Some Work but Mostly Play

Oops!  I'm behind on the blog again.  In true catch-up fashion I'll update our progress with a list of things we've installed:

door handle
converter/power center
all 12v and 110 outlets
reproduction Bargmann 99 taillite lenses
toilet riser (Brian made it & tiled it)
external waste plumbing and dump valves
hot water heater (and winterizing bypass)
curtains (I made them... all 14 panels)

Did you catch that?  Maybe I should say it a little differently:

This part is so exciting!
We have power!
We have a working toilet!
We have curtains!

Our trailer is starting to feel so much like home that can't resist using it. We've taken the trailer out the past two weekends. 

The first weekend, drove to the north Georgia mountains for a family reunion in McCaysville, Georgia.  Our extended family (from Missouri, Illinois & Wisconsin) stayed both in my parents cabin and a neighboring rented cabin.

Family Reunion highlights:

• picking blackberries, with the chigger bites to prove it (yikes! a first for us!)
• walk around the neighborhood, seeing a mother & fawn
• zip-line in the backyard
• introduction to Facebook Scrabble on an iPad (hooray for wifi)

 

I see something shiny behind that cabin

 my grandpa's home made ice cream (always the best)

digging for treasure (with uncles and a metal detector,  so fun!) 

kayaking and subsequent lake "swims" on two separate occasion
I won't say which two of us fell in but I will say that Y chromosomes were involved.

 This past weekend we visited another fine Georgia state park.  Samuel thought it was especially appropriate that Brian finished the toilet just in time (read= almost-all-night-er) for our visit to the Georgia state park called Tugaloo.

Get it?  Tug-a-loo!  

 We enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in our giant bathroom.

What a scorcher of a weekend!  On Saturday it was 99.5 degrees.  (The record high for that day/location is 101.)  We've camped with these friends for so many years but this is the first time we've ever ventured into a lake. I'm pretty sure our kids will look back at this weekend as "the time they let us play in the mud." 

 For the record, Annabelle says, "I didn't play in the mud."

Highlights from our Tugaloo weekend:

• Starbucks drive-thru...

Ok.  Maybe that was just a highlight for me.  It was only the second time I towed the trailer.  I was feeling pretty smug.  (No need to mention whether I drove over any curbs or not.)

• another mother & fawn sighting (it must be that time of year) 
• field trip 20 miles down the road to the air conditioned Coleman outlet
• ice cream at a truck stop  (People watching? Yes!  There were people watching us!  I guess it's hard to overlook a group of 20 sweaty campers.)

For a brief moment Saturday we thought it was going to rain.  

Samuel taped a garbage bag over our new...um, sky-lite. 

Yes, we lost an original Hehr vent cover.

just the kids

the whole gang

Back at home, our neighbor rang the doorbell Sunday night holding something odd.  It was aluminum, square-ish, and old.  She said her husband thought it looked like something that belonged on our Airstream.  It was our vent cover!  We lost it before we left our street.  Thank goodness for kind neighbors!

TAC Rally at FDR

For Memorial Day weekend we took Someday to our first rally.  The TAC rally was held at FDR State Park in beautiful Pine Mountain, GA. 

We almost never pass up an opportunity to go to a museum or some historic place where we can learn something new.  This weekend was no exception.  We've been to the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA before but Sabrina wasn't old enough to remember it. 

Photo by Sabrina, who is only 5:

Hmmm?  I wonder how much this 1938 convertible can tow?

Who knew FDR was so handy?  

This vehicle was outfitted with hand controls designed and made by FDR so that he could drive without the use of his legs. 

 These kids are showing considerable restraint here.  

I was about ready to jump in that fountain myself.  It was a hot day!

 

After the Little White House we went for ice cream and air conditioning in Warm Springs, GA.

