Project MoMiM

Raining buckets

2009-06-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! That seemed to do the trick. Heavy rain coming down right now. Left side is still leaking but the right side (where I caulked) seems to be keeping dry. Once it dries out a tad, I'll caulk the whole damn thing. (Oooo, big thunder!)

And just in case you're wondering, yes, I unplugged the computer. Three cheers for laptops & WiFi!

Rain, rain, go away...

2009-06-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like we're due for our four nice days for the month. It's just been raining for weeks on end and I popped in during one particularly energetic thunderstorm to see where the leaks were coming. To my surprise, the windows seem okay, but there we rivulets dribbling in all along the seam between the walls and the floor and flowing down into the pan below the floor. At least all along the areas where I had cut out the panels. I guess this explains the rusty spars and perhaps the rotted floor panels as well. So one more project; I removed the trim on around the outside and discovered there was no caulking at the seam at all and several of the rivets had corroded away. So I corrected that on the curbside and am now awaiting another rainy day to see if makes a difference. It felt good actually installing rivets rather than removing them. One of these days I'll start constructing something rather than just ripping it apart.

Damn dome done.

2009-06-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

After great internal debate about whether it was worth it, I decided to remove the front dome. It required drilling out many rivets that secure all the internal aluminum panels, three of which run the entire length of the trailer. What a pain. But I'll try repairing the cracks and painting the sucker to see if I can make it worth putting back in or doing some great design to take its place. In the meantime it will collect dust in the garage as the basement is now full.

2009-05-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Okay all you faithful followers, as I had requested of you, you've been hounding me for updates, so here it is: there isn't much progress. In January I got suckered into another show at the Opera House and, well frankly, I shaved my head and spent my free time pretending to be someone much richer and more influential than I am. Besides, the trailer looked better on the outside than the inside, so that's how I chose to view it.

But at last the show is over, the weather grows warmer (if not drier—rain, rain, go away...) so I once again engaged the fray, swatted dead the sundry squatting wasps & yellowjackets and took the circular saw to the bits of rotted plywood.

Nice clean holes, if I do say so myself. That's all the progress I've made this spring. In the next few days, I'll patch them in and then try to get the cracked plastic dome out of the front, and then either rip out the rest of the interior skin to see what things look like inside the walls, or skip it and try to start building something back up. I need a new shower and bathroom, so I'll need to do some real designing and then hunt down some plumbing expertise. Unless, of course someone else wants to buy it first. Hint, hint.

In frustration, a month or so ago, I threw an ad on Craiglist to unload it. The only offer I had was a trade for a gorgeous MGB, which I probably would have taken if I didn't already own a convertible. Maybe I should do it anyhow. I could fit two of them in the garage...

I hate winter.

2009-01-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

What else can I say? If I were King of the World, I think I would banish it.

Glum. Glummer.

Hitting the Wall

2009-01-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

Wow. A month and a half without a post. How could you all stand it? I do have excuses. I'm good at coming up with them. For instance, I was away for a couple weeks around the holidays and after that it was just too dang cold to work out there. It was a balmy double digits today. You'd think growing up in New England would make me a hardy soul, but in actuality, my blood's pretty thin. That, and I just didn't feel like doing anything at all.

But today I pushed myself to get out there and

start gutting the bathroom. My initial goal for the day was to remove the bathtub. Can you believe it? A bathtub in a trailer. Personally, I'd rather have that space used in the bedroom rather than the bathroom, but they never asked me. It turned out to be about the only item I was unable to disattach. The whole day was a tad discouraging. Plumbing always scares me a bit anyway and I couldn't figure out how to take off the fixtures without cutting the copper pipes which, in the end, I did. The weather was cloudy and snowing towards the late afternoon which made everything that much more uncomfortable and gloomy. But the good news is that the carpet was in fact not under the toilet as I'd feared, and I was able to remove it fairly easily. The plywood flooring was kind of dampish, but not rotted, so I think when I reinstall the bathroom I can just cover it with some sort of sealant rather than replacing all the plywood.

So, in short, I was feeling incredibly discouraged today for some reason and at one point was screaming at full volume my frustration. (Luckily my neighbors aren't too close.) I didn't even clean up my mess at the end of the day. I just slunk back inside and made some hot cocoa. But all in all, I guess I made progress. If you can call destruction progress. It's just that I know this is the easy part and I'm regretting biting off so much more than I can chew. But it's too late to spit it out now. And of all the regrets I have in my live over the last five years or so, this one only involves money and not enough to get worked up about.

Anyone want to buy a disemboweled trailer?

