Redoing the screens

 

Now that summer is upon and and camping is looming, it is imperative that we get the screens redone and functional.  We have our fair share of biting insects here in Vermont and I want try my hardest not to feed the active insect population with our blood!   My sister (Reinergirl on Airforums) showed me how to rescreen them in about 6 seconds so it was a total snap.  We semi-polished the frames just to get the serious oxidation off, washed them with soapy water, and BAM screened them.  NO MORE BUGS in the traylah!     PS  We first used mothers's polish which frankly did not work well, then switched to a 3M rubbing compound which was much better. Mind you it left a shiny burnished finish so if you are looking for a mirrored finish do not use this but we are totally happy!

Progressive Dynamics installation

After installing the formica covered closet wall, we cut out a spot for the converter.  The body of the converter sticks into the closet.   The floor of the closet will house the batteries but we can't quite figure out how to vent them yet!

Progressive Dynamics 4045: 45 Amp Converter + AC/DC Distribution Panel

Street side cabinets are in place

The patina does vary from cabinet to cabinet due to veneer, sunlight, etc, but since they are original cabinets we are happy with the results!  

We polished the trim around the window to give a fun effect

Placing the cabinets back was easier than we thought.  It feels like we are finally getting to the fun part of the trailer.

Electrical cabinet update

We are commiting a back closet on the street side into an electrical cabinet of sorts.  It will hopefully house two group 27 batteries and various electrical accoutrements!   Our Progressive Dynamics converter and AC/DC distribution panel will be going on the side of the cabinet. All of the electrical wires enter this cabinet in varying stages of disorganization! 

This tool tore up the formica pretty quickly!

Please note the bandaid is not due to the exacto knife. 

   The wall of the closet next to the future toilet had been covered in contact paper and the wood underneath it was marked and ugly.  We decided to add slightly more stability to the wall by adding a layer of formica.   The pattern was called SISAL MAT and we ordered it from Home Depot.   We found out formica is not the easiest material to work with.  We tried various cutting methods including electrical tin snips, cutting shears, etc. until we found out that we could cut it fairly easily with a sharp exacto knife!!   The glueing process was also nerve wracking- we had one shot to lay it down correctly.   We cut the formica oversized on the curved edge.  After the glue firmly set, we used a Dremel to make the edge exact. Above are the photos.

Bulkhead Wall Moulding Woes!

So we hit a snafu riveting in the bulkhead wall moulding back into our trailer. The rivet gun head from Vintage Trailer supply, and the pneumatic rivet gun from Harbor Freight both had too large of a head to seat the rivet snugly into the moulding since the metal ridge gets in the way.  We went to Sears to try to get a narrower head and although better still would not let us completely seat the rivet in.   We ended up making a wedge out of a piece of belly pan aluminum so that we could seat the riveter head over the rivet squarely.  The wedge allowed an even distribution of pressure around the rivet head so that the rivets seated evenly.   This is a bit hard to describe but we thought we would try since this may help others with replacing their bulkhead mouldings.

The rivet gun we found from Sears with a smaller head

We bent the rivet slightly for better access

Notice the wedge shape of the piece of aluminum

Initially rivet placed into hole

Rivet head seated into hole

Wedge placed into to allow even pressure with riveter

Rivet in place

small head size of Sears Riveter

Vintage Trailer Supply Riveter was too big

Shiny doors

Decided to strip the interior of the door and make it shiny.  Used citristrip multiple times and got down to some very oxidized metal that had us slightly worried about the polishing of it.  See worrisome photos above!   We are going to replace the door latches since Vintage Trailer supply stocks them and stripping them would be a royal pain.   We protected the precious door handle as best we could.   Although this was a very crude polishing it actually started to turn out better than we expected.   The whole reason we are doing this is to showcase a door guard that we got for our wedding anniversary (yes we are pathetic).  Peter and I both went to Ohio State so when we saw the Buckeyes on the door guard we fell in love.   Mind you this is the first frivolous purchase we have made for our trailer.  Fixing axles and frame and floor is all fine and good but terribly terribly uninspiring!

After two layer of Citristrip there is still paint left 

This was the oxidation under all that paint

3/4 of the door is polished

Cabinet placement

Woohoo!  Today we finally put our first cabinet in!   We redid the cabinets this summer by stripping the shellac off, applying multiple coats of Watco stain (natural) with ever finer sanding between each coat.  They are pretty rough on the bottom but we hope to cover up the bottom with Marmoleum click flooring so they should not look too bad.  Previous owners had stained them darker unfortunately, so we are left with a patchwork of light and dark(they only stained the exposed wood) but since we are putting the cabinets together in the same plan it should work out.  We were really on a roll when my cow vet of a husband got a call on a cow with a prolapsed uterus so we had to stop.  Here are some photos of our progress!  We used cove cabinet welt from Vintage Trailer Supply between the cabinets and the walls.