (who used to build trailers), we were able to get Stella up our driveway! (Okay let's be real, I let my neighbor back it up our driveway after doing a three point turn into the grass shown to the right in the picture above. Threading a needle, for sure. Here she sits:



Day 1 Continued: Starting Tear-Out
The first thing we did was remove the goucho (we had previous practice due to our refoaming/upholstering job 6 months back so this went quick):



Then the flimsy fold out table:



Then the overhead bin above the sinks (which was crumbling apart):



Then the floating floors:



Then the king bed frame, and at that point we ran out of daylight/energy.

Day 2: Removal of Interior Continued
I wish I could say I "tore things up" and got a lot done on the second day, but the credit goes mostly to my wife - I ended up having to do work-work instead of "fun"-work for most of the day. She got a lot done:



I ended up helping the last few hours of the day to help take care of the last of it:



We left the pipes for now until we decide 100% if we're relocating anything (which we probably won't at this point).

Day 3: Drilling out Rivets and Removing Interior Skins
I should mention to anyone considering this endeavor that one major step we took before removal of each item was meticulously taking photos and videos of placement/orientation/et cetera so we can remember how everything gets puts back together. We are doing this because we're not sure which elements we are going to save/reuse and which we are going to scrap altogether, and better safe than sorry. In preparation for the interior skin removal, we also drew a little diagram (and put labels on each panel) to help ourselves later:



We drilled out a million rivets and got out the upper panels. The insulation was pretty neat - it was like looking at one of those ant farms, except with mice (Hooray!). We have a space heater running because it has been down in the 20s at night. We ended up picking up an LED work light tripod and it's been the bees knees. Here's a picture of my awesome better half all bundled up:



I put the kids to bed and she finished cleaning things up:



Day 4: More Rivets and Removing Interior Skins
This day was the more tedious of days. My wife bore the brunt of the effort, and an effort it was. Removing a million rivets, electrical fixtures, water hoses, window trim, door trim, and other oddness takes a good amount of time. Still, we were able to finish the remaining skin and insulation tear out and get everything down to the "bones":



Day 5: Today! Sub Floor Removal
I have done a lot of "research" on floor removal and have read that we need to be very cautious especially around removing the middle section of flooring. My intent is to remove section by section and on every floor frame cross member place a "shim" of the sub floor to prevent the whole thing from dropping. Based on other people's experience with floor removal in terms of how long it takes, combined with a busy schedule today, it's unlikely I will get to the point where I need to worry about it, but feel free to share any additional tips you may have. More to come later .

[Llittle54]

Thanks for your report! I look forward to watching the progress. Keep the pictures (more the better) and commentary coming. Hope your pint sized helpers aren't too much bigger by the time you get done! Fun

[Minno]

Welcome!
Ah, yes. That looks familiar. We did a shell-on subfloor replacement. Shell-off would probably have been easier, but hind sight and all of that...
Pictures are good, as well as labels. We used cardboard mockups and painters tape to figure out our layout once the floor was replaced. You can get very innovative with floor plans!
Good luck and keep posting!

Kay

[ctaulborg]

Originally Posted by Minno

Welcome!
Ah, yes. That looks familiar. We did a shell-on subfloor replacement. Shell-off would probably have been easier, but hind sight and all of that...
Pictures are good, as well as labels. We used cardboard mockups and painters tape to figure out our layout once the floor was replaced. You can get very innovative with floor plans!
Good luck and keep posting!

Kay

Thank you for the kind words! I actually read your entire thread about Little Girl the other night - it was one of the big catalysts in motivating me to take on such an endeavor (and keeping me up well past bedtime ). You guys did a great job with yours!

[Tbeck11931]

Great job! Keep the pictures coming. During this Teardown you need to (plan ahead)
Things like solar power feeder cables, adding a second AC unit, fantastic fan, or just the wiring for something like that. Go LED all the way when you put her back together. Upgrading to 50amp service if you choose to do that.
Remove reseal or replace all the roof equipment fans AC unit etc. run a couple of conduit passes front to back and also across the bottom under the floor from your battery charger to behind the fridge or the stove area. Doing these cheap and easy things while your interior and floor are removed will simplify upgrades later to the Airstream.
I'm in the middle of a 34' Limited Teardown so I'm interested in your progress.
Thomas

[Minno]

Nice to know we helped motivate someone else. WE were helped and motivated by many others on the forums also. Come spring, we'll probably be reworking the black tank as we made a 'little' mistake plumbing the vent stack. Chris will probably build a new black tank. Oh well, no one's perfect...
As Thomas says, plan for the future as much as you can. Take pictures, so you can remember things later when you want to change things. It will happen! Our pictures have helped us several times when we've added lighting, etc.

Kay

[Air83]

following.

