Hello Airforums!
My husband and I have recently acquired a
1963 Tradewind (I think) with the twin bed configuration. It has been sitting in a field for the past 10 years with a broken skylight and several broken windows, so it was pretty gross.
We are hoping to take a year to turn her into a waterproof tent, and work on her slowly as time allows after that, but we understand that even that timeline may be a bit optimistic. Our plan is to completely gut the trailer, and we are assuming we will have to replace the frame, axle, subfloor, bellypan, interior skins, along with quite a few other things.
My husband is an architect and contractor, so he has a lot of experience building houses, although none working on trailers. I am a veterinarian, so I have no clue, but can drill out rivets with the best of them.
I wanted to start a post here to get some feedback on our plans, and any advice that seasoned renovators might offer. Here are the steps we plan to take, in the order we plan to take them:
1) Demo interior- take out beds, bath, toilet, gaucho, counters, etc. Completely gut the interior.
2) Remove lower interior skins- from my reading, some of the structural integrity is supplied by the skins and the floor, so I gather we need the trailer to be level
when we do this. Is that correct??
3) Remove subfloor- much of it is rotted away, but we will remove it and assess the frame, realizing that we will most likely need to be replaced.
I have been reading a lot of renovation threads, but would love to hear if we are on the right track!
Oh! And at some point somebody put silicone caulking all over the OUTSIDE seams. Any tips for getting that off??
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