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Sunday, November 6, 2011

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.