Today is the first day of my week off and I got started bright and early. Two trips to Lowe's and one to Home Depot later, I was ready to set up shop at about 8:30a. I put up a canopy last night to help out with both sun and rain and here is a shot of my outside workshop.
It's a little hard to see what is what because of the dappled light, but you get the general idea. The first job is to take out the starboard side window. For those of you who have been "gently" reminding me to put up T bars, I did! I started out with two and ended up with four. I used 2x4s and 3rd Hands (wonderful inventions).
I also made good use of some old T-shirts to get a snug fit without damaging the ceiling (t-shirts for t-bars....get it!?). OK. Sorry.
My plan is to take out the starboard window, then peel back the bottom corners from the lower starboard and lower right rear to replace the rotted framing. By taking out the starboard window, I free up the framing (or what is left of it) from under that window, as the screws that hold the window into place also hold the framing into place. Seriously. I didn't make that up. Believing that I would need to hop to and get the new framing in asap, I figured I'd better test my skills with the new Jr. Kreg jig. What a great tool! Easy peasy.
I've already measured for the horizontal framing pieces on the starboard side, so I cut and Kreg'd those. Nice!
So here is the starboard side window - "before". It took only a few minutes to get all of the screws out, but there is a LOT of caulking around this thing. I didn't try pulling out the window right away. I decided to go ahead and remove the J rail so that I would be prepared to pull away that starboard corner.
No photo for that, but taking out the J rail screws on the starboard side was no problem, but taking out the #!%*&!@! staples was a royal pain and took about an hour. Mind you, it look another 30 minutes or so to actually extract the staples from the skin. Holy cow!! I thought that the skin was just screwed into place. Not so much. And those staples were rusted to beat all. Sheesh!! No, I didn't stop to get the Tetanus shot today, but I will. I will!!!
Knowing that I also need to take out the rear window, I decided to go ahead and do that next. Get that weight off of the frame before I continue. There were boatloads of thick, gummy black stuff all around the rear window frame. Very tar-like. Not like butyl type, which has more of a molding clay consistency, but really like tar. Awful stuff. I had to work a plastic putty knife into it using the rubber mallet to get through the stuff. But here is a photo with the rear window out.
Ruh row. Take a look at the rear port corner. Up until now, the starboard corner has gotten all of the attention. I'm not sure how well this will come through, but it wasn't pretty. You can see the remnants of the black goo a little bit. If you look down in the corner, you can see that it was just globbed in there to fill in for missing wood. Eeeeesh!! But I moved on to the port side J rail.
Oh! I didn't mention the dadblamed drywall screws!!!!!!!! Oh yeah. About half of the screws in the port side J rail were drywall screws. Rusted drywall screws. Good Lord, give me strength!! Half of those were very rusted and the slots in the heads just became circles with the first hit from the driver. Jiminy H. Crickets!! So I pulled out the Drexel Multi-tool metal cutter. It is very, very thin and fabulous at cutting nails and screws - unless, of course, they are hardened drywall screws. Alright, I won't go on about this, but it took me an hour and a half to get those babies outta there.
For some reason, three of my photos did not come out. One is what the back looked like when the whole outer skin was removed. This is while I had just the starboard rear corner propped up and out of the way. This is the view of that starboard corner. The framing toward the middle is just fine. I knew that the corner was going to be bad. I decided, ultimately, to take off the whole lower back panel, because it was easier than keeping that corning propped up and I was concerned about bending it.
But then something new happened. Look at what I found under the skin. So much for the port corner, which I thought was in pretty good shape.
The top framing strip was a patch job and the framing toward the middle has been eaten away. The next photo is of the middle framing strip. It isn't attached to anything and the far left section is missing entirely.
Tra la la la la.
Fine. It will be easier to replace the whole back panel than patching it together anyway. But, darn!
But wait, there's more!!!!The whole back panel just fell out. By that, I mean what you see in the photo above: framing, insulation and interior panelling! Not really a shock, of course, what was to hold it in place? Unfortunately, the next photo of the whole back out is one of the three that doesn't want to upload. I'll take another one tomorrow. I must say, it is awfully easy getting into and out of the camper with the whole back wall gone.
Poor Trixie.
So then, with the whole back off, I cleaned up the wood as best I could and started a Plan B. Plan B requires that I pull out the rest of those blasted staples, so I worked on that for another hour or more. I also had to go back to Home Depot for a few 1x4s. I'll need to replace some of the pieces that are affixed to the floor.
I stopped to begin clean-up at about 7p. All of this took far longer that I would have liked, but none of it is really surprising. If I'd had another half day of sunshine, I think that I could have had the framing back together again. Tomorrow I'll be tied up until about 3 pm, so I don't know how much I'll get to, but if the weather cooperates, I'll be back on it Monday morning at sun-up. Here is Trixie all tucked in for the night. The tarp is tucked up under where the window goes.
Oh! I never did get that starboard window out. Not really any point just yet. More to do before I go there.
'night Trixie.
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