buttoned up roof

The roof has been all buttoned up!  All the butyl tape has been applied and more of the air bubbles have been worked out. Notice todays helper :)
He was busy screwing down the vents to the roof.

Below is the finished roof.  We purposely did not put the TV antenna back on.  We have never camped with a TV and until it is just Andy and I driving across this beautiful country, i don't think we will need one. I have never even considered putting a tv in one of our campers, the boys are quite happy just hanging out outside and making their own fun.

I will post picts of the inside too.  Andy found a couple of other small spots that needed to be fixed in the bunk room.
So, Andy and his dad took this to the State this past Wednesday morning and had it inspected, it PASSED! Yah!  You see it was bought as a salvage rv so it had to be inspected in order to get a regular title and to be able to register it.
Now all she needs a good cleaning, inside and out. That's where i come in, unfortunately...

roof part 2

The screw were bought, the awning was taken off, the plywood was sanded down and swept clean, the rubber roof and the glue was bought and so now comes the hard part.

Here is the material being laid out so they could cut it roughly to size.  It was supposed to be a gorgeous day out, but ended up being about 50 and windy.  

The glue stinks...just thought you wanted to know :), also it has to be rolled on the wood and the rubber roof, dry partially and then stick the two together. That is what they did, but apparently they didn't let it dry enough and in the end it produced many air bubbles in the finished roof.  If any of you know my husband you know that he was totally crushed by this.  The rubber was laying flat when they put it on, it wasn't until later that it started to lift.

This is actually what it looked like AFTER I sat up on the roof for almost 2 hours with a small metal roller and went over each air pocket to try to smooth it out.  Our neighbor, who has replaced these type of roofs before, told us that we (Andy) didn't give the glue enough time to dry, therefore the gasses from the glue released and made these air pockets in the rubber roof.  This makes sense, and there have been many opinions as to why this has happened but in the end all that matters is that the roof, or any other part of this camper, will not be leaking in the near future!

So basically Andy got on the roof when he got home and worked out some more bubbles.  We will try this a few more times and actually I will add another picture tomorrow of what it looks like now, there are even less air bubbles than the above picture.  

He plans on putting all the vents on this weekend, we will see how that goes, oh and notice the awning is back on.  That went on and off in a matter of minutes, now to find the strap, it is probably wrapped up in it somewhere???

roof part 1

OK, here is what you have all been waiting for, the roof update! Over the weekend Andy, along with his dad, started and finished putting on the plywood part of the roof.

Above Andy is pulling out some stubborn screws and showing us the supports he added for the bed slide.  He was reading that some people have had issues with the slide pulling out of the roof. While this is not happening to us, yet, we figured it can't hurt to make sure it won't pull out in the future.

Also, notice the mostly new insulation, we were able to get away with keeping about 1/2 of it.

And here it is...BEAUTIFUL!

Now he is putting all the holes in the wood for the domes, pipes, fans and vents.

It took a few hours on a weekend to put it all on, and get the holes cut.  Now he is going to remove all the moldings that hold the rubber roof down, scrape off the putty and then maybe we can attempt to glue the new roof on :)
But first a new skylight needs to be ordered, we need more screws, remember the 200 he ordered? He used over 150 to secure just the bottom moldings! And the awning needs to come off in order for the new roof material to go on and be secured down by that molding.
Oh and don't forget the weather needs to hold so we can do this.