Finally....Big Boy Campin!

We are camping now!!

There was plenty of room for all of us to be in the camper at the same time comfortably. Our eldest liked his bunk a little too much, he didn't want to get out of it :)

We had a blast!

It even rained the night we arrived and on and off the following day but we stayed dry!  No leaks for us!

Rhode Island for Memorial Day weekend!!

mermaids purse! great find!

Cooking dinner in the huge fire pit, and drying out the wet wood that cost us a small fortune at the camp store.

Touring Fort Adams

And here is my husband enjoying some well deserved down time at the Cape.

Stay tuned, we have a summer full of fun planned for our camper!  We even had a late fall/early winter trip in the works! 

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.

Part Deux...

The time has come for the roof, as Andy jumped onto the roof of the camper from the deck and said here goes nothing. The one part of this camper that is actually built pretty decent!  It only took him one evening, not even 3 hours, to get the moldings off and rip off the rubber roof.  He only broke one molding and one vent while doing this too.  

Here it is the next day with all the osb board removed too. That only took him a matter of an hour or so to remove.  He found a lovely mice nest right next to the AC, you can kind of see it here in this picture, i was not here for that part so there was no photo taken, sorry!

Andy says this is the least scary thing he has done on this camper so far.  We are going to leave it a day or so to dry out and then replace the osb board with new plywood, put new insulation in, and then glue a whole new rubber roof on. All after we (he), vacuums up the mouse poop and sprays it all down with some bleach :) 

With all the wet wood we have dealt with in this turd the roof is the only area that had mold on it. It was in the insulation on the back side of the camper all along where we think it was leaking from and where NONE of the screw holes in the molding strips were covered with butyl tape or putty.  

Plus don't you wonder how the mice were getting up there? Andy claims they shouldn't get in now, he has everything sealed.  He even plans to take out each window and reseal all around it. 

This is gonna be the best built camper around!!   :)

tires, moldings and such

It has finally happened! Except for a few small details the inside of the camper is finished!!!!

We (he), are now working on the outside.  Andy just put on the first piece of molding last night, and it looks great! The picture i took doesn't do it justice but i will post it anyway.

BTW the molding is Blue, that is the accent color on the Big Rolling Turd :) Oh and i don't want to forget to mention the screws,notice they are silver colored, Andy was really worried that they wouldn't look right because the old ones were painted white on the screw head. Well, when they were pulled off all we saw was the rust color that took over the white paint.  I keep telling him the silver is great, at least these won't rust, and who is going to get that close to it and say uh oh, those are the wrong screws??

So, the tires...I know that i have already talked about how the mens theory is that this thing had a blow out at one point and that is where we found one of the larger water leaks to be. Well when Andy pulled off the tires to lift the camper and put it on jack stands he noticed that the tires were in even worse shape than we thought, shocking, hardly. :)

 This is a photo of one of the old tires. They were actually bursting and you could see the metal inside the tires, that is what the tan looking spots are!  I can't believe they actually made it home from the auction site in Maine! This thing was not safe at all to be on the road!!


She (?), now has 4 brand new tires pictured below.  They are not actually on the turd yet, but I am sure at some point Andy will put them on, when will that be honey???
He has ordered some kind of middle cap so that the tires look better, still not sure what they even look like or what he is actually talking about. I will post more on that when they come in the mail though, with a new pict of what they look like on the tires.

moving along

this is what happens when you saw through solid foam insulation.

 Oh and the cat is fond of rolling around in the foam as well. Try getting that out of her thick fur!! Actually we have found cat hair from her in the small hole that was in the bathroom going to the storage compartment!

 here is the camper, coming together. part of the bathroom wall is up and all the bathroom cabinets are in.  YAH!  I think we have both forgotten what this thing looked like with walls and counters and such. 

The kids have commented that it looks really small now....

Here is all the new duct work going in.  Notice the nice looking fridge, and guess what, it works, really well!!!! The true test will be to see how well it can keep up in 90+ degree weather with the sun beating down on the camper all day. Our hybrids fridge worked in that situation but was definitely struggling, even with the AC on. 

