This remodel has required a few new pieces to be built around the new layout, and this one piece by the door, which used to be the end of the original dinette, just needed to be replaced, and pretty much has needed work since we bought the trailer, so it is finally getting replaced. It had many extra holes in it, old repairs, and was delaminating.

I used it as a template to cut out a new one, but with a shortened top. It doesn’t need to hold in a back cushion like the old one did, so it can be a little shorter. Also, I have always wanted a door there to access the stuff in that storage area. I need to get in there pretty much every time we set up, because I need tools out of the toolbox I keep there.

I stained it with the same all-in-one stain/poly I had used on the dinette seats/drawers, but for some reason it came out terribly blotchy, and sanding and adding more coats was just making it worse, it looked awful!

I asked on my woodworking group and one person recommended General Finishes Gel Stain, so I found some in Mahogany on Amazon (couldn’t find it loca) and waited a week for it to arrive. Once I got that in, I sanded the panel with 60/120/220 and then tried the gel stain.

Wow! It’s gorgeous! I was about to give up and toss the whole panel, I can’t believe how nice it turned out!

The other main piece is a new item – the backrest for the dinette. One side is the backrest, the other side faces the new bed and will have a shelf to hold phones and glasses. It will mate up with an existing piece of woodwork that is attached to the wall at the head of the bed, which will have a 12v power socket in it for handy phone charging.

I wanted the shelf to have a little personality, so I decided to make it curved. I cut it out to match the curve on the previous piece, and then took a thin piece of wood and soaked it in boiling water for half an hour to soften it up, so I could bend it to fit the shelf.

My first time bending wood, I was pretty excited!

Test fitting! I decided I didn’t like that pointy corner though. And the shelf needed edging on the flat side too or glasses might fall off onto the dinette side.

Much better.

I held off on staining this one until I figured out the problem with the first panel, so this one only got the gel stain used on it. And it was beautiful.

And then the ol’ sand-poly-sand-poly

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff! Look at that shine! The only problem I had was the bent wood on the shelf – where the clamps had pressed it into shape while drying, the wood did not take the stain well, and it has a light spot where each clamp was. Extra stain didn’t help. It’s no big deal, just something to think about next time I bend wood for something.

So now this piece is also done. It gets some pocketholes on the dinette side, which will be hidden by the cushions, and it is ready to install. Everything is coming together now!

The old cusions were not quite the right size in any direction for the new dinette, so I consulted with friends who had done their own trailers, and ordered new cushions from FoamOrder.com The nice thing about this store is you can enter your exact dimentions and they will cut them to size, unlike some places that sell them like sheet goods. On my friends advice I bought hard foam seats, with a 1 inch layer of soft foam on top, and medium foam for the seat backs.

I carefully unwrapped the bundle and it sucked in a bunch of air and slowly started inflating itself – it was pretty weird!

But when layed out flat they are tighter than I would like. I am going to need a little more room once they have batting and fabric on them.

Whipping out my handy-dandy vintage electric turkey carving knife, I lined up the edge of the bench underneith and a guide board on top, and slowly, carefully, trimmed a little off of each seat cushion.

And that gave me just enough room for them to lay flat and have a little extra space around them.

Much better. I think these are ready to go to the seamstress for covers now. I also took her a couple small throw pillows from the fabric store to cover to match the new cushions. I’m super excited to see how they all look!

Meanwhile, I think you can see what looks like a matress peeking in on the right. I was getting ready to go buy a double foam matress at Walmart to cut to size when I saw a post on my Airstream Club forum from someone selling (for cheap) the original matress from their 16ft Airstream. That caught my eye because I know the 16s have their matress in the end of the trailer, so it has two curved corners, which is just what I needed. We drove to Salem, Oregon and snapped that up. Brought it home, dropped it in place and …

Well, that is almost perfect! Let me get my handy-dandy vintage electric turkey carving knife…

Perfect! This looks ugly, but it will all be hidden under the bedding.

I made a lift-up center section to access the storage underneath, using the original table as a pattern.

I have a couple gas struts to fit on this to hold it open while we rummage around in storage. Im saving that for when the big stuff is all done. Getting close!

My Wilsonart ‘Betty’ Laminate finally arrived, in a box as tall as me!

