We Have Walls (Sort of)

It was a week ago Thursday when we started in on the trailer again. Heinz finished up a few tweaks on the wiring and got in a little bit of insulation before neighborhood chat and darkness took over.

On Friday I started prepping my car for sale as Heinz worked on insulation installation. Of course his attention got pulled in both directions as I needed help getting started on sanding/buffing the headlights and sunroof. So, once again, darkness and neighborhood chat took over as people wandered over to see what those maniacs were up to now using a drill on a car roof.

Saturday morning Heinz made great strides in installing insulation and actually managed to get about 2/3 of the lower level in before he had to close things up and move the trailer. The next door neighbors were having a party that night and getting the Airstream out to free up parking spaces seemed the right thing to do. And besides, we were invited to the bash.



Sunday was decidedly a lazy day, with neither of us in the mood to do any manual labor, so we tucked the baby back into the RV lot, patted her on the nose and promised to make up for it next weekend.

A new weekend, gorgeous weather, and a couple of energetic people can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting some work done. We pulled most of the inner wall pieces out of the backyard. While Heinz finished up some wiring tweaks (pulling speaker wires mostly) and the last bits of bottom level insulation, I began to drill out rivets that we’d missed during the deconstruction stage and scrub down all the wall pieces.

I have fallen head over heels in love with a product called Krud Kutter. Way back when we were trying to clean up the inside of the trailer after removing the old mouse infested insulation, I wandered the cleaning products aisle at Home Depot and Lowes trying to find a product that would clean, disinfect, and was safe for use on aluminum. READ YOUR LABELS! Almost all cleaning products state that they should NOT be used on aluminum, and then there are a few that don’t mention aluminum at all which made me skittish about using them. I finally ran across Krud Kutter, the only one I could find that states on the label that it is safe for use on aluminum. So I bought it and tried it. It doesn’t have too bad of a chemical smell and what is there dissipates quickly. But I really loved it this weekend. Man, can that stuff cut through dirt with ease! It took no time at all (relatively speaking) to remove 35 years worth of grease and grime.



So I spent all day Saturday scrubbing and Heinz spent it insulating and beginning to put in the inner walls. A quick suggestion here…if you are re-doing a trailer, mark the location of each section as you take it down. Don’t be like us and so eager to get them down that you simply pull them out and put them in a pile. Later you will regret it as you spend time trying to put the picture puzzle back together again. I know, I know, a definite “Duh” moment, but we’re slow learners at times.

Since we are moving some outlets around and had put in new flooring, it isn’t a simple re-installation. Each piece has to be put in with clecos, placement of the new outlets marked, taken down, bottom edge trimmed, old outlet holes patched, new outlet holes cut, re-hung with clecos to check the fit, possibly taken down and trimmed again, and then finally riveted to the frame. Of course, that often means having to drill new rivet holes since the old ones no longer match up. The nice part is that all those patches and old holes will not need bondo since they will be behind cabinets and never seen.

By the end of Sunday, we had walls, or at least we had half walls. The trailer now has the lower 1/3 completely re-installed except for a couple of small areas that needed too large an area patched. We have simply cut those out and will replace them with new sheets after Heinz makes a run to the scrap metal yard.



So the trailer is once again tucked away in the RV lot and we’ll spend this week straightening up the garage and ordering supplies for next weekend. It’s amazing how many rivets you can go through in a day.

Our Airstream life began about 2 years ago when we decided to retire at the end of 2010 and spend a year traveling the country. Like a lot of folks, we looked at RV after RV, but couldn’t find one we liked. They just all seemed so dull and cookie-cutter to us - monochromatic color schemes, plastic trim everywhere, each one looking like the previous one and the next one. But out there glimmering in the sunlight was the occasional shiny, silver Airstream, quirky, interesting, no two looking alike inside. So we searched on the internet and finally last October, spotted THE ONE. We drove down to Los Angeles from the San Francisco area and bought our 1974 Excella, with all its bumps, bruises, warts, and dings. It didn’t look too bad on first inspection, a little shopworn, but respectable.

Then we started to deconstruct it (or demolish it as the neighbors referred to the process). And there they were: water damaged floor, mouse eaten insulation (if I never see another acorn shell it will be fine with me!), twisted/rusted frame pieces, leaking rivets/seams, etc., etc., etc.

It’s now August, almost a year later and two novices have learned to buck rivets and install aluminum patches. We have replaced the flooring and numerous pieces of sheet metal; removed, cleaned and reinstalled the Vista View windows; cleaned and re-installed the water tanks; installed a new air conditioner and 300 watts worth of solar panels. As of last week it is now officially waterproof. In fact, we’ve tested it so often our next door neighbor felt compelled to comment that we could keep watering it, but it wasn’t going to grow. The only work we didn’t do ourselves was the welding to replace the rusted areas on the frame which we had done by a local trailer repair company.

It’s been somewhat, to say the least, time consuming, but we’ve reached a red letter moment: the outside is done and we started on the inside last Sunday. Whoo Hoo! As of today, the 50 amp service, 110 volt and 12 volt wiring is place – waiting installation of the inner sheet metal. Our next step will be insulation, then the inner skins.

So far we've come up with two major recommendations to anyone trying this on their own. 1) If you can’t be talked out of it, then press on. But be sure to take at least one weekend a month to play. All work and no play can really stress a relationship, both with your spouse and with your Airstream. 2) If you don’t have a warehouse-sized indoor storage place with electricity and tools, be sure you have tolerant neighbors who don’t mind you dragging a 31 ft trailer home every weekend and parking it in the street. It also helps if they don’t mind providing the occasional extra muscle or set of hands. We've lucked out with great neighbors that are fascinated by the project and drop by every weekend to check out the progress (or else they're calculating how long until we finish and pack up to leave).

Things are winding down a bit at work for both of us in anticipation of retirement, so we should be a little more regular at postings.