Curtains!

Well, curtain rods, anyway. I had to toss the ancient curtains that came with the TM when we bought it - they were sun rotted and faded, and the plastic slide thingys were broken. Plus, I never liked the design of the curtains dragging over the outside of the camper walls - they always picked up dust and dirt, cobwebs, bugs etc., even if we were diligent about sweeping down the walls prior to folding the camper down. My first attempt at replacing the curtains was plain rectangular panels with very small buttons sewn on the backs at top and bottom, that slid in and out of the existing curtain tracks. However, they weren't very attractive and I just wanted a more "homey" look.


















I bought some inexpensive brass finish cafe rods (at a garage sale, $1 each!) to experiment with. My inventive Dear Son mulled over possibilities for a few days, then bent the brackets to look like this:


















Originally, the upper flanges were bent up, so that they were opposite each other, one pointed up, one down, and they had holes drilled so that you could screw them to a wall. DS changed the holes that were drilled in the flanges to slots with a Dremel tool.


















He installed the two screws that came with the rods into the camper walls, and ever meticulous, numbered each position and each bracket, to ensure a good fit. The brackets slide down on the two screws, then the rod fits in the brackets.



































Voila! I didn't show the curtains themselves as I haven't hemmed them yet, and I want to spray paint the rods a different color - the brass is a little too '80's for me. *G* The curtains could just be rod pocket style cafe curtain panels easily made or purchased anywhere that sells curtains, but I think I will hang mine with clip rings instead, so they'll slide easily. If I planned to use rod pocket curtains, I would have set the brackets farther out from the sides of the windows.

Before folding down, I'll take the rods down, curtains and all, and lay them flat on the front bed, and slide the brackets off the screws and put them in the junk drawer by the stove. The screws don't stick out enough to be a problem, they'll just stay there all the time. Now I can buy or make any curtains I like, launder them when necessary and they'll stay clean and out of the sun when the camper is folded. Woohoo! Thanks again to my inventive DS for solving this problem for me!

Bag seals and flap system

Now that we've addressed all the wood that was inside the walls (or at least all the wood in the walls we could get at) it's time to work on the bag seals and flap system.


This picture shows the area to the front of the door, with all the bag seal/flap system removed. There was also some tacked on wooden trim a few inches above the flap that had pieces missing, and we didn't replace it.


This picture shows the new flaps we purchased from Trailmanor, waiting to be installed.


Here we have installed by glueing with Liquid Nails Ultra Polyurethane adhesive the solid vinyl boards that we ripped to fit. These were bought at Home Depot, and were found in the trim department. They were intended to be baseboard in a wet area and all we had to do was remove a small (about 1/2") of decorative edge to make it into a "board". DH drilled pilot holes and screwed and clamped them to the walls.



Then I stapled (with an electric stapler, a manual one wouldn't do the job) the bag seal purchased from TrailManor to the vinyl "wood", using 3/8" T-50 stainless steel staples. I lined the edge of the bag seal up with the bottom edge of the "wood", which in turn lined up with the bottom edge of the upper shell. I used a hot glue gun to glue the square foam rubber strips onto the bag seal. In order to get the staple gun in the the tight quarters when working close to the back of the shell, i.e. near the door or sink area, we had to remove the acorn bolts and carefully prop the shell up with a 2x4 resting on the lower walls, all the way across the camper. I forgot to take a picture of that, sorry!



Then folded the bag seal down and around the foam.


Folded the raw edge of the vinyl over, and stapled it to the underside of the wall. I started stapling it to the vinyl, but DH had me fold it less so that it was more covering the wood strip between the aluminum skins.


I had to cut and fit to make it around the corners, and also had to add another layer of padding/vinyl in the corners, as there was a gap.


In progess.


Completed bag seal, ready for the flaps!

Putting it back together...

Ahhh, spring. Time to go camping. Oh, wait.......the camper is still in pieces! Hey, kids..........here's our two, scraping the old caulk from around the roof vents.


They're being good camper repair persons, using sheets of plywood to distribute their weight and avoid dents.


