Day Twelve

Hooray!  Trixie is now all closed in all by herself.  No tarps needed.  Phew!!! That saves a lot of time getting started, getting stopped.

First things first.  I started on the roof again to get the second seam sealed.  It is darned hard to get that tape on straight!  I didn't.  Not even close.  BUT, I did get it to cover the seam.   Here is the BEFORE version.

Here is the AFTER version.  You can't see where it got really crooked, but you'll have to take my word for it.  Two down, one to go!  I think that the third one is also "untaped", so it will be a matter of cleaning the roof around the seam and putting down some more really crooked tape.

Next I needed to tackle the J-rail on both sides.  Starting with the remainder of the awning rail on the starboard side, you can see here where that ends and the J-rail starts.  Lots of butyl tape squishing out from top and bottom.  All good.  I even got butyl behind the light fixture.  It's darned tricky finding the screw holes after the butyl tape is on.

Here's one of the port side.  This poor J-rail strip has done just about all it can be asked to do.  It is bent all to bupkiss, but it will be fine for this season.  Major butyl squishage here.  Very glad to see that.  I'll cut off all of that once it is all finished and I'm ready to paint.

One more shot of the port side that shows something interesting.  Look below the "silver" stripe and you can see where I removed caulk.  The caulk line was a good 1.25 inches away from the J-rail.  That's a lot of caulk!  Hopefully I won't need any at all.  We'll see.

Next!  I got the hole drilled in the ceiling framing to run the 12v wires from the new ceiling vent fan into the bathroom.  That was interesting.  But it is finished now, so no need to dwell.

For the next two photos, the answer is, "Of course not!  Why would you ask such a silly thing?"

The question is, "Stacia, can't you leave well enough alone?"  Pffffff!!!  Clearly not.

I decided that it would be far easier to replace the whole 4x8 on the ceiling than trying to patch the old buckled paneling, so I demolished that.  The insulation is still in good shape, so I'll add the Pink Panther stuff to this, rather than taking this out.

And I took out the rear port panel also.  Same reason.  I can cut one piece out of a 4x8 to create one solid piece back here.  Much easier than assembling pieces (she says with great confidence).  I still need to cut some bits and pieces off at the ceiling, but that's shouldn't take long.  The wood is in fine shape.  Woo hoo!

I'm reasonably confident that I am 99.5% finished with all demo.  The only thing left is the flooring.  I just need to decide if I am demolishing just the green/white tile or the original sheeting that is below that.  I've decided to just drop in a sheet of underlayment 1/4" plywood for the summer.  I'll paint it and it will be fine for now.

I'm hoping to get some time in after work this week to get the rest of the insulation in.  Then I'll shower it down with the hose to see if anything is leaking.  If I don't find any leaks, I'll put in the paneling next Saturday.  Then it is on to the breaks, etc.

Did I mention that I bought Trixie a new car?  Well, it is a new old car.  But this is one that should be able to tow her with no problems.  A Subaru Forester.

That is all there is to report tonight, folks.  Happy Sunday!

Day Eleven

Today I decided to focus on the outside.  Although I'd been on a roll inside, I can work inside at any time. Today was mild and breezy, so I took advantage of that.  I'd love to be able to make Trixie water tight, so that I can do away with all of the tarps.  Securing her against rain at night is a full 20 minute job.  Then there is the 20 minutes to take the tarps off in the morning.  All in all, it is better for her to be rain resistant on her own.  To that end.....

There are a myriad of opportunities for water to seep into her - the ceiling vent, the J-rail, the roof seams, the windows, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.....  Today I focused on the ceiling vent and the center roof seam.  In the photo below you can see the ceiling vent, which is just sitting in place.  It is not affixed in any way.  To the right of it you see what STILL remains of all of the glob that had been "sealing" the previous ceiling vent.  Tar, glue, caulk, more tar......  As you can see, there is more of it for me to remove before I can start anew.

