Airstream work took a pause in November because of our vacation and then Thanksgiving, but December has been an exciting month! First we moved our Airstream indoors--its first road trip in over 20 years. It was a fun premonition of prepping to move on trips to come: setting up the stabilizers with the tow hitch, checking the brakes and taillights, strapping everything down. We have not yet been baptized in the couple trials of coordinating trailer parking, but we got a foreshadowing.
Having the trailer inside is even more of a value-add than I had expected. I'm not anxious about mice, bugs, water getting in. No more worrying about the battery freezing. No more dirt, sand, and mud getting all over our materials and tools. And when we have the space heater going, I am not freezing my buns off! Even though it's not in a convenient location, I am optimistic we will be able to make some strides thanks to the shelter.
So, for example, we have framed in the bathroom walls. We used metal studs for the curved part of the wall, cutting triangles out every 8" or so to make the curve and riveting it to the skins. We used regular wood studs for the rest. Making sure the walls were square was tricky because nothing inside the trailer is square, but we adjusted the hitch and used a level.
We had been storing the old walls since demo and finally they came in handy! First cut on the curve was perfect, we only had to do one more cut on the bottom. It was nice to have something go smoothly for once, haha! The inner-most wall is a bit of a puzzle because of the air conditioner and the back fan--we carved a diagonal slice out of the stud for clearance, but the plywood sheath on the walls should cover the carve out. We might notch it out altogether depending on how it looks as we polish it up.
Yesterday we divided and conquered: Peter teamed up with Amanda to do the dry plumbing for the sink and shower, while Prudence and I tackled the bed frame. The sink and shower vents are in, as is the shower drain! Peter has also made a rough plan for the pee diversion to feed into the same drain line as the shower. The sink drain line is in place, but is obviously awaiting the sink itself.
Working on the bed frame was a huge self-efficacy boost for me because usually I am the watcher/tool passer, but Prudence wouldn't let me get away with that. We used the pocket hole jig that Peter got for Christmas on some 1x1s and made a frame to anchor to the floor (as opposed to the walls) that the plywood base can rest on, above the electrical components box. (We used four (4) boards 77" long, twelve (12) boards 15" long with pocket screw holes each end to make two ladders, and then six (6) boards 29.5" to connect the ladders. Easy but satisfying!)
We left space at the "head" of the bed to build a cabinet for access to the drain and vent pipes running there. The "foot" of the bed will be pretty much flush with the street-side trailer wall. We will make one more "ladder" to support the far end of the bed, but we have to work around the back hatch and the battery, so we had to wait on the project manager before tackling that one.
The outlets and overhead lights inside aren't working because of a short somewhere. At first this was a demoralizing discovery because installing the ceiling was a giant pain, and the thought of having to un-do and re-do it made me want to throw a temper-tantrum, but then Peter recalled a spark during the installation of the front end, so we are thinking maybe that's where the short is. Next time I think we will attempt to find/fix the short, and also add some wood framing to the air conditioner hole. Maybe build the seat for the shower and put down waterproof lining for all the places the drains run.
For Christmas, Peter finally caved and said he will get me a mini wood stove, but it remains to be seen where it will go. We can avoid putting more holes in the ceiling by using the hole from the original stove exhaust vent hole. But we had Will run the propane so that the range can go in that spot. We had talked about switching the range to the street-side for weight distribution, but rerouting the propane may prove too intimidating. Anyway, Peter's love-motivated pro-wood stove gesture was as touching a Christmas sentiment as a person could want. ^_^
No comments:
Post a Comment