Wait until you see what it looks like in the next blog entry, the inside is just about done.  However there is still a lot of outside work to be done.  We are waiting on a delivery of about 200 screws.  These will replace all the outside screws holding the moldings down.  

trouble in paradise...

Here comes trouble!  So we quickly water tested this thing last week.  There was no snow on the camper, not much on the ground and it was relatively warm out.  Andy put a hose on the roof and let it run over a bunch of different spots for a little while.  Well, i guess we have a slow leak (or two), along the top edge where the molding strip is that holds down the roof.
What was happening is that we taped and put a tarp all around the open wheel well and fridge vent in the anticipation of the snow storm we were getting.  Love New England....Anyway, we got about a foot of heavy wet snow over the course of a day.  The following day Andy realized that a small corner of the new wood was wet by the fridge vent in the wall.  So we (not me), took one piece of the roof strip/molding off and guess what?  There was no putty tape where there was supposed to be, shocked?? Were not, just really bummed out.
So now the new plan is to pull the roof material up and replace any wet/rotten wood and put a whole new roof on with all new sealant and putty, where applicable.  :)

yup, it is a camper, wow!

Andy screwing in the wheel cover. One side of the camper is closed in, finally!

Here is the kitchen counter, with this and the benches it makes it look and feel much more like a camper rather than a storage unit.

 Andy installing the benches, i now have a seat to sit in and read while i watch him work each evening :)  Oh and my internet reaches out here so all is good!!!!

 The view from the opposite end of the camper

OK, so this one is taken from the inside of the camper where the shower will be.  Andy is in the storage area hooking up the hot water heater and water tank. This is one to be framed!!

This one is from the storage area door. Notice they put the vinyl in the storage area too. It looks really nice! Andy figures a couple of people can sleep in there too ;0)

Could it be a camper???

So, I actually think we have a camper here.
A lot has happened since the last blog entry.  The big rolling turd is looking better and better with each passing day.  We put in the final pieces of the sub floor that went under the bunk room, and I think those were the easiest ones to put in.
The next step was to buy and put in a floor, so we decided on sheet vinyl. Not my first pick, but the easiest one to work with and it is growing on me.

The vinyl went in very easy!

 The results! Not bad, huh?

We also had a new helper today, thank goodness cuz this stapler would of been smashed into thousands of pieces.  It would work for about 3 staples, then had to be taken apart !!!!! What a pain, the men stapled the edges of the vinyl and around the tank holes.  Special thanks to Paps, who is always there when we need him :)

And here is the other helper, working his magic

After the floor went down Andy was so excited, it was like a weight had been lifted off of him.  So we went ahead and put in the Kitchen cabinet.  It barely fits in the camper door and had to go in before the bathroom wall was put up.  The benches for the dining table went in too.  We, (me) briefly thought about putting in a real table with chairs, but in the end it just doesn't make sense with our large family right now, maybe further down the road.

Then Andy just went nuts, he started cutting holes in the floor for the water lines and tub drain. And just a bunch of little things that have to get done.

He also started to fix the wall that we had taken apart.  He left that for 2 days and it never set, the glue just ate away at the foam board, (I told him that foam needs special glue, no one listens to me), although in his defense the adhesive he used did say it worked on foam.  So now we have ordered special Polystyrene glue and will put that up in the next day or two, hopefully.

new toys & a bit happier!

So one of the better parts of this project has been that Andy has got to buy a few new tools, which always makes him happy.
He bought a pocket hole jig to ,well, put really fancy angled holes in wood, but I am sure most of you already know what it is.

So here it is, with the new drill!

 Our helper, who really thought we were all outside to throw her ball.

I am not sure if you can see it but the foam is EVERYWHERE!  Notice the van is covered and so is the cutting table!! The worst part? We thought we were done with it but we (he) has to cut more for the inside wall ;)

bad words...very bad words.

Let us start with a picture. This is what the camper looked like Saturday night, after a hard days work. The day started out very well, our son and I stayed in the camper and took measurements while Andy cut out all the foam. Here is what that looked like:

We, (not me) had to cut out foam to fit between all the supports. However, because we could not find 

1 1/2 inch board foam we had to buy 1 inch then 1/2 inch and put them on top of each other. So that means double the cutting, and the first foam was awful, it looked like Andy was in a snow storm when he got done making just one cut. I think it is pretty funny, i know he doesn't, and he still has to cut some for the wall, but that is for another post. 