Looking past the ceiling vent and the 2x4 you'll see that a previous owner had put tar tape over the roof seam.  The edges of the tape are curled up and the tape itself is brittle.  It has to go. Oh joy.

 So here is the ceiling vent hole with the vent removed for now.  What you can't tell from this photo is that the remaining caulk/tar is about 1/8" thick and hard as a rock.  A sharp scraper and mallet should do the trick.

Here is a shot of the tar tape on the port side of the ceiling vent hole.  Ghastly stuff.

Next:

I would have liked to have gotten a full port to starboard side shot, but I am standing on the top of the camper at this point (you can see my toes) and can only get so much in each photo.  But you get the gist of it.

The ceiling vent is now secure, with a gasket AND butyl tape under the flange and sealant in each screw hole.

Look to the left of the vent and you'll see that the tar tape and its goo are gone.  It took the heat gun, Goo Gone, Tar Remover and lots of elbow grease, but it is gone.  There had been no tape or caulk on the seam to the right of the vent at all, so nothing much to see there.

After:

This is what I learned today.  In as much as butyl tape is unforgiving - meaning that it is a mess to take off once you've pressed it down - it is, at least, humanly possible.  Not so much when we are talking about EternaBond.  If Eterna Bond even slightly touches a clean surface, you'd better be darned happy with where it touched, because it isn't ever coming off again. I'm not kidding.  No way, Jose.

You can see here that I put EternaBond on the roof seams and around the ceiling vent.  It isn't perfectly smooth in all places and that bugs me, but I'm going to have to learn to accept it (see paragraph above).  I know that doing this completely voids the vintage rules, but I think that I can live with that.  It's the roof for goodness sake.  No one will see it.  And no water rot would be a good thing.

I also made the mistake of using Goo Gone to try removing excess EternaBond sticky and sealant from the ceiling vent cover, but it removed the finish.  I suppose I'll just have to be OK with a little gunk on the vent.

NEXT!

The next waterproofing element is the J-rail.  On this starboard side, it is an awning rail.  In a perfect world, I'd replace this badly beaten up rail with new, but this will need to suffice for this season.  Strictly speaking, there should never be any need to use caulk.  We'll see how this goes.

The awning rail had been removed up to the middle of the roof to allow me to remove the outer skin on the rear.  You can see here the butyl tape between the under skin and the outer skin (dark gray glop).  Now I need to get butyl tape between the outer skin and the awning rail.

Ta da!  Done.  First, where the seam hits, the EternaBond goes fully around the edge from the roof to the end of the top skin.  Then butyl tape, then the awning rail.  You can see where we have good squishage of butyl tape once the awning rail screws were back in.

I'm concentrating very hard on taking photos from the top of the ladder without ending up face down on the sidewalk below.  You can see here where the awning rail is now back in place down the starboard side.  I remain skeptical about not needing caulk.

At this point, it turns back into J-rail.  What you are looking at here is the butyl tape with the paper backing still on it.  I have that pressed onto the side of the camper, just in case it sprinkles tonight.  I don't want rain seeping in now!  You can also see the lighting fixture.  I need to scrape off that old putty tape, replace it with butyl and get it back into place.

And the last photo of the day is to show you what the butyl tape looks like still on the roll.  I've run it half of the way down the starboard side.  Tomorrow I'll put the J-rail back on over this line of tape.

That's it for now, Campers.  The dryer buzzer is hollering at me.  I must go fold laundry now.

Day Ten... and holding

My poor neglected garden required my attention today, although Trixie was calling!  She'll have to wait until next weekend.

Day Ten

What a beautiful day.  Couldn't ask for anything better when working outside.

Of course, I feel compelled to make things just a smidge worse before making it better, so I did a little demo first thing this morning.  I decided that, ultimately, it would be much easier to demo the remaining piece of 4x8 paneling on the ceiling around the vent than to try and find a way to match up all of the disparate bits and pieces.  That took a whopping 10 minutes.  I'm standing in the doorway taking this photo.

