For Valentine's Day we got a stripper...a paint stripper. A previous owner painted over the trailer's original tan speckled (Zolatone) paint with cream latex paint. In preparation for repainting the inside we applied a chemical stripper.
While stripping, we started to notice bright colors under the latex paint. We were delighted and surprised to find not just a couple... but 30-40 travel decals around the front of the trailer. We were able to remove enough latex paint from ten stickers to be able to read them.
Decals we've found: Indiana, Maine, Hawaii, Arkansas, Seattle, Veracruz, Chinatown San Francisco, Jackson Hole, Golden Gate Bridge, and Grand Coulee Dam
It's hard to be patient and scrape the paint slowly. If you scrape too deep pieces of the sticker will come off with the paint. Scraping off "just enough" paint feels somewhat like an archeological dig. Unfortunately, a handful of the decals were destroyed by the stripper. The rest are still partially hidden under the most recent layer of paint.
We're feeling somewhat slowed by the decal discovery. We are highly interested in preserving the decals but we also know that the inside of the trailer will need to be painted. It's a decal dilemma. Fortunately, we've been able to find a few online suppliers of vintage decals. (We'd sure be thrilled to find replacements for all of them.)
We bought the trailer with no knowledge of it's history. While working on it, one can't help but wonder what kind of adventures it has seen, or help thinking "if only these walls could talk." Apparently, they can.
Any ideas about what these say?
Arkansas
Chinatown San Francisco, California
This is what our decal looked like originally.
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