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It is with an unbelievably heavy heart that I have to update our overdue blog with the news that our wonderful furry companion, Maggie, has passed away. She was "a grand old lady" in the words of our good friend Michael, and although her passing was unexpected (I think deep down we pretended she'd live forever), it must have been her time to leave us. Maggers was such a big presence in our little home, and she's left us with some emptiness, both physically and emotionally. It's been a week now, and there are still times when sadness overtakes us and all we can do is sit there and cry and give little Agnes lots of snuggles. Maggie was 13.5 years old, and Michael reminded me that when Mags turned 13, I had said that each day since then was a gift. Really, all the time we had with her was such a gift, and she will be missed and reminisced of often. I still like to think of her nestled in down there at the end of the Airstream underneath the fireplace, comfy as can be. The Airstream was definitely home for Maggie, and I think she might have liked it in her older years more than any other place we've lived because it required no great effort on her part to keep an eye on her humans, thanks to our one-room concept, so to speak. Our hearts are full of memories of her over the years, from Colorado hiking trips to sleeping in late all piled in our bed - Maggie having stolen most of the covers. As nearly every one of our blog posts proves through photographs, Maggie was with us every step of the way through our Airstream shenanigans, and we will miss her supervisory skills and her time-to-stop-working-on-that-aluminum-trailer because it's-4pm-and-i'm-starving(again) dancing jig. Here's to our Magoo, a truly great dog!
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I'm so sorry to hear about Maggie, they really take a piece of your heart with them when they go don't they? She looks very happy and content in the picture.
ReplyDeleteThanks :) She was a sweetheart and we'll miss her!
DeleteHi Guys,
ReplyDeleteVery sorry to hear about your pup: (
I have been following your blog for a while now. I am in the process of renovating a 63 Bambi in Cambridge, MA, and from what I see, seem to be working with about the same level of sophistication as you guys were. I have stripped my interior down to the aluminum studs, and am now about to pull the subfloor, and go through the steps of cleaning out all the old insulation and rodent poop, buzzing and painting the frame, and installing a new subfloor. I want to avoid a shell-off, and also have an intact belly-pan, so i want to leave that on if possible. In following your post where you guys were installing the new subfloor, i am guessing you used self-tapping metal screws to secure the subfloor to the frame... which is what I was thinking of using. You had mentioned the bent over C-channel bolts that hold the shell to the floor, and that you cut them off to pull the old subfloor. I am wondering how you guys re-attached the shell to the subfloor, without removing the bellypan to feed bolts into the C-channel to tighten the shell down, from above? Did you use another method, other than bolts? Any sort of advice or detail you can offer would be enormously helpful. Thanks again for all the effort you have put into maintaining your blog. It has helped me quite a bit.
Cheers,
jim
Thanks for writing and for following our blog! It is always awesome to hear that people actually read it! Trying to replace the subfloor with the shell on presents many problems, but we did it. It's a challenge because the original subfloor is essentially what holds up the shell. When you remove the old subfloor, the shell wants to drop onto the frame. For the subfloor installation we used self-tapping screws and regular bolts. The problem with self-tapping screws turned out to be that the steel is really thick in certain parts of the frame and the self-tapping screws sometimes would break or couldn't self-tap. This was especially true on the two main steel beams running the length of the trailer. So we used the screws in places where they would go in, otherwise we drilled pilot holes and manually tapped the steel and put in bolts. We did put in as many bolts back into the c-channel as we could (these all had to be manually tapped - this was such a pain and very difficult because you are so close to the wall. You can't tap a screw because the tapping tool is too close to the wall. At this point I wished we could take off the belly pan, but we suffered through without doing that.) When you put one sheet of plywood in you can fasten the edge with bolts/nuts because you can reach under the front edge of that sheet of plywood. You will invariably encounter problems getting the new subfloor back under the c-channel. Ours required a lot of hammering. Also, you may already know this but you can't use tongue and groove plywood for your subfloor because you won't be able to get it under the c-channel and then connect it to the other plywood.
DeleteIf you have any more questions as you go, feel free to give us a shout! Don't know if you are posting pictures as you go, but definitely send us a link if you are. Hope it turns out to be a fun project for you.
-Jacob