[kdickinson]

Very cool! keep the updates coming

[Suzbp]

Love the pictures!

[riowerks]

YAY for your wife! I want to meet her so we can share refurb stories :-)

Crista

[ctaulborg]

Day 5 - Just Kidding, No Subfloor Today
I had fully planned on getting to the subfloor today, but the massive pile of garbage outside our airstream and in our garage demanded our attention:



We are starting to look like hoarders:



So we spent the better part of the day organizing the mess, bagging up the garbage, rolling up and tarping the savable items (aluminum siding, et cetera), and running back and forth to the dump with a pickup load at a time.

After that, we started taking photos of the items we are planning on selling or giving away for free. For example, the old stove:



After that, I planned on starting the floor tear out, but realized we still had a bunch of "little" things to do before that could go full steam, such as removing the furnace, toilet floor flange, and miscellaneous water/drain pipes - so I made short work of those items:



Throughout all of this I was stressing about the "next steps", specifically "what am I going to insulate with?" and "where will I be able to get reasonably pricing long sheets of aluminum if we want to replace the interior skins?" and "wow there a lot of wires in here, I hope I can sort this all out", and "maybe I should just buy an already completed airstream, what did I get myself into?"

Then I turned around walking back from the house and was reminded how awesome it will be to take this thing out when it's all done:



Day 6 - Subfloor Removal, for Serious
My better half spent the majority of the day scrubbing at the walls removing the last bits of insulation, and also started the process of clearing out the wires we didn't want to keep, and finally cleaning the last bits of insulation and mess from the remaining salvageable wires. I was stuck inside doing no-fun-work, as I like to call it.

While I was working, I took the liberty of figuring some of the answers to my questions from the previous day:

• Insulation - after careful review and consideration, my plan is 1.5" Roxul with the possibility of the foil bubble stuff wedged between it and the interior aluminum skin. Good insulation, but still breathable to hopefully help with potential condensation issues.
  
• Interior Siding - AirPartsInc.com - how lucky am I, this provider is right here in Kansas City, and the woman I spoke with was tremendously helpful. At this point I think I will end up scrapping all existing interior skins and doing a full replace so it looks as nice as possible.
  
• Shower Pan - Oops, these are apparently very expensive to replace, and mine is currently buried at the dump. However, it seems Inland RV has a decent price, especially compared to other places I looked (does anyone here know of/recommend another vendor for the wheel well shower setup?)
  
• Wheel well Covers - our interior side wheel well colors were a bit rough. Looks like Inland RV has those too (and a bunch of other stuff)

One other big thing I did was start a Google Spreadsheet to list out all of the items we will need to purchase/obtain to complete this project. The list will continue to grow I'm sure, but having it helps me keep my mind straight.

After wrapping up work-work, I spent about two hours starting to tear out the floor. Knowing that the shell is held up largely by the floor, I opted to trim away at the floor about 4-6 inches from the edges, and then plunge out around each bolt in the middle areas. It went pretty fast, using only a circular saw, hammer, and flat pry bar - in about 2 hours I was able to have two thirds of the trailer ripped up and most of the leftover middle bolts taken out:



The frame looks pretty good, some surface rust that we will grind off and then a few coats of the Rustoleum Rust Reformer should do it. Belly pan looks great too.

I'll finish the rest of the subfloor removal (sans the strip around the outside edge) tomorrow.

A week or so back I ordered a Progressive Dynamics PD4655V converter-charger to replace the EXTREMELY loud one that was in our unit. Before it got too late I ran to Home Depot to get some fuses, wire, and other supplies to test it out. I grabbed one of the lights that was on the 12V set of lights from the interior of the airstream, hooked it all up, and it worked!



I have to admit, I had to "phone a friend" (I am lucky enough to have an electrician buddy) to walk me through some of it, but after a thorough explanation I'm feeling pretty good about the wiring situation.

The last thing we've been doing tonight (and will continue to do) is daydream floor plans. From the picture above of the tear out you can see that the gray water tank has a second pipe coming up off to the right - not sure why that is there but I'm thinking we may take advantage of it and try for a double sided bathroom setup, rather than the rather cramped single side we had before. So the plan would be vanity/sink on the left, toilet "closet" next to it on the left, and then to the right/across from the toilet closet would be the tub/shower spanning the space that the vanity/toilet would occupy, with pocket doors to close it off from the rear bedroom and front kitchen area. Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions on this front?

More to come soon.

[ctaulborg]

I just posted an electrical-related question in the electrical sub forum - hopefully that was the correct place to put it:

http://www.airforums.com/forums/f37/...ml#post1898952

[Minno]

Remember that your waste tanks need to be vented, so the second pipe coming out of your grey tank could be the vent.