The DS was of ENORMOUS help, fetching, carrying, getting out and putting away tools, slave labor....*G* A reminder - if you want to see the pictures BIG, just click on them, you'll get lots of detail.


Ok, time to do the street side wall. First we took the load off of the arms. With shells in upright position, we removed the clamps from the arms underneath the camper (see diagram above, courtesy of Happytrails and Ed at Trailmanor), removed and set aside the shims and clamps, and pulled the end of the spring out of the tube, then gently let the shell back down with people on each side to keep it level. Then we removed the bolts on the lift arms at the pocket stops and removed the wall. I know TM changed the lift arms to a different style around 1994, I'm not sure how you'd go about taking those apart. My husband took out a couple of screws and look what happened! The whole wall just dropped about three inches. I still can't believe this thing held together for the 90 mile trip home from the sellers, let alone to Canada and back!


Oh my. There were only three or four screws in solid wood. The rest were in mulch. We used hydraulic floor jacks and 2x4's to lower the wall while one of us steadied it. The wall itself is not that heavy, easily carried by two adults. I do recommend sturdy gloves as the edge of the aluminum is sharp.


Ok, the whole thing is ready to just fall off, but something is holding it at the front.


Aha! A couple of hidden screws behind the rock guard. We used hydraulic floor jacks and 2x4's to lower the wall while one of us steadied it.


Now it's off all the way, and we've also removed the trim and bag seal across the roof, and cleaned out the old rotten wood, screws, and staples. In the second picture, you can see the curb side wall where we've already replaced the framing. The wood strip is on the outside so that we would have a good surface to staple the bag seal. It is cedar wood and has been treated with Thompsons. All materials we've used in the repairs have been waterproofed or are water resistant, and the adhesive is Liquid Nails Ultra polyurethane - rated for use with wood, metal and foam, and is for outdoor use.


Here we've set up the wall in the shady backyard. Working in the driveway was too hot. This wall will go MUCH faster now that we know how it all goes together and what we need to do. Remove metal trim strip, set aside, remove nasty bag seal and flaps, remove any staples/screws, scrape out old wood, clean up with a wire brush on the drill.


We like to recycle and reuse whenever possible (duh, or we wouldn't be recycling the TM in the first place!) so we cleaned up and reused the old aluminum where possible.


We ran low on clamps, so my husband devised this one out of what he had laying around. Have I mentioned how wonderful he is at fixing things? *G* Glueing in that loooong strip of aluminum on the top of the wall took a lot of clamps.


Here's the street side of the camper with the wall removed. Again, all the old wood and so on was cleaned out of the edges of the walls.

Next post, putting it all back together, new bag seal and flaps, woohoo!

Demolition and Reconstruction

While we had the top half of the door off for repair, we used a tarp to cover the hole. I thought it would be a short project. Ha.


We then removed the metal strip that was screwed to the bottom edge of the upper shell. We knew we were in trouble when most of the screws broke off, rusted through. DS removed the rotten wood from the space between the aluminum skins, and cleaned up the area with scrapers, pliers to remove staples and broken screw heads, and finally with a wire wheel on the drill.



This is the flap system from inside the Trailmanor - what connects the top shell to the bottom shell with velcro when the camper is in use. All the wood used was rotten, the vinyl nasty and it smelled of rot. It was a definite replacement item. As a matter of fact, what we removed looked as if it had been homemade, and I don't think it was original. We ended up purchasing a new set from Trailmanor.



This pic shows the rear edge of the upper shell, with the trim strip and bag seal removed, opened and the rotten wood scraped out.


Here's the wood, or rather, what's left of it. It was basically mulch, we found only a few chunks of semi-solid wood. I think mostly what was holding the camper together was just habit, and maybe a half dozen screws that were still in somewhat solid wood. The white piece of "lumber" you see is what we bought to replace the pieces that held on the flaps, and it's not wood, it's solid vinyl. Never going to rot.


