WILLY'S FACE LIFT - INSTALLMENT 4

New wood ready for skin

Today was a slow, tedious and often frustrating day.  I don't know who experienced the most frustration, Pamela or me.  We had purchased a special attachment for a drill that is supposed to be able to take adhesives and pinstripe off without damaging the paint.  It didn't work very well.  Pamela still spent all day painstakingly removing silicone. We came to the conclusion that we are going to do a full-body paint right away because what had been an okay paint job; i.e. the original paint with some minor touch-up; is now going to be scratched, damaged and covered with patched spots.  We decided that we will paint before I put on the molding and re-install any windows that will have been removed. It makes for easier painting and a lot less masking.

I spent the entire day working on the front right corner.  I was digging out old silicone all day which was doing nothing more than keeping the new wood from going in right. I had to do a lot of notching and fancy cutting because the builders had put the frame up then drilled holes and ran wires.  Now I have wires forcing me to cut special channels.  Several hours and I only got about 8 feet of new wood installed.  I'm going to have to cut a special piece out of a 2x4 to put frame behind the spot where the front start down and slightly back. I was told that you often have to make molds, etc., because of strange angles.

Halleluia, the seams meet!!

The molding. 

 Tomorrow I'm going to close the seam so that it is ready for molding and then work on some patching. There are a lot of holes from wires, TV antenna, awnings, etc., that need repaired.  Closing the seams involves lining up the skin and securing it to the new frame with screws. (Staples would require the use of an air powered driver.)

The molding to the right is not the the original style. The original tried to be fancy and covered the screws with a piece of plastic but it just wasn't nice. This is a much older style of molding, but everyone knows there are screws holding it on. Heck, Airstream has made an icon out of their rivets and screws. This will be a lot easier to keep clean and shiny and should give a better seal.  As Pamela said on her FB page, we don't want to do this again for another 30 years.

Despite the frustration and problems we are making good progress. Right now Pamela is watching videos about painting.  She's been playing with a paint app since last spring coming up with ideas of how we might paint Willy.  It's decision time, Pamela!  

I can't tell you how excited I'm going to be to have my first seam put back together.