 This is me measuring for the top piece of foam. Notice my hair is up in a bun, one can never be too sure :)

The top piece of foam is down. This was our helper for the afternoon.  Him and I actually cut all the holes in the foam for the grey and black water tank attachments too.  I think Andy stood out side and cut foam for about 3 hours.

Everyone was still pretty happy at this point. We went ahead and put down the next top piece of floor, which is next to the wheel wells and was fairly easy to put down. No walls had to be lifted for this one, a few well lined up holes were made and down it went.

Now this is where it started to go bad.  The day was waning, it was getting colder and we were in a
time crunch cuz i had to leave for a sporting event practice.

We lost our helper, this was really just a 2 person job. Andy contemplated cutting the next floor board in half so that we only would have to lift one side of the camper at a time, but in the end decided to lift both up.  This involves tie down straps to be placed on the walls above the wheel wells and tightened just enough. I do believe i have posted a picture of this previously.

Well, first of all i have to say that one side of the camper is almost against a hill that is sand and mud and on this day snow and ice too.  This has made it really difficult to work on the floor just because you are slipping and sliding while trying to position wood and push it into a tight area at a certain angle. I can't tell you how many times we (Andy much more) have fallen and landed in the mud.

Where Andy was lifting the floor, at the wheel wells, he had to re position the placement of wood and straps many times. Everything started falling apart, literally.  The more aggravated he became the more things went wrong & the quieter we were and i was just trying to stay the heck out of the way at that point.  One of the walls above the wheel wells is just basically falling apart and the more he was tightening the clamps the more it crumbled.

So we (he) just raised it as much as possible and hoped the darn thing didn't fall apart on itself.  I am actually shocked that it didn't fall apart. And getting that last piece of flooring in, OMG, you have no idea.  It wouldn't go, then it was crooked, like really off, then we (he) pulled it back out a bit and we just started hammering on the edge of it with a block and hammer.  That worked, slowly, but it also destroyed the edge of the wood a bit, but hey it went in.  Then we leaned on the camper walls and lowered the sucker one last time on each side.  Andy screwed the floor down and that was that.  Well, he was still pretty mad at that point, and when i left i really thought i was coming home to a burnt down camper. There was tons of bad words flying around and at one point he actually punched the camper...

BUT..The Floor is in!!! YEAH!

A Quick note:
 I am also forgetting to mention that Andy has dubbed this, are you ready, "the big rolling turd."  He wants to get it vanity plates with that on it, something like ROLLTRD. Suggestions on this would be helpful.  :)

date night..

So, it's Friday night, the oldest two kids are gone skiing until later, the youngest has been put to bed, what do you do??? You work on the camper of course!
Actually we started working on the camper around 5pm, stopped for a quick bite then kept on going until about 11pm, that is when the kids came home in case you were wondering.
Here in New Hampshire we started the day off with a wonderful snowstorm that brought us about a foot of snow and a call saying school would be cancelled. Just when we were able to see the ground and work a little bit easier around the camper!
About the camper...we were able to finish putting down the sub floor inside the camper and we also added a bunch of supports that we did not plan on adding. Why you ask?  Well, what happened was that we had ran out of the 1/2 inch pressure treated we had been using so Andy said he would run to depot and buy one, we needed some 2x4's anyway.
45 minutes later he returns, we are looking at it, and it is almost half the thickness of the other boards we have down!!! So we put it in anyway, and that is the main reason we had to put in more supports. However, we will try to avoid buying wood at depot in the future.  Did I mention that Andy had to run back to Depot again because the 2x4's he bought were mis-marked and only 6 footers?? We needed 8 footers.

Ta-Da  the finished sub floor!! before the extra supports were put down. Of course the cheaper, thinner piece of wood is right in front of the door and at the bottom of the step that goes into the bunk room. You know the kids are going to jump down that step no matter how many times we tell them not to :)

tomorrow comes the foam.....

(our yard and neighborhood seems to be loaded with flying foam) that stuff is awful to work with, at least i am not the one cutting it ;)

This was the extent of our date night, we are a really exciting couple !

