Interior carnage

So on day 2 of the rebuild Andy wanted a good look at the floor and ripped up a section to see if he was going to be replacing the entire thing.  I think he has pretty much decided to replace all of the floor.
The rear panel has no more wood in it.  It is completely rotted out.  So that will need to be rebuilt.
He then decided that the interior will need to come out.  It was a very cold day so by working in the camper he could run the propane heater and stay relatively warm.
The closet, fridge and drawer framing and one bathroom wall all came out today.  They were built so well into the camper that he had to rip them out.  They were all burnt in the fire and will not be used again.. He said he would build new ones.
He also removed all the wiring in the camper.
He is so good to me :)

For now the hobo is under a tarp and will be continued when the snow that is due to come our way is over.

Tearing into It

Andy started to take off the skin on the Hobo to see exactly what he was dealing with.  A lot of what he saw was what he expected so that is a good sign (?), hopefully. 

This was an expected leak, this is where the roof is leaking on to the dining table inside.

This was where the water heater was, under the futon.  Completely rotten floor.

A zoomed in view of the water heater hole.

Not horrible. The skin came off fairly easy. (says me who wasn't here for most of it )

The Screws...Oh the screws (and nails)

A new Project!

Lil' Hobo
1970
14 foot box

My girlfriend and I were talking one day and she was saying how she would love to take a big road trip that would take here everywhere she had not been before in the US.  You see, she has a love of traveling and has gone on many rv trips in the past
I quickly said I want to come too!! I have always wanted to go out west and see well, everything!
So that got me, and my husband, thinking about how I could do it.  I definitely did not want to pull our KZ across the country.  First of all, I don't need that kind of space, second it is a waste of gas and I would not always be able to get into campgrounds or boon docking areas that have a vehicle length limit. We also had to consider the fact that the truck will pull a smaller camper much easier and I will just be more comfortable with all that :)
So, it just happened that the boy scout troop we are members of were trying to get rid of a camper that was donated to them years ago and was on its last leg.
Here she is

 

 

She is in rough shape.  A couple of the walls are separated and it has a large leak inside above the dining table.  I have hauled away a couple of buckets full of water since it has been sitting in our driveway but now it is frozen and has stopped dripping. 
I will post some inside pictures soon.

We really love the set up.  There is a dining table that turns into a bed, a futon that makes a bed and a twin size bunk above the futon.  There is a wet bath, a small closet and hopefully plenty of cabinet space.  The kitchen consists of a sink and stove/oven with no real counter space and currently has a dorm size fridge.  There is storage below the futon and the two bench seats of the dining table. 

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 ;)