Sunday we went to the Pine Mountain Wild Animal Safari.  This place could probably use it's own blog post but I'll try to summarize with a few paragraphs and glossy photos:

The Pine  Mountain Wild Animal Park is a drive-through animal park where you can feed the animals.  You can drive your own vehicle.  If you're unwilling to subject your vehicle's exterior and interior upholstery to scratches, mud, and the slobber of  giraffe, zebra, donkey, longhorn, and buffalo then you can ride through in the comfort (and I use that term very loosely) of a rented zebra-mobile.

standing in front of our roach-coach

The zebra-mobile is a species all of it's own.  Bars are added in place of the back windows.  Our comfy coach also had a nice feature:  the "check engine" light was on.  This is where mini-vans go to die.  We looked for our old minivan but we didn't see it anywhere.  Perhaps with the new stripes we just couldn't recognize it.

 

Ever wonder how buffalo breath smells?  

He could have used a breath mint.

All three kids are "cat people" so they were super excited to pet a Serval in the walking portion of the park:

 

 What is a camping trip without wildlife?  

We had plenty back at camp too!  Sabrina found an interesting 13 year cicada with red eyes. We found toads! bats!  hawks!  Someone said they heard a fox. (I was unable to substantiate this rumor;  We even tried to lure the fox with leftover feed from the wild animal park.  I don't think it will be the last of this "fox.")  Do ticks count as wildlife?  There were plenty of those. It was suggested that we rename the rally "Tick Fest."

Know one thing that's great about other Airstreamers?  They know lots of things about Airstreams and they like to travel!  Ok.  That was two but who's counting? 



 

We learned many things from our fellow travelers:  places we should visit, all about making vintage awnings,  tips about TV antenna, hitches, interior storage, securing your AC shroud, and the best ways to get internet access.

How could a three day weekend possibly go so fast? 

We really had a fantastic time camping with everyone.

We can't wait to go camping with you again!

... until next time
 

Floor De-poxy

 
Since we accidentally e-poxied the floor we needed to de-poxy it.

While scrubbing the floor we were counting the number of tiles we were going to have to replace.  We debated about the tiles that were going to be under the kitchen cabinet.  Replace them?  Or just deal with it?  Should we just live with the damaged tiles until after we installed the furniture?    So many questions.

Before prying out the damaged tiles we tired cleaning them with elbow grease and a heavy duty cleaner.  The cleaner successfully removed the epoxy/resin paper mess and the floor finish.  Hmmm.  Why not just use floor stripper?  I tried it.  It worked!

I had another problem I wasn't sure how to solve though.  Part of the floor had finish on it and part of it didn't.  Unfinished next to finished.  The floor looked really bad in the parts that were transition areas. Was I going to have to strip and refinish the whole trailer?  It was the million dollar question.  Fortunately, I know someone with extensive experience with VCT flooring.  I decided to take the "phone a friend" option.  (Ok.  Well, actually I sent an email, but you get the idea.) 

Much to my relief, I learned that it wouldn't be necessary to strip the entire trailer.  The iffy transition areas would look just fine if I put finish over them.

1 coat of stripper

LOTS & LOTS of elbow grease/scrubbing

2 coats of sealer

4 coats of finish

Good as new!  What a relief!

(I guess you'll just have to trust me on this one since I'm not providing a picture.)

We Didn't Prepare For This

With the paint prep finished Brian started setting up his paint equipment.  He closed the lid of our brand new pressure pot and tightened down the pressure regulator.  It broke off in his hand. We purchased the 2.5 gallon pressure pot from that cheap tool place. (You know the one.)  There's a store a couple of miles from our house.  No big deal.  He  packed up the pressure pot and took it back for a new one.

 

mixing the epoxy primer in our second pressure pot, he's still smiling

spraying the primer

Everything was going fine until...

Suddenly Brian emerged from the trailer in a fog of fumes and a fountain of paint.

In the midst of the chaos Samuel yelled "Quick!  Grab the camera!"  

That's a kid after my own heart.

The cause of that great fountain of paint?  It was a hole in the hose of our paint gun.  

Want to guess where we got this tool?

Brian dutifully took off the Ompa-Loompa suit (err, I mean paint suit) and headed back to the store.