Floor Update

Here is the second piece of floor getting ready to be put down. Notice the helper.

And here it is with the top piece of wood.

Now this section that was done took a whole day to do what you see here. This part sits over

the tanks and needed holes drilled into them and there was a lot of fitting issues. He also put in some extra supports that he didn't originally plan to put in.  

So due to bad weather and family commitments not much work has been going on with the camper 

this week. What you see in this picture is what it currently looks like.

stupid hair..

Ok, so i am a reasonably intelligent person, sometimes, i thought. hmmm...well it started out simple, my job was to go under the bunk house part of the camper and try to scrape away the layer of wood that was at the bottom of the foam insulation. It seemed to be an easy task considering that part of the floor seemed to be wet and rotten and was pulling away from the foam anyway.  

This part was my idea, by the way, instead of taking out that whole section of floor we will first try to scrape the bottom layer of wood off and lift that section enough to slide in a new piece of wood, and that would be that for the floor. You see the top part of that section of floor is the storage area and only the corners of the front were damp but didn't seem rotten, they only needed to dry out.

Anyhow, back to the scraping. I started off laying on a creeper and using a scraper, which went really well, the wood was coming off in large sheets, at first. Then i attempted to roll further under the bunk and OH MY GOD! My hair rolled right under one of the wheels and I started screaming. 
So i calmly grabbed my hair that was stuck and while loudly whimpering, rolled off the creeper until my hair was unstuck. Now at this point a normal person would go into the house and put their hair up, well, not me. I figured i could gather it up and lay on it so that it wouldn't get loose again. Well about 5 minutes later the screaming started again and i became angry at my stupidity and finally went into the house and put it all up into a large bun at the very top of my head, not to be taken down again! 
Lesson Learned!
Oh and i am sure most of you are wondering how the scraping went. It progressed nicely after that. I took a break and went back to it later in the day. It only took 1 hour and 45 minutes to completely get all the wood off the foam, all of course except the parts that sit under the walls.

This is the underneath of the camper bunk section, mostly scraped.

Notice there is no wood on the bottom of the foam. :)

there's a water leak??

Oh and i forgot to mention, the water leak!!  So obviously this thing has (had) a leak, are you shocked? Well we all originally thought that the water was coming in from the roof near the bathroom vent, because well, it was all separated in that area, and other reasons that i forget right now.

I think we have to go back a bit on this one...So the day Andy drove this into our yard he stood there, as men do, and took a really really good look at it. And he comments that one of the fenders is all cracked and then looks closer and sees a newer tire than the one next to it. So he deduces that this thing must of had a blow out at some point and they (the old owners) put the spare on and thought that was that.  Well as it turns out when he was taking all the "stuff" out of the camper he found the wheel well cover to be FULL of water.  What happened was that when the tire blew and hit the fender it separated the sealant from the camper and that allowed water to drip into the camper that way.  
Along the way he has found many places that could be possible water leaks. None of the seals around the whole camper, roof included have ever been maintained.  So he did take a tube of self leveling lap sealant and go over all the seams and vents on the roof after he tore everything out of the camper.  

The other big area that was leaking was from under the front part of the walls, between the fiberglass of the camper and the wall it attaches to.  Not sure if i described that too well; basically under the storage compartment door area on both sides of the KZ.  Well it turns out that it was coming from 2 cracks in the fiberglass that are in the front of the camper in the section that holds the battery and propane tanks. The whole side seem seal was separated and as i mentioned there were identical cracks that almost looked like they belonged there.  
So as of yet those are not fixed but are covered with tape to prevent any weather getting into them; because of course we are due to get rain and some snow for the next couple of days. 
Good news. I just checked and so far the underneath of the camper is dry, and it is currently raining out, YAH!  
Maybe all the leaks have finally been taken care of?? I guess only time will tell...

This is the area in the front that was leaking, it is in the exact same spot on the other side as well.  Just thought i would give you an idea of what i was talking about there.

 

This is the bathroom shower skylight.  See how it is separated a bit there?  We (Andy) still

needs to fix that, hey Hun when are you gonna get to that?  You sure are taking your time

fixing my camper....  :)