Silver Sistas

…At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves. Our plans were rolling quite smoothly at first. In the days leading up to our annual trip to Upper Michigan we were to install new LED lights, rewire the brakes, and replace the old sub floor with Nyloboard and then we were ready for our voyage. Easy right?!…

As you might have guessed by the lack of recent blogposts, the Airstream did not make it on our trip.

Looking back about a month ago, it was about 8pm on a Monday and the Virginia sun was setting. Erin and I had been outside all day, working on our Airstream with our friend Mike, who rewired the tow lights and brakes for us.

(Side Note: The reason Mike had to rewire our brake wires is because we ripped them out like savages during our demolition phase. See Demolition Derby. “Wires? Who needs these old wires?” Put that one in the dumb and dumber books in the chapter about thinking before you act. We will leave all future bomb disarming to our slightly smarter, wire conscious brother, Scott (Army EOD.))

By now everyone had left and my only companion was the distant noise of classic rock coming from my dying i-pod speakers. I was on the top of an old wooden ladder in my driveway painstakingly reaching to pipe caulk around our new LED lights. My hands and clothes were covered in caulk, and with nightfall near it was becoming increasingly difficult to see what I was doing; but I trudged on.

In my frustration to beat the sun, I hastily caulked the rear running lights on our trailer and was tediously going back over the areas scraping tiny pieces of caulk off. Balancing on my ladder was a tin muffin tray which I filled with q-tips, lacquer remover, and a large rock to hold it down.

The tray must have fallen off my rickety ladder 20 times; splashing lacquer thinner everywhere soaking my socks through the mesh in my tennis shoes. I would bend down and calmly pick up every chemically saturated q-tip, re-organize my little tray and put it back on the ladder. I was doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. I think they call that crazy, and I might have been a bit delirious from the lacquer thinner and working in the sun all day; but in my head I could see victory. We were just a few gobs of caulk away from towing our trailer. Or so I thought…

Turns out, Airstream’s aren’t water-tight? We had one last step to towing our Overlander to Michigan, that was replacing the old soggy plywood sub floor. We assumed we would get some help and pull up the old and put in the new. What we failed to realize was the condition of our metal frame. When we pulled up the old plywood, we saw a deteriorated rusty rotted frame unworthy of our new flooring. Wer’e not blaming Airstream for their faulty design, leaky rear bathroom issues, or the honest man who sold us the trailer in “great condition”. We blame ourselves, because our nightmares could have been avoided by doing a little research before hand. Let this be a lesson to future Airstream buyers~ inspect the floor, inspect the bellypan, and inspect the rear frame; BEFORE purchasing an Airstream.

If you think a little frame rust is going to stop us your wrong. It is a minor setback on our journey but as always, the journey continues. We breifly considered quiting and washing our hands of the project; and then we got our senses back. Thank god. We’re saving this Airstream from the graveyard, she’s got potential. The trailer is now at the welder getting the frame repaired so we can install the Nyloboard securely. We decided there is no sense in installing such a quality floor on top of a rusted out frame. We’re now realizing the Airstream we are building will probably out live us. It can be someones restoration project in 2092.

SO recapping yes, the Airstream didn’t make our Michigan trip this year. The good thing is we take our trip to Michigan annually, so the trailer will definitely make it Summer 2013 in tip top shape.

Were thinking of setting our sites on Alumapalooza in late May 2013 to be our Airstream’s first trip. What do you guys think? Has anyone ever been to Alumapalooza? Comments Please…

Here we are on our front porch in Michigan!

Now that we are back from our trip, we will be updating our SilverSistas blog regularly (finally) and re-grouping. Stay tuned for a long-awaited blogpost and instructional video on replacing plastic window parts purchased from Out-of-Doors Mart. And NO, I won’t be posting a How To on caulking, because despite the artistic advantage I thought I had, I can’t caulk to save my life.

Erin used her interior design skills to draw the layout plans for our 1969 Airstream. She started with pen and paper first, and eventually moved to her iPad. We have heard good things about using Google Sketchup, but the program seems pretty advanced.

Now we are thinking about making some sort of 3d cardboard mockup to scale, so we can see exactly how everything will fit. I also made scans of our original Airstream’s maunual, particularly the Electricity chapter. Soon we are employing a friend help us hook up our electric, because right now were not street legal! As of right now we are using the following websites to help us understand “The 12 volt side of life”.

After a few long hard days of work our Airstream’s interior is completely gutted to it’s aluminum shell. There was a lot of anticipating building up to our “Insulation Removal” day, so we went ahead and bought all of our supplies prior. We knew working with fiberglass was going to be messy and we wanted to remove all of it in one day. We took another day to power-wash, sweep, and remove all wires and plumbing.

Despite us finally being able to take a breath and sigh of relief; everyone keeps telling us the hard part is yet to come. It’s true it really didn’t take a lot of brains to rip, tear, and bash the interior out. However, wearing a full body suit, goggles, and respirator in 90 degree VA heat kicking up dust from mouse droppings and fiberglass in a humid trailer is hard work.

Now all that is left is a partially rotting floor and an aluminum shell, our blank canvas!

Whats in our toolbox:

1. Painters Coveralls - Fiberglass is nasty stuff, you will definitely need to protect ALL of your bare skin. We decided to use these inexpensive painter’s coveralls. The alternative would be to wear long sleeve clothing and a hood, but note that you will probably want to trash whatever you wear afterward because it will be covered in fiberglass shards. Our coveralls were hoodless, so we improvised with plastic bags around our heads.

2. Safety Goggles - At one pointed it looked as if it was “snowing” fiberglass in the trailer. Goggles are the only way to go!

3. Fiberglass Respirator - We had already experienced some respiratory “issues” from just tearing out the furniture. Due to the age of our trailer, our fiberglass insulation was crumbly, moldy, and mouse and ant infested. As it crumbled off of the walls we realized respirators were needed to save our lungs.  They sell respirators in the painting or tool section at most hardware or warehouse stores.

4. Man-Power – Perhaps the most important resource to removing our insulation was Man Power, and no I cannot provide a link for this. We recommend recruiting any brothers, cousins, dad’s, significant others, or friends you have. There are just some things we as women can not do – including but not limited to tearing through aluminum walls, wires, and plumbing like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. In our case, we needed a few T-Rex’s. Thank you Kevin, Scott, and Josh.

5. Gloves (Disposable) – We went through a few pairs of these as we tore the insulation off of the walls. It seemed as if it was stuck on originally with a layer of adhesive and took some pulling to remove. Erin’s hand was actually bleeding at one point from the fiberglass seeping through her gloves. Go for the most inexpensive kind you can find, but make sure they are coated with a layer of rubber or silicon to protect your palms and fingers. Again, you will be throwing these away.

6. Pressure Washer - We decided because we were replacing our floor boards anyway to pressure wash the interior skins. The fiberglass glue left a fuzzy sheen on most of the panels and would be too time consuming to scrub off by hand. I would not recommend the pressure washer if you are trying to salvage your flooring, as it will create water damage. Our water just leaked out of the existing holes in the floor onto our driveway.

We are in now the process of figuring out our interior layout, which includes measuring everything, making never-ending lists, and buying parts. Meanwhile we are getting estimates on the cost to replace the floor. We originally wanted to do this ourselves, but due to our time constraints we are thinking about sourcing for outside help. Due to the scale of this project, we have reassessed our goals and now our new mission is to have it “camp ready” in time for our trip in August.