Demolation begins

Well it finally begins, we start the demolition phase of the refurbishment. The condition of the floor forced our hands when selecting where to start. The bedroom in the very back of the trailer has the most floor rot so it made sense to start there. We started by removing the bed and then the "built ins", the book shelve and the shelving unit above the back window. Next came the trim and then the side walls and finally the ceiling. You can see a pattern to how every thing was installed. It is clear from the stain patterns on the wall that the panels were stained after they were installed and as you will see later that leads us to make a change in how we proceed with this project.

With the help of Sydney the original "Adventure puppy", we made good progress through out the day. You come to really appreciate the quality and attention to detail that they put into these trailers 50 years ago. The insulation looks pretty good and we think it was updated once since the original build. Unfortunately the silver backing is all that was left of the insulation as we moved it to check wiring. So it will all be removed and new put in its place. The plan is to seal the seams of the exterior aluminum, both inside and out. To replace the existing 110V wiring with a grounded modern system, after some thought I have decided to run new 12v wiring to the exterior lighting to allow us to have the exterior lights serve as accent lighting.

We carefully loaded up our truck with panels and took them "home" to refinish.

More next time. We will really discuss the reasons this is taking so long and then talk about what we learned about panel finishing.