Painting the Frame

It's been awhile since I updated our blog, but while I have not been posting, we have actually been working! A few weeks ago J finished grinding all of the rust off the frame. I took these fun pictures (below) of him working right at sunset when the grinder was throwing sparks! After all that rust came off, we borrowed our neighor's shop-vac and I spent about an hour and a half shop-vac-ing the shit out of our airstream, figuratively and literally.

Next up was frame painting time! Our Rust-Oleum arrived from the Home Depot, so we went to work painting. In theory, the tough, enamel-like paint will help prevent any further rust damage, and plus it's pretty!

Instead of the huge task of removing (and subsequently having to re-attach) the belly pan, we chose to just do our best to paint the underside of the frame with the belly pan still attached. A mirror from Uncle Bill came in very handy to see that yes, in fact we were missing a lot of spots with the paint brush.

We painted our way toward the door of the trailer, working side by side. We kept a space heater on in the trailer overnight to help keep the temperature up and the humidity as low as possible to try and get the paint to cure! It took a few days, but today we were able to rough up the first coat with sandpaper and go ahead and apply the second coat.

I painted my way out the door (my back is killing me) and the frame is drying as I type this! If you come into our driveway, you might consider wearing a respirator...that is some stinky paint! We have been having some amazing sunsets these past few weeks; I leave you with this lovely photo, which kind of sums up my life right now :)

Frame Work

Since I am inundating you with pictures in this post, I'll try to keep the words short! While I have been avidly following this blog and secretly wishing we could work on our frame like they have, we've been busy doing it our (the cheap) way:

Jacob throwing sparks from the grinder while getting the scaly rust off the frame.

Taking a break to enjoy a weekend sunset!

Our frame had serious rust damage in the rear of the trailer, requiring reinforcement. A trip to our local salvage yard and we bought $6 worth of angle iron in the form of a used metal bed frame. Jacob had it hacked up and began bolting it into the frame in one afternoon.

The entire top of the beam was rusted through - that is the new bed frame piece bolted in place.

Frame reinforcement.

This is how Maggie would prefer we spend our Sundays. 

Respirator masks make very good monkey faces.

While Jacob is down there working on reinforcing the frame, I have been cleaning and getting down to those final layers of grit that remained in the belly pan, so we can paint the frame with Rust-Oleum. It's pretty awesome to see how far we've come and all of the nasty crap that was in that floor - and it's gone! Walking around in Blue Moon is a bit tricky right now - so far no wipeouts. We have been moving chunks of plywood around the frame to create walking paths and sitting platforms while we are working. 

So nice not to see muck everywhere!

Frosty the Airstream

Back home after a wonderful week-long Christmas trip to visit my mom and Pete in Toronto! The airstream greeted us with a long to-do list and we're back at it again. The last two nights have been clear and cold, and Blue Moon has woken up to a thick layer of frost! Brrrrr....

Jan and Lyle gave us an adorable airstream ornament for Christmas

We've done quite a bit of work on the floor since I last posted pictures. The remainder of the floor is out, and another 250 lbs went to the dump. Last night, Jacob and Michael cut the bolts off the frame that were holding the floor in - the bolts were bent over when the trailer was originally manufactured so they would never ever come out. Thank you Airstream for that. Next the boys started grinding rust off the frame so that we can paint it with a rust-prevention paint and hopefully get another 50 years out of the chassis. Our goal is to have our new sub-floor in and the walls riveted back on by the end of this month! Whew, think we can do it? Stay tuned for Heidi the Riveter episodes!

The airstream is way less disgusting now :) That big flat long chunk of metal that is laced through the frame on the right side of the floor is the original heating duct, it appears to be rather difficult to extract...

Must get to work!