So, I've actually got a little paying work this week, so I'll try to get back there and take out the tub and the shelving later in the week and clean up the mess I ignored. After finishing the gutting I plan to take thorough measurements and start drafting up some plans and ideas for the new design. Whatever that may be. I'll really have to start from scratch because I don't think I can salvage much. And when it warms up a bit I'll take a stab at replacing the bits of rotted floor boards. How hard can that be? (Famous last words.)

But right now I'm tired. I'm going to bed and hoping I have good dreams tonight. Last night I dreamt my car wouldn't start. Lame. I need something more inspiring than that.

Middle Gut

2008-12-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

Wow. I've really destroyed this thing. Yesterday I carried the chaos right to the back bathroom bulkhead, taking out the bed, bedroom cabinets and the bathroom closets. Everything but the closets came out fairly easily, but again there's not going to be much worth saving. I'm really beginning to hate that dark fake wood panellin

g and I'm wondering what the hell I ever saw in this trailer.

So today was a just cleaning up. I removed all the cabinet debris into my basement for later sorting and shop-vacced up the dirt, rivet shafts and assorted grunge that had collected in inaccessible spots over the years. But it's too damn cold out there to do any more work today. And I'm at a good stopping point. That bathroom is going to be a bear to renew/remove. The counter is cracked, perhaps repairable, but it definitely needs painting, at the very least, with new, spiffier fixtures. The toilet was installed after the carpeting (carpet! in a bathroom! eeewww!) so I'll have to figure out how to get that out. And I need to remove the tub for access to the plumbing and electrical I want to upgrade. I'd like to replace the fuse box with a breaker panel, though I'll need help figuring that out. But that's for another day. I need a break from this beast.

Lurching on

2008-12-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I spent a couple more hours this week ripping out the front room. On Tuesday afternoon I managed to extricate the overhead kitchen cabinets, the one over the counter being particularly ornery. The bulky "Airstream Central Control" panel in front of the kitchen vent was a monster to get out and hopefully I'll be able to replace all the switches, lights and dials with something more streamlined. I'm doing most of this demolition with a huge load of blind faith that I'll be able to end this project with something better than I started. I'm still feeling immensely
naive and pray I don't screw myself over too badly.

It rained a bit earlier in the week and I noticed some leaks around the edges. This alarmed me enough to decide to remove some interior panels before moving on to the bedroom removal. One was near the door and I'm hoping that is just because the kitchen vent was open and rain found its way in there. (It's raining now and after I finish my toast and this entry I'll go check it again.) The other was near the front on the curb side, so I drilled out the rivets to those panels first. I was relieved to find that the insulation was mostly dry with very little mildew and thought maybe it was because I hadn't fully latched the front

window, but upon closer inspection noticed that the frame around the curbside corner win

dow was cracked with a bit of moss growing it in. I'll have to at le

ast replace the gasket around the glass and somehow fill that crack, but that will have to wait until I build up some more confidence.

I think I mentioned that the front dome plastic is cracked. After a bit of web searching I found the blog of a fellow in California that showed his

method of patching ABS plastic so I thought I'd try to save that piece before giving on and redesigning the front ceiling altogether. Trying to remove it, however, proved to be a much bigger puzzle than I anticipated. Some of the rivets holding it in are covered by ceiling panels that run the length of the trailer. This means that the bedroom fixtures and bathroom closets will need to be removed before I can even think of taking out the dome. Argh. I'm feeling so way in over my head.

Another disappointment is the side oblong windows. The seal on all of these needs to be replaced and I thought I could do this by removing the interior frame to open up the glass,

but the frame is just trim (which I bent trying to remove). I'm not sure how to get to the seal.

The garage is filling with debris. I'm trying to take photos to document the process, but I'm

doubtful much of the original materials will make it back in. Once I gut this whole trailer, patch the leaks and replace all the electrical, plumbing and substructure that I dare to, I'll have to design from scratch the whole thing. God please let it not completely drown me.

That's about all I can report today. I'm going to go back out there in a few minutes and take apart the bed. That is if it's bright enough to do that. It's so gloomy today (winter in southeast Ohio is not a pretty thing) it may be too dark to see in there. If so, I guess I'll spend the morning trying to wade through all the Airstream web forum postings and try to horn my way into that community. I'm feeling I'll need their help very soon.

The Big Gut Proceeds

2008-11-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

Well! Black Friday was not only a productive [destructive] day in MoMiMland, it was profitable as well. I earned $2.11 today in concealed coins buried in the dust and debris that I cleared away. Apparently the previous owner(s) had a penchant for losing quarters in their kitchen cabinet. I guess that sometimes you can make change by making a change. (Sorry, I guess that was uncalled for.) Of course I probably decreased the value of the trailer by $1000 or more, but I don't want to think about that.