With all of the proper tools assembled again, we quickly ran out of paint before we ran out of trailer.  

I guess we should have expected this based on how much paint we lost to the fountain.  

What a predicament.   Our paint supply store was closed for the weekend so getting more paint wasn't an option. Letting the epoxy dry and starting again later didn't sound like a very appealing option either.  (If the primer wasn't covered within 24 hours then we would have to sand it again before spraying the Zolatone.  No thanks.)

We  noticed that the pressure pot siphon didn't reach the bottom of the pot.  This meant there was still a good bit of paint in the bottom.  Time to improvise.  I grabbed a roller and finished our thin layer of epoxy. 

Feeling like a Dad in the 50s,  I patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) paced outside the delivery room (err... I mean trailer) while Brian did all of the hard work with the Zolatone.  

For 6 hours.
Are these things supposed to take that long?
"I don't know nothin' about paintin' no trailers!"

Did I mention it was almost 90 degrees outside!  Poor Brian.

We cleaned out the paint guns and went to bed.

In the morning we were pleased with the results:

Predictably, fittingly, unfortunately (pick your own adverb) there's more to the epic paint saga.

After removing the protective covering from our new floor we made this gruesome discovery:

 The epoxy primer glued the rosin paper to our floor.

I guess sopping up the paint with towels wasn't enough!

(more on this later) 

Brian realized something from cleaning out the paint guns.  He was able to get a pipe cleaner in the tip of the 1.8mm gun he used for the primer.  The pipe cleaner didn't fit in the gun we ordered and used for the Zolatone.  The Zolatone gun was supposed to be 2.0mm, larger. 

We're not positive but we think our smaller-than-expected paint gun is to blame for the slow progress on the painting. 

In general, we're very happy with the results but we ultimately decided to order two more gallons of paint so that we can get better coverage in a few areas.  Brian is planning on using the 1.8mm gun for shooting the last two gallons.  We'll see if it goes any faster the second time.  We're both hoping for less drama.

My soap-box side note/lesson learned:  I neglected to name this post "To Hell with ______ (insert name of the discount tools place.)"  I'd like to say that we won't be buying tools from them any more but I can't quite go that far. Their tools are cheap.  Yes, I mean that in every sense of the word. Sometimes I feel like this store is our only option for local tools based on both cost and availability.  (Especially in cases where we won't be using the tool for some other project.)

I know we should be thinking "sustainability" instead of "availability." Sometimes it's so hard to avoid the temptation of going to the cheap place when we just want to work on the next thing without having to wait for tools to come in.  If I just think about how much sooner our tools from the cheap place will be in the landfill then it will be easier to make a good choice and buy higher quality tools from someplace else.

Paint Prep

A whole post about paint prep?  

Really?  

Yes.  Really.  

Prepping for paint is enough work to warrant its own post.

It seems like we've been doing paint prep since the

day we bought our trailer.  We've used stripper on the walls 

so many times I've almost lost count.  

I can think of at least four times:

• after we gutted the trailer, before we took the walls out
• before we put the walls back in the trailer
• and again
• endcaps (2-3 times) after they were installed in the trailer

During frustrating times with the restoration 

we've tried to encourage each other by teasing. 

"It could be worse.  We could be stripping paint."

note:  This only works when the other person is not actually stripping paint.

After the inside skins were stripped and installed they 

had to be sanded.  I used 150 grit and a palm sander. 

Sometime not long after we installed the skins we started thinking about ordering our paint.  We first tried the paint supply place that was right next door to the warehouse we rented at the beginning of our restoration.  They had a set of Zolatone samples.  We also looked online for a place to buy paint.  We called a couple more chain stores in town.  Finally, we settled on the local paint supply store.  They had the best price.  Before Brian made the order he called Zolatone to get specific part numbers.  Zolatone is in the middle of changing their epoxy primer.  The old primer isn't available.  The new stuff isn't available yet either.  They suggested we use any expoxy primer. (Okay, if you say so.)  We ordered the paint and expected it to arrive in 10 days.

