History continued
Well now that I had the "Dog House" stripped to the bone it was time to start to work.
The first project was to strip the old, dried out, stained cracked and curling yellow vinyl flooring. I tried to pull it up at the edges but the glue had laminated it to the wood floor. I was able to take it off in stages. The vinyl surface would peel off the backing paper so i got rid of that. The paper was a little tougher. I tried everything from scrapers to knifes hammer and gasket scraper. I finally used a wood plane and was able to shave it off that way. I also found that if wet it a little with a spray bottle the plane would cut deeper and take more off. I finally got all the flooring shaved to the wood in about three evenings.
My next challenge was to replace the window glass. I called several glass companies who said I needed to bring the frames in to get an estimate. All of the windows except the two door glass panels were rounded aluminum. This made all the bids fairly high at between 50 to 80 dollars per paine. I had 7 pains to replace so that was going to cost over 350 dollars for them to put in the glass and I was going to have to remove and replace the frames. I decided I would try to do it myself. I went to the internet and downloaded all the information I could on glass cutting and found that cutting curves in glass is not too difficult. The key as it turned out is to have a good glass cutter. I only had to redo one paine out of seven. My next challenge was to mount the windows back in the frames. The rubber glass locks had shrunk so I was short about 6 inches on each window. I compromised by using the locks on the criticle areas and using aluminum colored silicone to fill in the rest.
The three screens that covered the sliding windows had holes and torn areas so I went to Home Depot and purchased screen fabric, cord, and tool and set to work replacing the screens. The total outlay for glass screen and tools and supplies was about 100 dollars and about 2 evenings and a Saturday to finish cutting fitting and mounting the glass back into the trailer.
My mountain mansion was starting to take shape. No more desert wind and dust storms or occasional rain could get in now.
It was really surprising how many of my neighbors who usually only waved came over while I worked into the evenings to check on my progress.
My next project was installing new tail and clearance
lights and redoing the 12 volt wiring. My plan here was to make the wiring much more user friendly and also add
battery and brake wireing.
I found my
tail lights and clearance lights at camper world and installed them in the same locations as the origional. The
tail lights were a challenge because the lights I found were different size than the factory style. The mounting holes did not match up so I cut aluminum plates to fit the old
light area and after riviting them to the body I mounted the new lights.
The front pigtail was a challenge as the old one was pretty far gone and really not usable for my application. The pigtail was removable from the trailer and had a male plug at both ends. I installed a new 7 prong rv female socket in place of the old five prong unit. I now had the external wiring done so now i moved inside. I purchased 7 wire shielded trailer cable and a seven wire junction box from my local Napa automotive store. I could have bought it at Camper World but was able to get a discount through my work. I installed the junction box inside the trailer where the female socket comes through the front of the trailer and mounted the cable along each side of the trailer to the back lights. I looped these from the seat anchor rails so they would be off the floor. .I hooked in all of the outside lights the inside 12 volt lights and had circuts for the
battery and brake installations. I also looped wires for future installations of a three way
fridge, heater and electric pump controls to the faucet With the junction box I now have plenty of access to and expansion of the wiring for
Solar or
generator power or anything else I may want to install. I also replaced the two twelve volt cabin lights with new low profile units from Camper world. One over the sitting area and one over the sink area. I will also install one in the porta potty closet before I am done.
Now that the twelve volt wiriing was done I started on the 110 volt system.. I replaced the single breaker panel with a four breaker unit from Home depot. I installed new four wire romex to each side of the trailer and hooked in the 110 volt lights. The aditional wiring will provide plenty of shore power for appliances or anywhere I may need . My final task was to replace the old frayed shore power cord with a new one. I made it removable so It can be stored until needed. I also intend to mount an outside plug recepticle at a strategic location before I am finished