Grateful for my Mobile Workshop pieces, I laid my table saw, bench, and router table out to make a flat area big enough for the laminate to unroll and relax a bit.

First step is to cut this down to something approximately the size of the table, with a little extra on each side, which will be cut off with the trim router later.

I clamped a couple boards down to hold it still, and give my jigsaw something to ride on. I put a new blade in my jigsaw and carefully cut it. A few chips flew off here and there, but because of the excess this was not a big issue.

I put everything inside the house for a few days so it could warm up, because the contact cement warned it needed to be applied at over 50 degrees. Luckily we got a warm, if rainy, day a few days later, so I set up a sawhorse table in front of the garage (under the porch cover) for the table, and set the old trailer table on the table saw, covered in paper to protect it, and put the laminate on there. While wearing a repirator I applied the very stinky contact cement liberally to both the laminate and the table, rolling it out, and then set back and waited for it to get tacky.

No pictures of the next part, because I had my hands full, but I was able to apply it just like the instructions I had seen online, but putting dowels on the tabletop, centering the laminate, and then removing the dowels and pushing it down. Then I rolled the heck out of it with a laminate roller. Then I used a flush trim bit in my trim router and cut off the excess.

Tah-dah!

I filed the edges of the limoleum to make sure they would be easy on our hands and sanded the plywood edge of the table until is was silky smooth, and then finished it with a clear protective finish. I like the look of the bare plys.

After that all I needed to do was attach the old leg and mounting strip from the original table, and sand and refinish the mount that held the table to the wall. I’m reusing all the hardware from the original table to save some $$$, and it’s all good hardware, so why buy new? I installed the mount, with Dave’s help to get everything level, and…

..by golly, I have a new table! This is such a big step forward, I’m starting to think this project is really going to turn out ok!

Covering the Utility Tunnel under the new dinette turned out to be trickier than expected, because there was one level I wanted to keep everything at, so the cushions will lay flat over the whole area. So I built the seats based on the height of the existing tunnel wall, and I want the covers to sit down in there flush with that.

The seats are actually 3/4 inch higher, because the tunnel covers need to be higher next to the seats, and lower in the middle area, because when the table is folded down, that is where it will go, and then the whole thing should be flat.

Because I am concerned about weight, I didn’t want to just use 3/4 Plywood for the raised part, so I used 1/2 ply, and 1/4 strips to make a frame under the ply to add up to 3/4. Maybe more work than necessary, but it also let me use some scraps instead of cutting into another expensive piece of 3/4 ply.

Then I did build the table out of 3/4 ply, because I want it to be strong and sturdy.

And by some miracle it actually all fit together and is nice and level on top. But when I looked at mounting the leg on the table, I realized I had forgotten the leg was long enough it would need to go under the table and back into the tunnel area.

This caused me a lot of headach as I tried to figure out how to remove the existing support, build a new support that would hold up the two tunnel covers, and yet make a little slot for the leg to fold up into, and there was also a limitation of how far down the whole assembly could go because the whelwell liner is in the way. I ended up needing to use my new dado blade to remove 1/4 off the bottom of the table, and then I could modify the tunnel structure just enough to get my piece in there, and by golly, it all worked, at least in theory, since the table is not fully assembled with the leg yet, but I’m confident I’ve got it worked out. Everything test fit ok.

And everything fit back together just right.

The hand slots make it easy to pull up those tunnel covers for maintenance.

Now to finish the table and get that all assembled. Waiting for my awesome retro Wilsonart Laminate to arrive…

More to come…

I started with the Dinette seat. They were going to be small, because they will butt up against the utility tunnel, and they will have drawers for storage. I followed Steve Ramsay’s Tablesaw Cart video because it was just what I needed, except mine was going to be even simpler. One big drawer. Or I thought it would be simpler. All the details actually got more complicated as I went along.

For one thing, things were complicated by it being so cold I had to bring everything into the house to glue up.

Super helpful, Mighty.

A little extra weight applied from the pantry.

I got a pocket hole jig which made assembly super easy.

And in no time I had two nice frames with drawers. Of course then the drawers tipped forward when you pulled them out too far, so a friend suggested rails at the top to keep them level, and then they needed to stay closed while on the road, so I added magnetic catches. I painstakingly stained them Bombay Mahogany, which I thought matched the deep reddish color in the trailer, but then I realized that the trailer was several different colors inside due to fixes done over the years. Well, now we are going with Bombay Mahogany.

