Door to dork.

Doors are a pain in the butt! We could not find windows, or trim in the shape we wanted, in a natural silver aluminum finish. We spray painted them silver.

The doors are made from the drops gleaned from cutting the door openings. I packed 1/8th inch luan around the edges of the opening and traced that shape to the door blank. This will give plenty of clearance for the doors to shut on the weather stripping.

The weather stripping was installed with caulk and staples, making sure to overlap the corners to shed water. The door is hung on piano hinge over top of the weather strip.

Always a dry fit.

This was the most nerve wracking part of the build so far. You do not want to miss cut the rough openings for the windows! They are all plunge cuts with a skill saw, which are notoriously difficult to get straight.

Then the window is simply glued and screwed to the door panel.

After a whole day of work the doors are on.

Good Friends, Good Works

Our friends Rose and Orville came to stay with us for the weekend and put in some hours working on the trailer. Orville is the Tearjerkers Chesapeake Chapter Director. We installed cedar siding to the interior, sealed it all up from the exterior, and insulated.

Orville was the cut man and I fit and secured the cedar to the interior framing. This was a huge help, without a cut man I would have had to crawl in and out for every board.

The cedar is a closet lining material. It is very light, has tongue and groove, which makes it really easy to follow the curve, and comes in packages of six 8' boards. It comes in at about $1 per square foot. There is an aromatic version of this cedar which is darker and has more aroma, but it comes only in random lengths up to four feet. We wanted to have as few seams as possible and accomplished having seams only in what will be the back of the closets.

The color was also much more in line with our aesthetic.

Any available seams were taped and corners calked, for strength and to prevent air flow.

Pink fiberglass insulation was installed in all the curved areas, and in the flats rigid foam was used. Every void was filled with either insulation or caulk.

Thank you Rose and Orville for all your help, especially for working with the sloppy and itchy materials. Thank you to our friends Trina and Bill for their support, and the Cranwells for showing up on cue with pizza in hand. We love you all and it makes our trailer even more dear having our friends help in building it.

Moving on Up.

In this post I will get through raising the walls and finishing the framing. First I raised the head and foot bulkheads. The vertical members in the head are located to attach electrical boxes to, and the foot to mirror the floor joists underneath. I went ahead and drilled all the holes, pulling the wiring through before setting the bulkheads. In this picture you can see the rejected trim ring from the first varnishing attempt, it has a rough mock-up of the cabinetry for the galley hanging in it.

I skinned the bulkheads to square them up and attached the port side. I set it in a bed of silicone caulk and glued and screwed it to the floor and bulkheads, being careful not to place a screw beyond where the trim ring will cover. In the foot bulkhead I had to pick the perfect length screw and drive them from the interior, sweating the whole time and praying it did not pierce the exterior skin. I followed the same procedure for the starboard side. At this point I could really appreciate all the work of preparing the sides with their candy coating of varnish, water will never get to the wood.

The last easy, flat piece of framing was the ceiling. It has a rough opening of 14 x 14 1/2 for the attic fan. Originally I made it straight 14 x 14, but changed it after hearing how difficult it was for our friend Trina to install hers without leaving a cavity for the fan wiring. Thanks Trina!

The final step of framing was the curved portions. The rejected trim ring came in super handy. I cut out the parts of the curve I needed, used them as templates to cut out mirror images for the other side, and installed them with the framing.

This gives a guide at the edges for the interior paneling and provides a nailing surface to hold it in place.

The one thing I don't have is a good picture of the cabinet bulk head. It will serve as the back wall of both the galley and cabin cabinets. It is about 16 inches forward of the foot bulkhead, its bottom is the same height as the top of the foot's, and it runs all the way to the top of the trailer. The top member is a full 2x4 on edge with the top edge ripped to match the curvature of the side. I went with a more stout framing member because it will be what the galley hatch hinge is attached to. I promise to include a picture in the next post to clarify what I am talking about.

Finally the Foundation

Hey everybody, sorry to be gone so long, but I promise to catch you up. This post will encompass the deck preparation. First I needed to bring the joists of the frame up to an even height. I needed something that I wouldn't have to worry about rotting so I chose Azak, a PVC material. I had to plane it down to thickness and notch it out to fit. I attached it to the metal frame with self tapping screws, making sure to seal them to the frame with caulk.

Then I fitted a plywood layer to the frame, leaving a slight gap at the sides to accommodate a bed liner finish to seal the edges.