Kay

[ctaulborg]

Originally Posted by Minno

Remember that your waste tanks need to be vented, so the second pipe coming out of your grey tank could be the vent.

Kay

I had thought about that, but there was already another gray tank vent going up on the left side of the trailer; you can see it front/left in this photo:



Maybe this thing has been rehabbed once before, or it came stock that way because the different models sometimes had one or two side bathrooms?

[ctaulborg]

Day 7 - Finishing Sub Floor Removal, Underbelly cleanup and Frame Grinding
Today started off a bit cold and icy:



But we were undeterred. Before I could remove the rest of the subfloor, I had to remove the two battery covers near the front of the trailer. The required removal from the outside:



There was about 4 inches of caulking/sealant surrounding these covers so it took a bit of effort, but they did eventually slide out.

Next, I removed the last third of flooring, which proved to be the toughest - the middle section was in pretty decent shape and as a result it took a bit of cursing and effort to get fully removed.

We start working on cleaning out what was left of the pink fiberglass insulation and sweeping/scooping/shop vacuuming out the dirt and debris that had accumulated in the last 30 years in the belly pan, and in the light of day were finally able to get a good look at what we were dealing with regarding to the frame condition:



Lots of surface rust, but nothing super substantial. Our neighbor came and gave his blessing on the structural integrity of the frame and said we didn't have to do anything, but because we had come this far we decided to grind off what we could and then give it a coat of Rustoleum Rust Reformer:



While my lovely wife had the lucky job of running the drill and grinding away, I started in on the pleasant task of removing the leftover stripped elevator bolts that had held the subfloor down, which required removal by means of vice grips and grit. Luckily I had help:



As the day progressed we were all at it together to get over the final hurdle:



Only a bit more grinding to do:



But finally, all done and cleaned out:



Next steps:

1. Holding Tank Inspection – while everything is open I will probably replace the drain valves as they’ve always been a bit stiff/janky.
2. Wiring/Electrical - thanks for the tip Chris (Minno) on bestconverters.com, I will be calling them on Monday
3. Floor Insulation - I probably will be going with rigid foam and Reflectex
4. Subfloor - I can get 5/8 plywood locally and am assuming this will be perfect given it’s the same thickness as what was in there, but somebody please do tell me if I am incorrect in this assumption .

[Minno]

We used 3/4 inch plywood because it fit in our C channel. That is apparently not always true from what we understand, but you could check it. I would use the thickest you can fit in.
Good progress!

Kay

[danjoe91]

Wow! We did (what we thought) was a complete renovation of our Excella, but you guys went all the way! Luckily our subfloor was good, and we had no leaks to fix. The previous owner kept up on outside aluminum seam maintenance. Although it was done with not much finesse ( sloppy caulking smears), it kept water out. Good luck, and look forward to watching your progress!

[sgschwend]

Our 86 had 3/4" but AS kerffed the edge to 5/8" to fit in the C channel.

Depending on what flooring you are going to use will determine the spans/flatness specification. AS used carpet which is very forgiving. Check the gaucho area for large spans. This is a perfect time to add extra support members.

You guys are doing great! Going at light speed, we plan on being done with our restoration work at at 24 months.

[Minno]

It took us 4 summers to get ours functional and insurance worthy (road worthy and 75% complete in order for State Farm to insure). It was another 3 summers to get her where she is now - just a punch list to finish. It's definitely a process!

Kay

[ctaulborg]

More progress!

Leaks, and Caulking
We had a lot of good intentions to have the subfloor completely replaced by this point, but other factors (weather) prevented us from doing so. In the end this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as the non-stop rain we've had the last week has revealed seemingly endless leaks and water in our belly pan:



We took full advantage of this and marked out every leak with masking tape:



I spent way too many hours attempting to locate a local dealer in Kansas City who carried either Vulkem 116, Tempro 635, SikaFlex, or 3M 560 but was skunked all across the board. In the end I ordered 15 tubes of Tempro from vintagetrailersupply.com and added rush shipping. I also ordered some Dr. Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure from Amazon which arrived next day. I went ahead and tested it out on a few areas, including the seams above and around the vinyl blue strip (which had hidden rivets behind that were leaking):



While waiting for the caulk to arrive, we decided to button up a few other loose ends, including purchasing some 2" x 2" x .25" angle iron to add support near the front of the trailer where the goucho previously was (my 6 year old son was pretty excited, as he had never seen a metal works shop before):



We also decided it would be good to give the inside walls a good scrub down with bleach (10 to 1 water mixture). Hazmat suit time, very flattering:



Finally the Tempro arrived and we started the long process of caulking every single rivet from the interior:



There were an awful lot of them, and we still have more to go, but 12 tubes of caulk later things are starting to look pretty good:



When it finally dried up outside, we cleaned off some of the other seams on the exterior and added some fresh caulk:



Plumbing
The plumbing systems worked pretty well, so at this point the only major change I had planned to make with regards to the holding tanks was to replace the stock monitoring system with an upgrade - in my case I opted for the SeeLevel II, specifically the 709PH variety, which will let me monitor battery, fresh, gray, black, and LPG levels as well as having an on/off switch for both the water pump and the hot water heater:



I ended up purchasing this from rvupgradestore.com, who were super helpful. They even gave me the number for Garnet (manufacturer of the SeeLevel) so I could ask some more technical questions. I'll provide more details on this during the install later.