While the rest of the country ran off to the mall to not spend money today, I continued to gut the Airstream's kitchen. I removed not only the kitchen sink, stove and counter but the fridge and the surrounding cabinet on the road side as well. The fridge was clearly not original equipment, as the surround was gerry-rigged to fill the gaps. And stuffed with insulation. In the refurbish, I believe I'll get a smaller gas/electric unit and build a counter there rather than a big cabinet. With sailboat

style shelfs along the wall. In the meantime, the old fridge (which is only electric—no gas) seems to work okay, so I'll plug it in in the basement and store my beer in it. Maybe I'll attach a tap to the side and keep kegs in there.

This morning I went for a 4 mile walk. I've been doing that most days now for a couple of weeks. Tuesday or Wednesday morning I woke up to discover that my head had offered a preliminary compromise to my heart. The two have been battling for weeks and making it extremely difficult for me to get on with my life. Of course my heart didn't immediately sign on, but was willing to enter negotiations. So over the past few days on these walks they've been hammering out details of a peace plan which I hope to announce on Monday. Remarkably my hormones have been uncharacteristically quiet during the process and I'm hoping they'll continue to remain on the sidelines. How this will effect Project MoMiM remains a mystery, but I suspect it won't make a huge difference. It depends on how the announcement is received in the wider world, but even then it may after the New Year before my time will be split to other resultant obligations.

Eventually, I'll need to remove at least part the interior skin. I need to figure out how to replace the front dome; the existing one has an irreparable crack in it. One idea I'm entertaining is to cover the walls with velcro fabric which would make attaching light things easier and cover a multitude of blemishes, but it would hide all the frame locations and add the risk of riveting something in the wrong place. And I noticed that one of the copper water lines to the sink broke either before or as I was removing the counter. So that will need to be repaired. I'm considering replacing all the exposed plumbing exposed after the Big Gut with PEX tubing so I'm not too panicked about that yet.

The cabinetry may be more challenging than I expected. I pretty much ruined most of what I removed, but it was pretty hideous anyhow. I'd planned on replacing it with birch plywood or something similar, but I'm realizing that it will be hard to build something that's not significantly heavier than the original sheet luann and aluminum extrusion construction. I'll have to give that some thought. Suggestions?

The floor that was hidden by the carpet seems to be in okay shape, but the corner of one sheet of the the marine ply is rotted away. I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle of replacing. I'll try to get some advice from one of the online Airstream forums (fora?). In theory, it wouldn't be too hard now that everything is stripped out, but I'm wagering that it won't be easy, either.

So, that's today's post. Tomorrow if I'm feeling as energetic I'll remove the upper tambour cabinets and maybe a piece or two of the interior skin. I doubt I'll start ripping out the bedroom before Sunday at the earliest. Now I'm tired and I'm going to go rot my mind in front of the television. Goodnight world.

Front Gut

2008-11-28T05:59:00.000-08:00

A happy belated Thanksgiving everyone. Fortified with a good Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter beer, I spent the afternoon unstuffing this turkey of a trailer. I managed to remove the front sofa, credenza, front shelf and the blinds. I chickened out (there seems to be a poultry theme here) about taking out the upper cabinets and wall coverings yet. I figure I need to take small steps here at first. Today's goal is to remove the kitchen counter and, depending on my level of energy, the fridge and pantry cabinetry. Eventually I intend to replace all the appliances and build a new counter from scratch.

The credenza included an AM/FM radio that must weigh 5 pounds. Quaint, no doubt, but I don't think I'll include it in the final design. I'll consider replacing it with some sort of iPod connection, but eventually someone will consider that ancient and oversize. Suggestions are requested.

Workin' the Bench

2008-11-28T05:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I did it. The workbench came together, more or less, earlier this week. It still needs the power strip attached and I need an 8' fluorescent light hung above it once I clean out that corner and shove it in there.

That project in the back there is a bed I built in college. The wood cracked a while ago and it's been disassembled for a couple decades. I've never really figured out how to rescue it. But I digress.

2008-11-23T19:04:00.000-08:00

So it begins.

2008-11-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

Today I made the commitment. Well, to be honest, I haven't really, because all I did was move it from one spot in the backyard to another where it will kill a new patch of grass over the next few months. But that's progress, but what's more, I've made the decision to start the process, something that's been evading me for almost a year and a half now. So, let it be said that today, Sunday, November 23, 2008, by starting this blog, I've officially begun Project MoMiM.

