So here we are in Late October. The weather is getting colder and the nights, longer. We are approaching winter at a breakneck speed and yet this Camptastrophy is still in the works. Over the past few months, Liz and I slaved in the elements (mainly nice weather) being the weekend warriors and tasking to fix this dream machine up to snuff. We still have a lot on our plate seeing as how the canvas is removed from the rig, the drawers are strewn about the cabin, the batteries are as confused as the guy who has to wire them and a million other bits and bobs that need to be placed that are still in limbo. So what went wrong? Last post we were so positive and optimistic about the fun fixer upper we had purchased. Well, let me tell you the short and long of the Rough Roof Story.
Isn't she beautiful in the picture above. A real gem of a camper from the early 80's. Hard body, rugged aired-up wheels, a frame with minimal rust and a propane tank that has seen some places. We thought we were in the clear. Some primer and paint, a couple screws here and there. So what if the floor bowed and sagged when you walked on it. We could manage. That is until the roof collapses and we get squished to death in a horrible pancake of plywood and aluminum.
The original camper had latching hardware on the roof and near the top of the base to winch the roof down tight for travel. As I went to replace these pieces (one of my first mods of many), I noticed that some of the screws just fell out of their hole with a poof of dust while others kinda gooped out with old stinky blackness on them.
I am not sure how it happened but this poor old girl was suffering. She had ROT. Some sides were wet while the others were desert dry and looked burned. What could do such a thing. . . oh yeah, neglect. The roof had to be fixed in this condition. It was a safety issue as are many things with the camper.
It started with a heave-ho and ended in cussing, running around and figuring out how we got here. In order to fix a roof, one must remove said roof. Simple right. Campers are built out of lightweight things like Styrofoam and aluminum right? Yes while this is true, they weigh about a metric ton when wet and rotting. Also this thing had enough sloppy silicone jobs to kill a small village.
Liz and I managed to remove the roof from the body of the camper, going over the risers, and really giving our all. We laid it upside down aside the camper and realized that this just got involved. The ceiling panels (glorified cardboard) was the first piece of the puzzle to go. See Ya. After that, we removed the sides which were basically constructed as follows.
EXTERIOR Aluminum [ Choice of wood rot ] Aluminum INTERIOR
Simple stuff. Remove the wood rot, buy new wood, replace, and suture back together with some wood screws. Not so simple. Insert our first genius idea of the lot.
Liz and I devised a plan since we are genius'. We can reduce the weight of the ceiling, which in tern reduce the weight of our camper. GREAT! We thought we could achieve this by using a framework of wood (as opposed to a solid piece the full length) with Styrofoam in the empty spaces. We sure got an A for Effort on this one.
TO THE HARDWARE STORE!
We bought wood, screws, some tools, Styrofoam, new plastic ceiling panels, about 50 of those metal spikey plates that you hammer into two planks of wood to get me to join forces.
These bitches
They hurt when you touch them or even look at them for that matter and we just bought stock in em'. So we get to hammering. And we measure and cut and score and cuss and hammer and cut and measure and measure twice cause that's important to some people and cuss some-more and hammer and . . . day one was a blast.
Day two, oh joy. Sundays are always shorter because we have to get back home by the end of the night. So we carry on. We get most of the building done but wait, not enough spikey things!
TO THE HARDWARE STORE.
Buy 75 more and return what we didn't use. Surely another bright idea. Sunday goes by fast and then we are forced to call it a weekend. We pack up shop and tarp the camper body, cause you know, we lack a roof and stuff.
Fast forward 5 days and its Friday again. Woo hoo the camper crusade continues. We try and get all the pieces of the roof back together but is isn't going well. the Framework replacement is flimsy and aluminum is rough and sharp at the same time. We struggled with this for some time and got lost in a couple other side projects and by the end of it, its Sunday and we go home back to our 9-5 and dog walks around Wedgewood Gardens. Joy
The next weekend, we had the aid of Mr. Mark Fulton. He took a look at our operations with the roof and tried to help. He saw the practicality but the possibilities stopped at potential. He knew early on that the framework would be a bust and made the fatherly decision to take this project over and do it right.
TO THE HARDWARE STORE
He bought the plywood as a whole piece and brought a bunch of power tools from home to help get things cut and shaped. Even with his help, we were still unable to get everything pieced back together. Pack it all up and see ya next week!
Our fearless trio continued to put it all back together with much frustrations. We decided to scrap the interior aluminum panel to make it all fit back together better. It worked. We mended the roof and it was finally ONE PIECE AGAIN! Success!
We flipped the lid and gave the exterior a good power wash which worked wonders turning it from grimy black/brown to a off-white color. Bondo sealed the cracks and holes that numerous past owners had placed in the bonnet. We used a special paint to give the roof a new coat (or three) bought from Walmart. The paint is called Kool Seal Elastomeric Paint (Coating) As seen here Of course every Walmart for a 100 mile radius was sold out of the stuff and it didn't make sense to buy online since we were in a rush to paint. I found two cans in the Clinton NJ store and had them put it on hold. Woot. (Side note; the Walmart near the cabin was fully stocked (20 plus cans) a week ago when we were there. Guess they decided to restock)
This gave the roof a nice white color while also providing flexibility to the structure in addition to promoting temperature regulation. The white rubberized coating will seal in heat when we want and will reflect hot sun rays when we are hot.
Our next challenge was the ceiling panels. We replaced the original 'cardboard' pieces with three plastic panels from home depot. We bought trim and it looked great at first. Sure enough though, we didn't use enough adhesive in the original install and when we came back the next week, the panels were falling off the ceiling. We did another round of adhesive to really glue it good but STILL, the panels are falling down :( To this day, we are still trying to get the ceiling to stay but we came up with a slightly unorthodox method. Since the ceiling body is namely Styrofoam as seen in pictures above, there isn't much to tap into. We are going to use screws to eventually hold it all up. To make the screws a little less unsightly, we are anticipating placing them in constellation patterns and using glow in the dark paint to color the screw heads and have them glow at night. As of now, this is a 'to-be-installed' project.
This project was a lot more than anticipated and took a huge chunk of our time to get situated. Luckily, we are close to completion with this task and many others. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for further renovation updates including frame painting, metal working, flooring replacement, canvas sewing, battery hookup . . . .Oy vey
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