Well, there are lots of updates, but I'll try and get most of them in. Our big goal was to get some walls on the ole girl and tidy up the electricity. Well sure that sounds simple enough, right?? Yeah.. well in true Marilyn fashion it was a challenge. In preparation for the big day, I started making some templates and finishing the majority of the insulation. Keep in mind that the sheets of aluminum are 12x4 feet and almost impossible to handle alone. It was hard enough to work with a piece of cardboard that size by myself! Below is the skin template for the second wall we did. We had very few usable skins to start any of the templates with. Oddly enough the wheel well is a touch different, so it throws off the window and so on. So essentially the starter was a nonstarter.
Next, I finished the majority of the insulation, at least enough to be able to get most of the walls up.
It was a little scary cutting that first piece of aluminum as once it cut it's done (yea obviously, I know). But we bit the bullet and went to cutting. BTW the camera adds 10 pounds. To ME, not the aluminum.
As you can see below we got the first cut pretty darn close to perfect and only had to make a few trims when we got it on the wall.
We had planned to use the visible ribs and a laser level to make sure we didn't miss any with any rivets. News flash... they are not exactly straight. Even if we use the laser level to follow a rib with no walls, it's way off. I'm going to try some other things as far as manipulating the actual trailer before we do any more, but we did miss a rivet or two. We decided to do rivets every 6 inches (with some exceptions like the bottom rivet is 8"). For the most part the first wall wen pretty good. I will go back and do the rivets every 3 inches, but I can do that by myself so I wanted to use the extra hands while I had them so we did 6 for the time being.
Next, we (well Ron) did the 110 that was now behind the wall so we could put the outlet boxes in. I wont even go into the story of bad rivets that we purchased from Amazon. I will just say make sure you buy GOOD rivets! US RIVETS!
As you can plainly see, Benson was the super on this job!
This is the second section we put up. Nothing new worthy took place here. Thank GOD! I will say we improved our method of carrying the aluminum from the garage to Maryilyn. Its always a learning process!
We decided that the center panel should go up before the top of the walls so that all the exposed cuts were factory cuts. I will say this is where we made a mistake with our measurements and had to cut an additional piece of aluminum. The one we messed up will get used in other areas, but there were a few choice words flying out of my mouth.
Ok.. so now we have almost all the 110 hooked up, we have 3 sheets in... Life is good. But then... I slept! And while I was NOT sleeping Im thinking, how the hell am I going to hold a 12 foot piece of aluminum 4 feet in the air, get it to curve with the walls and fasten it by myself? CRAP. RON we MUST finish these two top walls before you leave.
So off to cut the top of the side walls we went first in cardboard and then in aluminum.
Thankfully the only mistake we made cutting (besides some small trimming) was the middle piece early on.
I will say you won't find any pictures of us actually hanging the top walls because there were four of us playing twister with a 12' piece of aluminum 4' in the air. Ron had the forsite to see this issue and made these little "S" type brackets to rest the aluminum on as we were holding it. I have to say without those clips it would have been close to impossible with our knowledge and skillset.
So the biggest pieces of the walls are in and hopefully, I can handle the smaller pieces by myself.
Next, I decided to replace all the vents in the center with vent/fans. Hopefully, this will circulate enough air to keep the front and back at the same temperature, but cooling and heating. So we went to work getting the old ones off and making things right to put the new ones in.
I dont have any pics of the fans after install, but Ill post some next time. Two of them are controlled at the fan and the one in the bedroom is controlled via remote control.
You can see the underside of one of the fans in this picture as well as the gally lit up.
So to sum it up we got a hellofalot done. Most of the hard part of the electricity is done, the biggest wall panels are up, the vent/fans are all in, all the brake/turn / running lights are replaced and working, just to mention a few. We are moving along! I
I have to give a huge thank you and credit to Ron again! He worked on much of this while I wasn't even available to help him. Mostly I just went out and nagged him. I don't know WHAT I would have done about the walls. He also tidied up and finished all the hard electrical stuff and a million other things. Although we have different ways of doing things, his patience, explanations, and expertise are priceless.
THANK YOU RON!
I also want to give a shout-out and thank Margie and Brian for helping us hold the walls up to get them tacked. FYI I'm taking volunteers for the rest of the wall! :-)
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