Next, we wiped down the walls.  Four times.  It might sound a little excessive but our rinse water was
extremely dirty; aditionally, I was afraid stripper residue might interfere with paint adhesion.  We use a TSP cleaner and then followed with a rinse, twice.

Our paint came in.  Sigh.  We still (after a month of searching Craigslist) didn't have a conventional paint gun with the appropriate size tip.  We ordered one.  It was supposed to be a rainy weekend anyway.  We decided to work on the floor instead.

Our paint gun arrived.  

Time to tape.  

This, like every other part of the paint prep, 

took longer than we expected.   

Finally!  Ready for paint!

A Few More Things

 Eyebrow

For Brian's first attempt at fabricating a new eyebrow

he tried using the leftover .032" 2025-T3 

sheet of aluminum from the front panel.  

It was not the best aluminum to make the flexible brow.

He ordered some (softer) .032" 2024-0 aluminum from a local 

aircraft supply store.  When he went to pick up the order they

had a (thicker) .040" sheet of it instead.  

Even with the thicker metal it was so much easier to work with than the body panel aluminum.

2024-0 aluminum= nice eyebrow &  happy fabricator

Battery Box

When we bought our trailer there was no battery box; only a wooden shelf was attached to the front of the trailer.   Brian looked at pictures of old battery boxes for the inspiration to make ours.

support first

support frame & acid proof paint
We know what battery acid can do to aluminum.

   Our box is large enough to house two marine batteries.  

Smaller tractor batteries that would have been used originally.

Floor

We installed the VCT floor.  

We tried to come as close to the original floor as possible.  

The new tile is different from the old in two ways: 

It's 12x12 instead of 9x9 and is asbestos free!

Our inspiration piece:

 

a small section of our old floor

 

before

Square one.  The best place to start.

Ta-daa!  (Only 6 more coats of sealer and it will be finished!)

 

Goodbye, Decals

Back in February 2010 during the demo phase of our restoration we discovered some travel decals in our trailer.  We were delighted by the decals, feeling like our trailer was telling us part of its story.

Now, it's almost time to paint the interior skins.

Because I'm so sentimental about our decals I wanted to take our last opportunity to get the gang back together for a photo.

Ok, I confess.
I'm really "getting the gang back together" because I had a total hard drive failure in December. 
I couldn't stomach the thought of having zero pictures of the decals.
The cost for pictures?  Stripping the endcap after it was installed.
(Yikes!  Look out for falling stripper!!!)

We have a total of 61 decals. 
There are only 16 that we can't decipher.  

Here are the gratuitous close-ups with all the gory details:

Boy Scouts, unknown (2), Yellowstone

Mt. Rushmore, Black Hills S. Dakota

The Castle on Cedar Pass Badlands Monument South Dakota , 

South Dakota The Greatest Pheasant Area on Earth, 

Boy Scouts of America

Wisconsin, Minnesota, No. Dakota, Illinois

 

Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon

 

Washington, Seattle 1962, Grand Coulee, (Canada), Banff Canada

 

Lake Louise Banff Pk Canada, unknown (2),
Tri-State Mich/Penn/Ohio, Michigan

Michigan, "Prevent Forest Fires," Ontario Canal, 

Arkansas, Key West, FL, unknown

unknown, New Mexico,  Painted Desert Arizona,

Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon California, Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco Chinatown, Hawaii, Kauai, Maui,

Grand Tetons NP Wyoming, Jackson Hole

Tampico Mexico, Vera Cruz

Any guesses?  The second one says '68.

 Around the door:

unknown, Maine

Indiana, unknown

(2) unknown, Laborers Local 534

unknown, Canada, unknown

When I stripped the paint off of the decals we were delighted to figure out 3 decals we couldn't previously decoded:  the first Boy Scouts decal, Key West, FL, and Maui

It was sad to see them go:

see the paint bubble

Goodbye, decals.
Someday I hope that all of us will have an extensive travel portfolio like our trailer.