Ok, I promised you scary. Here's scary. DH decided that it would be much easier to work on the wall, if it was on sawhorses. So he took it off the camper. EEEEEK! First we took the load off of the arms. With shells in upright position, we removed the clamps from the arms underneath the camper (see diagram above, courtesy of Happytrails and Ed at Trailmanor), removed and set aside the shims and clamps, and pulled the end of the spring out of the tube, then gently let the shell back down with people on each side to keep it level. Then we removed the bolts on the lift arms at the pocket stops and removed the wall. I know TM changed the lift arms to a different style around 1994, I'm not sure how you'd go about taking those apart.


Another angle......that hole at the curved area is the end of the cabinets that are above the front bed. We had to disconnect the wires to the front lights and the porch light.


Lower part of the front end......you can see where we opened up the aluminum skins and removed the rotten wood, as well as the nasty old bag seal and flaps that came off later.

Here's the wall on sawhorses.....the big hole in front of DH is the upper door opening. He's inserting square aluminum tubing into the space between the skins, replacing the rotten wood. We found a great price on the tubing - $1.16 a linear foot - from a place in our town that supplies to companies that make screen rooms and the like. Shop around - a metal supplier in the same town wanted nearly twice as much.

The tubing on the left came from Trailmanor, the tubing on the right is what we bought locally. Same thickness, the only difference we could see is the white paint and the corners were less rounded off.
And another shot of the wall with DH spacing out tubing to see how much we needed.


Here's the door opening with the new tubing inserted. Just dry fitting at this point.


This is the other side of the door opening. The area around the door was the in the worst shape of the entire camper. The aluminum had started to degrade.


This shows just how bad the deterioration was - the top of the door frame had NO support left at all. When we took it down, it was completely empty, the rotten wood had just crumbled away, and you could see right through it.


The pictures above show the "pocket" and "pocket stops", the rubber chunk with a strip of metal and a screw. The U shaped metal brackets are called "pocket stop repair kits". The first picture is the pocket located by the door frame, toward the rear of the upper shell. It was encased by two metal plates, and bolted together with a wooden frame. We used aluminum tubing with treated wooden plugs glued into the ends to replace this, shown in the next picture. Sorry it's so blurry. We used Liquid Nails Polyurethane adhesive to glue everything together, it was the only one we found that was rated for wood, metal and foam and also was weather proof. The third picture shows the old pocket stop, made of rubber, a piece of wood, and a screw, the rubber much flattened from years of use. Bottom is a picture of the inside of the pocket, before we put the metal bracket and new stop in. The lighter spot on the right is where the stop was located.


This picture shows the top of the wall with new aluminum tubing installed, glued on all sides and clamped with wood strips to ensure complete pressure and contact. I was starting to relax, we could do this. All we had to do was finish glueing the aluminum strips around the edges of everything, add strips of treated wood to have a surface to staple the bag seal and reinstall the trim strip with screws into, and we could put the wall back on. What I failed to take into account was 1. How long it would take us and 2. How cold the weather was getting. We'd started this project in late September, in Michigan, and the glue we were using wouldn't set up at less than about 50 degrees. And our garage was already full, no room in there for a new project. So I did what any self respecting Trailmanor owner would do. I gave up my kitchen to the cause:


We balanced the wall between the table and the rolling bar we have in the middle of our kitchen, and continued working. It wasn't so bad, it only took us another few days to finish, and it was definitely warmer.


This picture shows the ends of the aluminum tubing, and the wooden plugs DH cut to fit and glued into the ends. This gave a solid place to drill and screw everything together.


Here's that area at the bottom of the door frame area where the aluminum was so degraded. I wrapped it in plastic wrap before we clamped to avoid having the wood we used for pressure from becoming glued to the wall when the glue oozed out from the degraded areas. The second pic shows everything clamped, with some spare pieces of wood and aluminum in the pocket to avoid crushing it. Once everything was cured, we put away our tools for the winter, put the wall in the garage and wrapped the camper up tight in tarps for the season.

Next post: In the spring, putting it back together, taking off the street side wall, and installation of new bag seal and flaps.