Electrical
I made some progress on the electrical front. I decided that going with an all-in-one power center solution made a lot more sense (for timing, budget, and sanity) than trying to get all separate components. In the end I called Randy from bestconverter.com who recommended the Boondocker 4 Stage Power Center 60 Amp (BPC4-60). This unit has both an AC and DC distribution board as well as a charger/converter all housed in a single, small form factor unit. It has a maximum 30AMP AC limit, but for our purposes that should be just fine. I do plan on running wire that supports a 50 amp service in the unlikely event that if we ever decide we need more power, it's a simple switch out of the power center.

I also purchased some rubber grommets for the wire runs (also from vintagetrailersupply.com), and started planning the electrical placements.

Floor Plans
We still haven't fully locked down a floor plan, but I went ahead and created a measurement-accurate model of the airstream's dimensions in SketchUp so we could more easily finalize the floor plan (we have a lot of these printed out at this point, so it was a worthwhile investment of my time to create this):



The [expletive-here] Shower Pan
As I mentioned in a earlier post, we made a big mistake in throwing away the old wheel well shower pan. I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out a viable replacement. I started with the low-hanging fruit first - I called all of the airstream supplier websites (inlandrv.com, vintagetrailersupply.com, et cetera) but couldn't find anything that would fit our trailer. I even called airstream directly and while they have a replacement part, it wouldn't be guaranteed to fit and would cost $1500.

The next option was custom fabrication. I started by making a model of what we needed in SketchUp, with two variations to gauge differences in cost (the only difference is the flared angles of the lower pan which is how the original fiberglass one was):



Initially I wasn't set on using fiberglass versus stainless steel, so I reached out to fabricators of both materials. In the end I contacted over 20 different companies, and received an answer from about 4 of them, with quotes ranging from $500-$1500 to fabricate the shower pan. On a whim I even reached out to a plastics manufacturer to see if they had anything they would recommend (they had some options but in the end I felt that a rigid plastic would prove to be too brittle for daily use as a shower pan). I also read that some people used spray in bed liner, so I also called my local Line-X who said it was doable, but I was concerned about the longevity of this option and inability to easily see leaks so I opted against it (for now).

After speaking with (pestering) friends and family regarding the merits of going with fiberglass vs stainless steel, we decided that fiberglass would be the best, longest-lasting and lightweight option. The fiberglass fabricator I had spoke with estimated it would cost $750-$1000, which in my mind is a lot for a shower pan, but I do understand there is a lot of time and labor that goes into the fabrication process. I still can't convince myself that this is the best option, so I have spent a lot of time researching and watching detailed how-to videos on fiberglass fabrication - to that end we are going to attempt to make our own fiberglass mold out of plywood, then go through the fiberglass mat/cloth, epoxy, and gel coat process to see how it turns out. If we can make it work, it will not only teach us a valuable skill, but will also open up possibilities to fabricate the shower pan on our time in a very custom manner. I'll share details of this process when we get to working on it, which at this point will be a while down the road.

Subfloor
We purchased 8 sheets of 5/8" plywood from our local Menards. In the end I decided this would be the simplest option, and figure if the previous 5/8" thick flooring had held up for over 30 years other than couple rotted spots from water damage, this should get me by for another 30 at least. We also got a couple rolls of 4' x 25' Reflectix. As of now my plan is to use the Reflectix under the sub floor with a little sag between each frame cross member, which seems to be what airstream is doing with their newer coaches these days. If it doesn't provide us with the desired effect, I figure I can always add something else later when we inevitably drop and replace some of the belly pan.

Before we can get the new subfloor installed we need to finish removing the bolts in the c-channel:



I tried a few different tools, including an angle grinder:



And also an oscillating multi-tool, but neither worked very well. In the end what worked the best for 90% of the bolts was to use vice-grips to either snap off the square head or to unscrew it, and after that using a screwdriver (I know I know, but couldn't find my nail set and was in a hurry) and hammer to pound the bolt down and out through the bottom:




For the rest I drilled a pilot hole in the top edge of the square nut, and then drilled it out until it got to the point where I could yank it out with vice grips.

Next up, subfloor install!