These were the photos posted in the ad:
She looks pretty sweet, right?!
She is a 1972 Shasta 1400 and she's now living (much to the joy of my neighbors) in my backyard. I've had her exactly one week today. My how time flies!
Here are a few more photos taken after I took delivery of Trixie. The previous owners had removed some of the swell contact paper that had been applied over the laminate, so you'll see some differences - particularly in the starboard rear corner. I suspect that the surface laminate just came right off when they removed the contact paper. There had been a water leak in that corner for quite some time.
OK! So last Friday (Day One), I decided that I would remove the surface laminate that was jutting out from the walls and splintering, maybe even apply a new surface laminate, sand it, scrub everything, slap on some paint, make new cushions, then turn to the bigger and more important stuff - getting it ship shape enough to get tags for it! I knew that the wheels would need to be removed and repacked (not sure that is the right term), and I have no idea if the brakes work.
Yeah. So much for that simple plan. When I started to peel off that left rear corner laminate, I put my left hand against that corner paneling to support my weight while I peeled off the laminate to the right and my hand squished into the wall, at which point, the wall in the corner started to fall away. After a whopping 90 seconds or so, I had this:
Oh boy. The paneling on the left (the starboard wall) put up no resistance at all. The framing in the upper part of this last photo was soaking wet. So much for "used to be a leak". Fortunately, though, with the help of my trusty garden hose, I found the leak point on the roof and applied Gorilla tape. I know. I'm sorry. I'm sure that is sacrilege. But hey, it is working so far!
So I took a deep breath and figured that I had to at least keep pulling away until I found solid wood. Right? Shoot, what do I know! A tiny bit more digging later and I found yet another gift. Termite damage! Well come on! If you were a termite, wouldn't you want to live here?
I took lots of photos and went onto the Shasta Forum (a lifesaving station, if ever there was one) to plead for help on what to do and got lots of responses that sounded a lot like, "FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, STOP YOU DAFT WOMAN!!!" Of course, being a Shasta owner for such a short time, I didn't know that the paneling is as much of the weight-bearing structure as the framing and that I was daring the ceiling to crumple with each piece of wall I removed without putting some support up. Oops. Thank you Shasta Forum angels!!
Here is a shot of where I stopped the demolition.
See how nice and yellow that framing is just to the left of the termite rot? That has to be good news, right? RIGHT?!! The framing on the floor looks pretty bad and I can't yet see any framing in the corner between the starboard and rear windows. Given that the leak was directly above this corner on the roof, my guess is that it looks like this all of the way up.
My hope, at this point, is to do these repairs from the inside of the camper, so that I don't have to completely remove the skin from the back and the starboard. That just makes me really nervous. And, again, I want to use this little beauty this summer. The Forum angels say to do it from the outside, and who am I to argue, but I've seen a restoration recently that appears to have been done completely from the inside. I'm going to investigate that before I continue.
I am happy to take on the bigger job come November, but not right now. I fear that once I get started, I'll just find "one more thing" one right after another, and, before I know it, I will have gutted Trixie like a fish and there will be no hope of summer camping.
I need to take photos of the rear port side to show you some work that someone else did earlier. This will hold me for today.
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