Awnings and Demo

Now that we’ve had this Airstream for a few weeks, we’re really getting moving on the work that is needed. When we first picked it up, I spent the first few days going through the various components and testing what did and didn’t work – did the 12V lighting work when a battery was in? If we plugged into utility power did the outlets work? Could you put water in the drain and have it come out of the tank?

Fortunately, these tests all generally had good results. The wiring inside was working without issue and the other basic components, such as the gray and black water tanks, seemed to hold water and empty without a problem. It was my understanding from the purchaser that the previous owners (who had it for 15+ years) had winterized it before it mostly sat, so it was expected those would work.

One of the other things I tested on the outside were all of the awnings. Turns out they are in amazingly good condition. The only issue was the large patio awning did not want to open. A little research revealed that this was because the steel tube was bowed. ZipDee (the maker, who is still in business) has instructions on how to fix it yourself. So one evening Mary and I took apart the awning and gradually bent the bow out of the tube, fixing the awning. I gave them a quick cleaning and now we have three working awnings. Huzzah!

However, as mentioned in the previous post, this travel trailer is a ultimately a gut renovation – everything on the inside is going to go. That includes all of the insulation packed between the inner and outer “skins” that make up the trailer. But before we could get there, we had to tear out things like the walls, fixtures and flooring. That process took about two weeks. Here are some photos of the progress. You’ll notice that there is a shot of the rear floor, which is basically completely rotted out. This is a well known issue in vintage Airstreams because of how the rear bumper is designed – it essentially lets water flow into the edge of the wood floor, leading to rot. We’ll be fixing that as part of the renovation. Also, the boys wanted to help out a bit.

Next up is taking out the interior skins to remove the insulation that we know will be really nasty since there has clearly been colonies of mice in here.

Leave a Reply