Adding Those Little Touches

It's October 9, 2011, and I am getting ready for a Fall camping trip with my women's vintage trailer camping group friends, "The Trailerettes, located in Northern California.  We are a group of professional women (and some retirees) who get together several times a year for some camping adventures in Northern California.    We plan on heading up into the Sierra Foothills in mid October to celebrate the Autumn season and get in some camping before the holiday season hits.  I've only taken "Shorty" out on her maiden voyage trip earlier this spring to Coloma.  This year my hubby and I gave her a new paint job, sealed and polished her windows, polished drips rails, and a bunch of other small fixes.  This weekend I put some finishing touches on the interior.  If you can't tell, my decor theme is "road trip vacations."  I've been collecting "vacation" type stuff for years and now it's being put to good use.  Remember the sleepy bear for Travellodge?  Stopping at a highway gas station and getting an ice cold Coke in the bottle from a vending machine?  I can just taste how good that was when my Dad would pop the cap off and I would take a swig!  Howard Johnston hotels and restaurants and their yummy ice cream sundaes?  Stopping at Sambo's restaurant for pancakes?  Vegas when the Rat Pack were Kings of the strip?   Those big plastic motel key fobs that your room key came on?  Magic fingers massage on your motel bed?  Motels near Disneyland that had the great pool slides and you could stay up and watch the fireworks at dark?  Big pastel colored umbrellas with fringe and retro pool furniture?  Restaurant place mats that showed maps of the state...These are the memories that I tried to invoke in my decor theme for Shorty.  I had a lot of fun pulling togther items that I thought would bring these memories back.  If you will look at the early photo of Shorty on the top right of this page, you will see we made some decent progress over the summer.

I've Been Workin' on the Windows (Sung to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad"

Since a few of my fellow Trailerettes have asked me about how I clean up and reseal my trailer windows, I took this opportunity to take a few photos and share how I do it.  I am by no means an expert, but after I've gone through cleaning and reputtying my trailer windows, they are water tight, at least for about 5 years.  Of course, we keep our trailers under a white awning year long and cover them with a breathable cover in the winter months, as extra insurance.  Water damage is not something you want to deal with!

To begin, figure out what size screw is holding your windows on, and purchase new stainless steel ones.  The screws used on my '63 Lo Liner windows were  8 x 3/4" long sheet metal screws with a 1/4" hex nut head .  I bought a special drill or driver attachment that will fit around the screw head and they come out pretty easily, except when the screw head is really rusty.  It seems to shrink a bit.  So I grabbed a 1/4 open end wrench and removed them manually without the drill or driver.  Remove all screws, making sure to keep your hand against the window when you remove the last several screws.  You don't want your window to fall out. 

I take a bucket of hot water and use Murphy's Oil Soap and a stiff cleaning brush, to scrub the aluminum and screens clean.  Rinse with the hose with a strong jet of water.  I then take a 3M or Scotchbrite cleaning pad (be careful not to scratch aluminum) and with the oil soap and water mixture, scrub all around the window aluminum.  If there are some small spots or rust to get to, I use a fine brass brush, they are small, they are located in the paint department of your hardware store.  I also use 0000 steel wool, which is very fine and won't scratch the metal, but the more abrasive Scotch Brite pads have the potential to scratch the aluminum.  You can also use a metal polish, after doing the above steps.  Sometimes the metal polish will brighten the metal more.  If your aluminum is badly corroded and has a type of corrosion dust, I have seen a product for cleaning aluminum, located where you find Navel Jelly rust stripper at Home Depot.  You can also get ambitious and use a Dremel rotary tool with a polishing head and some rouge polish.  That's getting pretty ambitious for me...I want to get out and go camping. 

Update!  My hubby decided to do some extra polishing on the window frames and gutter rails.  So he bought some polishing attachments for our drill, a can of polishing compound, and they turned out beautiful!  Alot of work, but it sure is shiny.  Not all of the corroded areas shined up, but some did. 

If the screens are rusty, I usually clean them up really well and then spray paint them with Rust Oleum Aluminum colored paint.  You have to make sure to scrub the Murphy's Oil Soap off before painting, because it is made from vegetable oil, and will prevent the paint from sticking well.  So you may want to use ammonia and hot water on areas that you plan on painting.  Ammonia is a great cleaner. 

