Floor Removal = Rusted Frame

In order to remove our rotten floor, we had to remove all of the lower aluminum interior panels to gain access to the channels running along the floor that the plywood sub-floor is bolted into. We located three drills and Jacob, our friend Michael, and myself all drilled out rivets until our hands were sore. After I carefully marked all the panels and wrote notes how they go back together, we started removing them.

Jacob and Michael remove the first panel - yipee!

The panel falls away, revealing surprisingly in-tact insulation

Holiding a chunk of our trailer :)

Some panels still had their insulation...others did not.

Next it was on to floor removal. For my birthday, we tried hard to get our old floor out of the airstream and to the dump. We got half way and then we were thwarted by hidden bolts in the floor that must be cut off. Brace yourself, Blue Moon is not a pretty sight right now...

Upon closer inspection, our steel frame chassis is rusted through in places! Yikes! We are going to need some serious reinforcement, and then some rust prevention paint. The aluminum belly pan that lines the underside of the trailer was filled with muck - mud filled-uck, literally. So it is no wonder that rust and deterioration were happening. We took 250 lbs of rotted floor/insulation and this "muck" to the dump for my birthday. You can actually see daylight through the end of the trailer there below the insulation, so apparently there was a leak...

Once we tackle the daunting task of reinforcing our frame and wheel wells, we'll get on with re-insulating the floor with foam board insulation and the putting-back-together of our trailer will begin! Needless to say we are both really looking forward to that part! It has been a hard few months of demolition and destruction. It will be nice when we get to start making it beautiful inside...and when we won't have to wear respirators in there anymore.

In the meantime, the drear and wet of the pacific northwest winter has set in...our trailer has its own micro climate in places :)

It was so windy the other day that while working in the airstream, a huge gust blew into the open door and blew out the brand new window that J had just installed. We were delighted to find it wedged into the grass nearby and unbroken, but a step back all the same.

We found a home for our one-of-a-kind airstream tub. It will be getting shipped to Ohio after the new year to someone else who is restoring a vintage land yacht and has been searching for our exact tub! We connected via the airstream classifieds. Yay!

Ta Da! Paint-be-gone, and...A Very Rotten Floor

The paint stripping is done, yay! Our friend Michael came over and helped us bust it out. We now have a shiny silver interior. With that behind us, I think it is safe to say that it was a lot more work than we had hoped, and not all of the areas turned out as shiny and beautiful as others. Some sections of aluminum we revealed are permanently textured from when they were installed at the factory, and unless we re-textured them with a grinder or something, will always look that way. In any case, the walls will always have our stamp of sweat and toil, so we will just love them for what they are!

Last night we started peeling up the carpet and investigating our rotten floor that needs replacing. We knew from the beginning that the floor was completely shot, so we were not totally surprised when we punched through at times while stripping paint.

The floor basically disintegrates in your hand and crumbles into a wet pile - yuck! The worst water-damaged area is of course where the old tub/shower, bathroom sink and toilet were located. It is hard to tell what is going on in the photo below, but we just peeled back the fiberglass box cover that was situated over the wheel well. We weren't sure exactly what we were going to find, but underneath it is the steel wheel well covered in what's left of a bunch of insulation. Let's just say that if I were a mouse, I'd want to live in there too.... ew. We were both a bit dismayed to discover the terribly poor condition of both the steel wheel wells. They are very wet in places and nearly rusted through. Working on an airstream is one way to officially learn that steel rusts, and aluminum does not! It's also a great way to see what materials "survive" mother nature after 50 years, especially in the damp pacific northwest.

This is a good time to point out that it will unfortunately be necessary to take off all of the lower aluminum panels inside in order to access and replace the floor. This involves drilling out about a hundred+ rivets... and then putting in a hundred+ rivets to put it all back together again. Amazingly, the side lower panels are one solid piece of 23 feet long aluminum!

Finding a new use for the linoleum tiles: "salad-tongs" for picking up mouse-poop laden 50-year-old insulation. Very happy to be wearing a respirator right now.

Goodbye nasty carpet

For some good news: you wouldn't think our airstream is still keeping secrets from us after all this time, but we have been unable to locate the actual plug to get hooked up to electrical! So we have had no idea if the wiring was still good inside or if the lights even worked. Jacob was pretty excited to find it the other day, buy the yellow adapter and plug it in...and find that all the lights came on!! And the airstream gods and goddesses shined down upon us and there was light :)

The Great Purge, & Other Things

Moving into roughly 180 square feet requires purging one's life quite a bit. Good Purging takes time, so we decided to start now. If you allow yourself enough time to purge, you can make money off of things you no longer want - in the last month we've sold many random pieces of furniture we had acquired (all second-hand), and taken a lot of clothes to consignment and thrift stores. It feels good. J and I have lived in 8 rental houses together over the past 9 years (don't worry, we're totally stable, reliable people!). Over that time we have acquired and purged 8 couches, 4 dining room tables/chairs, 2 sets of dishes, and countless other "things." The house we rent now is furnished, so there isn't a huge need for us to own our own stuff. And that's all it is - stuff. We are down to pretty much our mattress, in terms of furniture, and that will go in the airstream when we are ready to move in. Moving into the airstream is our affordable version of putting down roots. We'll own the roof over our heads for the first time in our lives, and we'll have built and customized everything inside. We don't want to rent a storage unit or have other things stored somewhere that we don't use, so we are downsizing our life everyday to just the things that we really use, or that mean the most to us. If it hasn't been used or worn in a year, it definitely has to go!

 Let the purging continue...

We are nearing the end of the paint-stripping saga (finally)! And it is looking great... so we'll save the photos for the surprise ending :) Lots of folks have asked us why we are bothering to strip the paint since it is such a pain. It is hard to explain unless you have been inside Blue. When we walked inside with just the white paint, it felt like any old RV. We wanted to feel like we were in an airstream and to expose the shiny aluminum on the inside that makes it so iconic on the outside! We hope that light and colors will reflect in fun ways in the metal throughout the interior. 

We have been trying to seal up the airstream so that it will be weather-tight before we put in our new floor and everything else. J replaced this crapper job (above) that someone did. He cut out another piece of aluminum from the old fridge and riveted it in place! It looks so much nicer :) 

While each coat of citristrip is setting up (6-8 hours), we like to dream and plan! We've gone through a lot of floorplan ideas for Blue in the last few months, tape measure in hand. Currently we are designing the kitchen and bar area. Our "big" house is decorated for the holiday and feels warm and cozy inside. Hope you and yours are enjoying the season :)