I was again dealing with size issues and had to make it out of 4 pieces gleaned from 2 sheets of plywood. I fit them together with a tongue and groove that I milled into the wood, making sure to have the seams over a metal part of the trailer. This will help prevent water from getting to the seams.

I then laid out the floor joist. I tacked them in place temporarily so I could flip the whole thing over and secure the plywood permanently from below.

Katie then helped seal the plywood by first painting a coat of bed liner, then filling all the voids with paintable caulk, and then applying a second coat of bed liner making sure to seal the edges.

I then attached the floor system to the trailer with 4 carriage bolts in each trailer joist. We then hoisted the whole trailer up into a rack that I made to give access to the under side. The idea was to flip it all the way over, but the welded on light boxes were in the way, so it ended up propped and looking like a medieval trebuchet.

This gave us great access to really seal up the bottom of the trailer. We caulked any seam or void, sprayed bed liner in all the irregular places and rolled it on thick in the field. This was an incredible amount of work, but now I feel confident that the trailer will not rot out from underneath us. I fully intend for this thing to last 50 years.

We then ran all the rough wiring. This is the first time I have ever done this and it had me tearing my hair out. I am praying that it all works because all the wires are sealed up in there but good. Next was two layer of rigid foam insulation sealing between the layers with caulk. At this stage we realized that the opening of the doors was much higher than the floor. To prevent the circulation from being cut off in your legs when sitting in the doorway we decided to raise the floor 2 1/2 inches. Before you scream, "what about the weight!" it only adds about 25 pounds. I only raised the cabin area, not the galley, which affords a great surface to attach the galley bulkhead to.

We filled this layer with some pink fiberglass insulation we had left over from insulating the crawl space at our house.

I finished the deck with tongue and groove plywood lapping over the edge and sanding flush to make a perfect edge to attach the sides to. Now the foundation is complete. Stay tuned to see the walls raised and the roof put on.

Progress

I promise you, we ARE making progress on our build! Jeremy has just been so busy that he hasn't had time to blog about the building process. He'll have to catch you up soon. Until then you can look at this picture and check out the build album on Flickr.

Louella's "Foamie" Group Build

After we made some progress on our build Saturday morning we headed down to New Church, VA to help some members of our Tear Jerkers chapter with their build. Louella and Rick are building a "foamie". Instead of building with plywood, which makes for a fairly heavy trailer, they opted for rigid foam insulation. They will be pulling the tear with an HHR which doesn't have a big towing capacity.

The group had been building all day so a lot of progress was made before we got there.



The foam for the roof was scored on one side to make bending it over the spars super easy. What a great idea!



When basic construction is finished Louella will cover all the foam surfaces with canvas. This should keep the weather out. I'm really excited to see the finished project.

There were also two ponies on the property, keeping and eye on the build. This is Little Buck.


And this is Queen Bee. Guess what the "B" stands for... :)

Purchases!!

Oh boy, did I ever do some good spending last night! We bought 3 big purchases for the teardrop: an exhaust fan, chrome detailing tape, and windows. Can you smell the hole my credit card burned in my pocket? It was red-hot!

After some good searching - and recommendations from teardrop friends - we decided on a Fan-tastic Vent for the exhaust fan. We also heard "Don't buy from anyone except Scott at Adohen Supply Co". We took their advice and got a crazy deal on a 5000rbt model vent. We opted for white interior trim, a low profile base, and a clear, flat, dome cover.

This model has a thermostat so if we're camping and go off and leave the dog in the trailer we can be sure that the temperature won't move much from where we set it. This is a good thing when you have a heat-restricted pup!

And what a find on flexible chrome detailing! We were looking to trim out the wave on either side of the trailer with aluminum. Instead we found Flex Chrome in almost any size and shape you could ask for! Please please please check them out! We chose part #HR027C. I comes in 108in strips so we bought 4 of them.
Lastly, we bought these awesome windows from R.W. Johnson Teardrop Trailers. We were originally looking for safari windows off of a VW bus but realized that they would be too large to fit into our door. I did a search for crank-out windows and found these instead. Ideally, we would have loved for them to have an aluminum finish but apparently you can't find them anywhere anymore - I asked around. I think we'll take these babies apart and spray them silver. Jeremy is a window man - hopefully he can get them back together!

Aren't they just wonderful! "Crankout with screen. WIN". You really can't get any better than that :)
Woohoo!!!