Surrender

Every DIYer has to occasionally give in to the reality that it is not always possible or practical to accomplish every project alone. The extent of water damage in the little trailer, and the fact that it won't fit through the garage door (tall 1950's trailer and short 1950's garage door) led me to seek professional help. (No, not the psychological kind, at least not so far.) I sought out the skills of Pete and Joseph of Sierra Trailer Restoration, just over the "hill" in Nevada City, CA. They specialize in restoring vintage Airstreams, but are happy to work on "canned hams" as well. Last Saturday I delivered the trailer into their capable hands, leaving her a veritable dwarf among a collection of giant silver Airstreams. Tuesday evening Pete called to warn me not to panic when I received the forthcoming pictures. Here she is, laid bare to the bones. This weekend I will zip back over the hill so we can discuss options for the rebuild.

Ugh!

In a burst of energy I decided to pull down the rest of the wallpaper on the ceiling of the little trailer. Yikes! Seems I have a few leaks. That's the aluminum outer skin you can see through the hole in the last picture. I've got lots of work ahead of me!

Progress

Two more home projects - one large and one small. First the small: Several years ago I converted the front hall closet into a pantry. Great for food storage, but left a need for alternate coat storage. My brand new orange paint job called for coordinated coat hooks. I found some unfinished shaker peg rails at Lowes. A little woodburning and painting and voila! And yes, I did use wall anchors to secure the rails. Mitten storage was accomplished by hanging a felted bag from one of the pegs.




The bigger project has a long way to go. Having determined that the massively ugly and unhygienic kitchen carpeting was not glued down with asbestos-ridden glue, I couldn't wait to start tearing it up. I spent Friday evening tearing up about half of it. Then I spent much of Saturday pouring boiling water on petrified carpet glue and scraping with a variety of implements. Not a fun process on a particularly hot day. Very swampy. Sadly the installers used an orbital sander to rough up the 1956 linoleum, so the floor revealed is less than optimum. Even damaged, the scarred linoleum is vastly preferable to icky carpeting. Down the road there will be tile. Until then, there will be lots more scraping.