That may be shortened to MiM in the future. We'll see.

Firstly, let me state that as of this moment I am at one of the lowest points in my life. Certainly the worst since 1993, the year I decided to go for my pilot's license, which I haven't used for the last two years. Last Thanksgiving I got canned from the design firm I was recruited to move 800 miles to work for three years prior. I made the mistake of buying a house here in Athens and now that the real estate market has tanked, I can't sell it for what I've sunk into it. So I'm kind of stuck here in the hinterlands of southeast Ohio without prospects.

My two closest friends in town each moved out of state this fall and most of my distant friends are wrapped up in their own lives, so it's difficult to get together for a beer more than once half a decade or so. When I lived in San Francisco they'd come visit, but who the hell wants to spend vacation in Appalachia?

A few months ago the woman who I was with moved onto another man. For this I can't really blame her as I did rather push her away. But in retrospect, I guess I felt (feel?) more for her than I realized and suddenly there's an irreplaceable hole. Internet dating sucks. Last night I got a reply to a benign compliment I sent someone; she wrote "[My friend and I] agreed that you're someone we'd want to kick in the teeth if we ever met." That's a direct quote. Anyhow, I'm feeling rather friendless and stupid right now.

Why should you care? Well, I don't suppose you should. I doubt I would. But I wanted to illustrate the emotional condition that kicks off this endeavor. After way too many hours (days? weeks?) lying on the sofa playing Sudoku puzzles on my otherwise silent cell phone, today I mustered enough energy to start up the tractor and tow the project closer to the basement door. Tomorrow (as it's supposed to be raining all day) I'll build a heavy-duty work table downstairs with good lighting and electrical access. Over Thanksgiving weekend, instead of whining about cranberry sauce by myself, I'm going to rip out my guts.

Well, the Project's guts. Project MoMiM. That's a "Month or More in Moab". That's the prize I'm eyeing. Since spending three hours in Arches National Park in 1995, I've been aching to go back to the region and spend so much time there I grow sick of it. I want to be Edward Abbey in my own Desert Solitaire. I doubt a month is long enough, but I like the alliteration.

The summer before last I bought a 31' 1975 Airstream Landyacht travel trailer more or less on a whim. I get these annual lust bugs where I can't concentrate until I buy whatever it is that I'm craving. Generally I regret it within a year, but by then I'm moving on to the next obsession. A few years ago it was a small truck. Then it was a new house. Next a compact tractor. Then it was a BMW motorcycle. Then it was the Airstream. This year it was a dog, but so far I've resisted that, mostly because I'm so wrapped up in my own pointless grief right now, it wouldn't be fair to the dog.

Anyhow the plan originally was to sell my little Ford Ranger and buy a diesel truck that could haul this monster and convert it to run on waste vegetable oil. Then I lost my job. In fairness, I was starting to detest it anyhow and my days there were numbered, nevertheless I was hoping to go out with a flash and a bang, not with only a sheet of paper listing the Ohio unemployment website address. The truck idea fell to the wayside until I could sell the house. But, then, well we all know about sub-prime mortgages now. I have drummed up a little freelance work that keeps me stocked with ramen noodles and Trader Joe's quiches and holds Chase Home Finance at bay (I'm not sub-prime quite yet) but I'm not as busy as I'd like to be. Hence the Sudoku puzzles. But since I'm anchored in Athens until fortunes improve in either the real estate market or Ohio University suddenly starts importing faculty who need homes, I finally decided to sink my time and money into the Airstream this winter rather than home improvements as I'd otherwise be wont to do.

So, this week, the dingy three decade-old interior will start to go. First the ratty sofa, then the cabinets, appliances, partitions, wall coverings and as much of the bathroom I dare take out. Frankly, I'm scared shitless. I understand that there's a supportive Airstream Restoration community out there, but right now they're all still strangers to me and they seem far away. Everything I do will have to be done solo and cheap enough to stay out of debt. I'll try to take it one step at a time, but I know that as soon as I drill out that first rivet this week, the pebble starts rolling and can't be stopped until the dust settles over the avalanche. To anyone reading this, any words of encouragement and constructive criticism will be welcome, but please don't post comments as mean as that internet dating woman.

In the weeks and months to come, I'll try to update this blog with photos and comments and discoveries I've made and conundrums I'm facing. Maybe someone will read it. Maybe not. But I figure if I journal the progress publicly, I'm more inclined to feel required to keep going. If you're out there reading this, please keep my feet to the fire.

So, with a deep breath, a shiver, a shudder and a DeWalt cordless drill, starts Project MoMiM. Stay tuned.