Before staining I countersunk all the screws in the frame and filled the holes with a bit of oak dowel, just to hide the screw heads.

I added nice handles to kind of match what had been there before, and got them installed.

The final step was adding a piece that fit into the top for sitting on. Once that was in I could start test fitting the panels that will go over the utility tunnel.

But that is a story for next time.

I caused the problems with our broken windows on our last trip (see previous post) by removing the old front window rockguard off of our 1968 Caravel so I could rebuild it, but I didn’t get it rebuilt in time before the trip. Here is a picture of the original rockguard. As you can see, it was completely opaque, but it started out clear, back when it was new in 1968. It also had a few holes knocked into it from rocks over the years already.

I removed it from the trailer, which was easy to do, as it was not riveted on, it was only screwed on. likewise the two extendable arms were screwed to the trailer, and then to the inside sides of the cover, near the bottom. The shape of the cover allowed the arms to sit inside the cover when it’s folded down. This was probably the trickiest part of the whole build.

The rockguard needs about 1 3/4 inches clearance inside for the arms to fit under it.

So I removed the plastic insert from the thin aluminum frame of the rockguard, and built my new aluminum frame to sit inside of the original auminum frame. That original frame would be key to locating the original hinge and latches so the new rockguard would fit right back into place on the body of the trailer without drilling any new holes.

Then I riveted those pieces into the original frame with pop rivets. It was all looking really good, until I thought about the arms.

Back to the hardware store.

I also replaced the weatherstripping on that front window and glued the lexan sheet into the hinge (which still refuses to come apart) with ParBond. It seems to be solidly seated in there now, and I don’t think it will come out. It opens and closes just like the glass window did.

All done! It really wasn’t that difficult, and I wish I had finished it before heading out on that trip and breaking the front and side windows. It was mostly a gumption block – sitting there in the garage staring at it and trying to puzzle out the right way to do it. When I finally jumped in, I did it wrong by using that angle piece that was too small, but at least it was easier to do it the second time with the right-sized angle pieces! It fits, it looks good, and I can see out of it from inside the trailer without having to open it up. And to think this is a project I’ve been mulling over for the past 10 years or so!

We planned a camping trip to Whidbey Island in May, to complete the vacation in October that got cut short for Barclay’s illness. So I started preparing the Airstream by tackling some of the issues I found on our last trip.

I polished up the old Plexiglass window

I replaced missing rivets

I lubed and tightened up the door latch.

I pulled off the broken front window guard so I could rebuild it. I didn’t get it done in time, but I figured that was ok, lots of Airstreams travel without front window guards. Surely we could make ONE trip without ours.

We were all ready to hit the road for an adventure. But when we finally hit that road, we were cruising along about 50 miles from home when I looked in the rearview and wondered why the curtains were waving around inside the trailer?

And the broken front window let in so much air going down the highway that it also blew out our old plexiglass window!

We pulled over in Castle Rock and carefully cleaned up all the broken glass we could with the limited tools available in the trailer, swept debris up off the road. Then considered our options and turned around and headed home.

Once we got home I started taking stuff apart while Dave ran to the hardware store and picked up some lexan.

I easily cut it to size on the table saw and installed the side window. It could probably use new weatherstripping as well, but good enough for now.

The Front window had other ideas. Nothing we could do could get the hinge apart. You need to take the two piece hinge apart to attach the new window with adhesive tape to the hinge. But the hinge was absolutely not coming apart.

Dave and I tried impact drivers and screw drivers and soaked the screws in penetrant and even tried to drill them out, and nothing was working. So we called Scott over.

He tried everything from special screw extractor bits to the dremel to heating it with a torch, and still nothing was working, and we didn’t want to set the trailer on fire, so as the sun was getting low we pried all the broken glass out of the hinge and slid a piece of lexan cut to size up into it, put the clips on the bottom, and because of how much flex it had, we fastened a piece of aluminum across the middle to hold it in place (since the top wasn’t actually stuck in with adhesive like it should be).

So we had replaced 2 windows in 5 hours, and were completely exhausted. We slept at home that night and the next morning we were ready to roll again.