Another shot from the kitchen area.  I've yet to tear out the yucky fiberglass insulation from that one section, but I'll get to that in a minute.

One more shot - this time from the rear.  I hardly ever post any photos facing the kitchen, so here you have it.  I need to take that fiberglass yellow insulation out next.

In for a penny, in for a pound!  Why not show you the whole mess that it is kitchen these days.  You can see the blue tarp is still over the top of the camper.  That will be the case until I get the new ceiling vent dfan sealed from the outside and the J-rail butyl taped and screwed back into place.  My best guess is week after next for that.

Alright!  Turning from starboard to port, here are the walls as of about 11a this morning.

And now....
Everyone sing it with me........ "Isn't sheeeeeeee......

...pretty in pink."

In the rear starboard corner, I added a little support bracket for something in to which to screw the light on the outside.  Once the glue hardens, I'll add insulation there, too.  Ignore that starboard upper rear section.  It will get insulation, too.  All of these sections will get insulation tape to cross from pink, over the wood framing, to pink again, just to make it as tight as possible.  With the insulation and remaining framing in place, I'll cut the channels and secure all of the wiring.

I went out to get luan today and came back with unlayment plywood.  I think that it will have a very nice finish, once painted and it was only $10 per sheet.  Can't beat that with a stick!

Welp!  That's it for now.  See you tomorrow!!!

Day Nine

Back to success!!!!

I'm not going to tell how I fixed the problem.  I will tell you that I discovered the cause of the problem and it is was something that I did back on Day One.  I pondered and pondered taking off the bottom skin and redoing some of the bottom framing to correct the problem and decided against it.  There was a way to "cheat" it and make it OK.  I don't like doing that, but the alternative seemed a bit over the top - even for me.

So look!!  The rear window is in and there is butyl tape aplenty!!  I'll trim it another day.  Yippee!!

Also, all of the 12v wiring is in and I even test fitted the new Fan-Tastic fan.  THAT is a very happy purchase.  It pulls air in or pumps it out.  It was a little warm in my aluminum box today, but this puppy sucked a lot of that hot air out in a matter of minutes.  YES!  I still have a smidge of work to do around the opening on the top of the camper, so permanent installation is still a work day or two off. Very exciting.  This is the first "improvement"; meaning that it is something that was not there before.

I'll be taking out the rest of the fuzzy insulation and replacing it (where I can get to it) with 3/4 hard foam.  This is just nasty stuff.

I also discovered that I don't actually have all of the connections needed to make the camper brakes work.  That is a job a few weeks down the line, but it is certainly interesting.  I know that there is a break in the connection somewhere between the tongue of the camper, where all of the wires are exposed and the turn signals on the rear.  I'll need to jack up the trailer to find the problem.  Again, that can wait a little bit.  I know that the interior wiring is fine, because they work just fine when connected directly to the battery, so no need to wait to close in the walls.  Yay!

This is what the rear wall looks like now.  You can see the wires for the running lights and the turn signal lights.  Odd.  There was nothing for the screws to bite into except the aluminum before.  I plan to add one more vertical slat of framing so that those screws aren't just suspended there.

Next week's goal will be to cut channels in the new framing for the wiring and get the insulation in.

I feel SO much better today, having made this progress.  Soon, I'll be back to doing what I intended to do in the first place - just fluff up the interior.

Good grief!!

Happy Sunday everyone.

Day Eight

Gorgeous day today!

The goal for today was to get the rear framing complete, get the skin to fit, slap on some new butyl tape EVERYWHERE and get that window back in.

I had a second pair of hands this morning to help me with the skin - thanks Kenny!

Next, I cleaned all of the old gunk off of the window.

Then I temporarily fitted the window and clamped everything in place to make sure it would fit.

Perfect!

Put the butyl tape on.

Glued and screwed framing into place.

Ready to put that window in permanently!!  Woo hoo!!!!

Got the window in place and.......it doesn't fit.

Huh???