I then take a scraper and remove any of the old butyl tape around the back edges of the window, that goes against the body of the trailer.  I scrape any remaining on the trailer and often use Goof Off to remove any glue or putty residue on the trailer.  Take your roll of butyl putty and place it around all 4 sides of your window frame.  You then butt the window up against the opening of the trailer and line up the screw holes.  Put in new, STAINLESS STEEL screws, so that they won't rust over the years.  I usually drive in the new screws every other hole, then fill in the remaining other screws.  The putty will often be squeezed out the sides, so take a PLASTIC putty knife to cut away the remainder.

I noticed the back window on the Low Liner had a little leak along the bottom, so I bought some window CLEAR silicone sealant, and placed a thin bead of it along the glass and aluminum to keep water from leaking in.  This worked wonders for my past Lil Loafer trailer, and thank goodness, cuz I camped out in the rain twice in 2011 and it was ALOT of rain.
I took some pics to help you understand my little process:

Use a wrench to remove a screw head that has rusted and the drill can't grab the head.

I order these from Ace Hardware.

Screws, drill attachment, wrench and driver.

Windows are waiting to be put back on.

Butyl putty or tape.

The 8 x 3/4 stainless screws I use.

Scotch Brite pads and 0000 steel wool

One metal polish product

Badly corroded aluminum.

Murphy's Oil Soap, Scotch Brite pad and elbow grease.

Here I'm placing the butyl tape

All cleaned up and ready to install.

Cushions Are Being Made

Almost forgot to mention that I took Shorty's dinette/bed cushions to our local upholstery place.  I am having the foam replaced with 3" very firm foam.  The seats and backs will be in plush leopard fabric and the sides and bottom will be in cocoa brown duck fabric.  I love kitty kat fabric...it will made the seats cozy and soft, throw a few vintage sofa pillows around and walla!  Kitschy!

Gotta Love Vintage Barkcloth!!

Thought you might like to see the vintage barkcloth I found for Shorty's curtains.  I need to whip up a bunch and line them.  Will be one of the next projects I get done before heading out on my next Trailerette adventure! 

This very retro vintage barkcloth will most likely be made into pillows...but you never know!

Shorty Gets Her New Paint!

It's mid July, 2011 and the weather pattern has been cooler than normal, so we decided it would be a great time to give Shorty a new "dress."  I had actually taken some time off of work so I could pull windows, scrape off old putty and prep her for primer and paint.  When I took off the old lights, I found a salmon pink color trim.  So, the decision to make "he" a "she" was decided.  We bought a paint sprayer kit from Harbor Freight, which I believe was around $50.  Also a black rubber air hose and some other parts.  The paint we chose is what we used on our past Lil Loafer.  The primer is Sherwin Williams Alkyd (means oil based) metal primer.  The body paint is Sherwin Williams "Stops Rust" oil based paint for metal.  I chose a white shade with a very light gold maize color for trim.  This will match the colors in the awning that I had previously purchased.  Because this trailer doesn't have a ceiling vent, I decided to keep it white, to keep it cooler.  So my hubby and I prepped, sanded, scraped off old putty, and washed the trailer with TSP.  Then came the paper and tape to cover the windows.  It was a beautiful day to paint.  We set it up on our front lawn under a big shade tree.  Luckily, there was nothing falling from it.  Studies the instructions for the sprayer, mixed the primer, and off he went.  Took about 2 hours to primer and it looks great.  We took the door off and the storage door off also and primered those separately.  We need to wait at least a day to let the primer dry before we continue with the regular paint.  Oh yes!  When we pulled the door off, we found some serious dry rot next to the door.  So we had to piece in some replacement wood before we continued with the paint project.  Luckily, the wood around the rest of the door and windows was fine! 

Here's a few photos of the prep and primer project:

This really doesn't show the true color of the light gold/yellow paint...but here's the samples and a swatch of my awning.  I haven't seen a trailer painted in these colors, so I thought I'd give it a try!

Pulling windows!  Wear protective gloves!

Pink!  She's a girl!

The original Lo Liner Decal

The black stripes gotta go!

SURPRIZE!  Dry rot by door and galley

Dry rot replaced

Practicing spraying on piece of wood

Bye bye ugly paint....

Primer looks pretty darn good