Weatherstripping, sealing, and Reflectix!

One of my favorite accomplishments of the weekend was no longer having to use a ladder to hold the door closed. Peter reinstalled the latch. It is amazing! The door works! Ahhhhhhhh! Also, I washed all the mold and grime off the door, which was not a strictly necessary project but was immensely satisfying. 

Since the Airstream was sitting out exposed to the elements, unused, for many years, there is a lot of dirt, dust, and organic material in the window frames and crannies. Even with the skins out, and the new subfloor, and the Reflectix on the walls, the trailer still smells musty, and I am trying to control my impulses to engage in useless cleaning prematurely. 

W reinstalled the access doors and put new weatherstripping on them. We went with 9/16 width and 1/2 thickness. They ended up being too wide, so Peter trimmed them down with a razor blade. Thickness ended up being just right.

I finished up interior sealing and then did the tops of the windows externally. They look terrible. I used a clear polyurthane caulk and it is shiny so it catches the sun. It is bumpy because I didn't take the old sealant off. The clear looks better untooled, but I was forced to tool it on most of the windows because of the bumpy application. Then I decided to take some external lights off and I covered the sealant in crude from the lights. Ugh.

But the external red indicator lights are now replaced!

Peter's sisters are in the throes of SAT prep, studying 12 hours a day, every day except Sunday. They were willing to take a break from that and help us out for the right price. So while we were spending time with my family watching Hamilton, they were toasting away in the Easybake Oven taping Reflectix to the walls! In a few hours they had it almost all done. I don't know if it actually feels any cooler in there, but it certainly looks cooler. We had two rolls of 200 sq. ft., and it was just shy of what we needed. 

Coming up: Peter's mentor has some kind of a sawmill he is willing to let us use to turn the black locust tree Peter harvested into boards for our countertop and cabinets! We need to build the electrical components box while we are waiting for the components we ordered to arrive in the mail. Peter bought PVC pipes to redo the venting for the tanks. Blessed Will gave us the specs for his axel order and Peter has a welder lined up, so we might see about ordering those soon-ish. I need to finish drilling out interior rivets and stripping paint off the skins because we have a target date for skins back on!