I don't know.  I really don't.  I had the whole thing together before I took the window out, applied the butyl and take put the window back in.

Since it is 5 pm, I'm going to sleep on it and start again in the morning.

A little discouraging.

Never say die!!!!!!

Day Seven

Hi Everyone!!!

Finally, I got to go back to Trixie!  Today's goals were to get the wiring in place (mostly 12v), replace rotted ceiling vent framing and get the back window in.   The first challenge was getting a photo of the old ceiling vent framing with the old plywood ceiling removed.  It is a gorgeous day and sun kept making my picture turn out all black.  But I think you can see the "before" here.  The dark patches on either side of the opening are just shadows.  Then there is the lovely paper thin fiberglas insulation.  That will be going away.

The cross beam framing wasn't absolutely perfect.  Some of it is a little squishy, so rather than making each new framing piece 14", I made the first one long enough so that I could make certain to screw it into strong wood; thus the somewhat unorthodox setup.  Two birds with one stone on this piece.  Got the new framing in place and pulled through the new 12v wires that will be needed to run the new ceiling vent fan.

Then I worked on getting the upper framing in place for the back window.  The frustration with this job was determining the correct order in which to do the work to get the back sealed up again.  I need to match up all of the old holes for screwing the window back into place.  I got the upper framing in and just super clamped it where I thought it should go.  Then I started reattaching the outer skin so that the top of the back skin could be put back into place.  

The skin was very tight, with the starboard side not wanting to fully wrap around as it had before (easy to see that it had before, because of where the aluminum bends).  Much to my elbow's chagrin, there was a lot of rubber mallet pounding involved.  I tried my best to use my left hand.  That was hoot.  I think that I may have actually landed on my target once twice, though.  Pffff!!!

As I got each small section as tight as I could get it, I shot a staple into it and kept working my way down.  Oh!  I didn't mention that first I took off another 6-7 feet of J-rail so that I could put new butyl tape between aluminum layers 1 and 2.  When I get that far, I'll put another layer of butyl between layer 2 and the J-rail.  Not yet, though.  More important things left on the list.

So I repeated this on the port side and measured between the lower window screw holes and the top.

Not good.

3/4 inch off.

Swell.

From inside the camper, I could see that the skin was NOT lying completely flat against the framing, which was surprising, as the sound that the mallet made when I was pounding from the outside, it sounded like it was completely flat against the wood.  Alas, no.

I liken the process to trying to get a full-sized fitted sheet to fit onto a queen-sized bed.  As soon as you try to get that second corner on, the first corner pops off.  So!  I decided to try to anchor the back by using a screw to connect the back panel to the top framing piece for the window.  Then I went back to the starboard side to take out every staple that I'd just put in.  Oh boy was my elbow pleased.    The process for this is very gingerly inserting an ice pick under the staple and tapping it with the mallet until the staple starts to give.  Then I can work it out with a nail remover.

Then I started the rubber mallet work over again to pound that puppy as far down and squish that butyl tape as much as I could.  Working at about one three-inch section at a time, I actually put a screw in place to "pull in" the aluminum to the wood.  That worked pretty well. Next a staple next to the screw, remove the screw, move down the next few inches.

Well!  For those of you who don't believe that God really does work in mysterious ways, my mallet head popped off!!  Of course, I just got down off the ladder and smacked the sucker against the sidewalk.  This would work for a few minutes, then off it would fly again.  THEN, the blade of my icepick (the sophisticated tool that I use to get under the staples to remove them) broke off.  OK!!!!!  OK!!!!  I'm stopping.

So here is where we ended the day.  I got the starboard side to within about 1/8" of where it needs to be.  You can actually see the screw holes on the port side, so I have to repeat the "remove staples, pull aluminum down harder, hammer down the aluminum/butyl to be right up against the wood and restaple" tomorrow to hopefully get everything where it needs to be.  What you see here is the window held in place by clamps.  Oh well.  I gave it a good try.   Tomorrow is another day and Trixie will be there waiting for me.

'night Campers!