Shades, Drapes and Shower curtains

[RUSSELL]

To all,
1. Shades . We just replaced all the shades. The cost for material was 34 dollars.The AS uses wooden dowels to roll up the shades all we did is cut to size and stapled the new shades to them. My wife hemed them up and put a littele fringe on the bottom just as AS did in the factory. The only pain was the door . It has to be deriveted. A good rivet gun is not that expecive and was used for drape and shover curtain replacement.
2. Drapes. We bought at Pennys home store. They were 230 dollars but required some modification and putting on the slide clips that AS uses. That took about a week.The biggest problem is the slides you have to make sure that they straight and smooth.
3. Shower curtain .we bought over size and cut and hemed to size. The biggest problem was taking all the rivets out to get the bath curtain down. You can not just drill out one or two rivets.
If anyone has any questions please let me know at www.gmby@netptc.net

Regards Russell

[herbigrf]

I have a 1978 and the brackets that hold the roll up shades are all loose. How does one make them tight again. I am a little never about pounding or drilling them until I know what is behind them. The little posts stick out.
Ron

[87MH]

Originally Posted by herbigrf

...How does one make them tight again. I am a little never about pounding or drilling them until I know what is behind them. The little posts stick out.

Ron -

First off - Welcome to the Forums - lots of help here and in the archives.

I don't know of a way to "retighten" pop rivets.

You will probably have to drill them out and re-rivet.....really not that big of a job.

Do a search on "replacing rivets" - the "Search" is a pull-down on the upper right of this page (just above the "permanent" advirtising in grey) - on the dark blue bar across the top. You will get a BUNCH of hits. The "search" function here on the Forums is a very important tool to discover the "Why's and How's" of Airstream ownership - no use reinventing the wheel - I would suspect that most everything that COULD go wrong with an Airstream has been discussed here in one form or another.

The "little posts" you mention are a bit puzzeling - those may indicate "Olympic" rivets. They will be a bit harder to drill out, but they are certainly not necessary to use for blinds. Again, do a search on "Olympic".

Drilling and replacement is nothing more (at least for interior work) than drilling the center of the old rivet out with a 1/8" drillbit - do not let the bit go more than an inch into the interior skin - the exterior skin is a bit more than 1 1/2 inch separated from the interior skin - then use a simple (and cheap) "Pop-Rivet" gun (hand operated) to replace the old rivets (1/8" short rivets work best. Special rivets are not required for most of the interior requirements.

Airstream usually does not mount wires (or anything else) between the skins in the area of the windows, but be careful anyway and try not to let the bit go in any further than necessary. Usually you will find "pink" fiberglass type of insulation between the interior and exterior wall - do not be concerned if you pull a bit of that out when you retrieve the bit from the wall after drilling the rivet. Leaving the "back" part of the expansion rivet in the wall after drilling the neck is perfectly normal.

Luck - Please post back with your results.