some days of a dad: April 2014

weekend of april 5th was challenging. rain on and off all weekend, high temps around 55°F, and I needed minimum of 55 for 24 hours for the VCT tile to set right. plastic on and off several times a day. checking weather radar, looked like a 4 hour gap saturday afternoon, so I decided to lay the tile.

putting down the floor:

grinding off the proud screw heads

subfloor done (water-proofed on underside)

really, the whole reason I had to strip it to the frame was the deer crushed the passenger side front floor, which anchors the winch that raises the roof. july 4 weekend 2013, we hit the deer friday pm. I had to jimmy/jerry/jury rig the winch mount with a clamp and a pair of vice grips at our friend's place (we were staying with friends for the weekend at their river lot (secondary, our friends aren't THAT swanky), and they're building a cabin, have a lot of tools around.

to repair the floor, I had to start from scratch. I always thought the design of the original trailer was ugly and a waste of space. this is the perfect excuse to get the boss (dana) to let me rebuild it.

anyway, back to laying tile. we chose grey VCT, off the shelf from home depot. available sat am, not special order, .78 a sq ft, and my neighbor has some left over yellow we can use for accents. 50 ish sq ft, around $40 bucks.

this is becoming the theme. what's available now, cheap, and not ugly. that's what we'll use. there's a challenge in working with limited materials, in finding off the shelf solutions, and not overthinking every decision.

also, we're going camping at bumping lake, outside Yakima, in the mountains near Mt Ranier on Memorial Day weekend. we don't have time to make a big deal out of every decision.

tiling complete, weekend of april 12th, i think (after our spring break, see below):

looks blueish, called grey, ???

ok, so my time line gets a bit fouled up. now i think the bad weather was this weekend of the 12th.

in any case, the first full week of april was our kids spring break. we rented a cabin on the Oregon coast at Arch Cape. I brought a work laptop, so I could figure out the wall construction, and design new curves for the front and back ends of the trailer. for 10 years, this ugly trailer's been parked in our back yard; i've probably spent hours staring at it from the hot tub, wondering why they didn't add more space on the front and back, and integrate the curve of the bottom with the roof.

looking back at this before photo, you can see what's left of the front "curve" shape sweeps up and back into itself at the joint with the roof. (and by the way, you can see what a piece of crap this was, right?, but we love it, when its open, it's 8 feet turns into 16', with 3 full beds. always get the best night's sleep in it, and get to keep all our stuff up off the ground):

just by adding some matching curve to the roof, a more integrated, practical space can be made, with more storage, and a sweeter, more teardrop shape.

for a couple hours on vacation, i ignored the kids and tried to get something going:

the green represents the new shape of the front and back. everything shown wood is exactly the original design, which i can't alter due to the lift mechanism, and the size of the frame. and don't worry, the curves do actually meet correctly, they just look staggered from the angle. the roof is a half inch wider than the base for drainage. trim will even out the transition.

i tried a bunch of shapes, (like 4), and finally realized this was the best i could do, given the restrictions on overall length, and remembering the bed support struts at the last minute, which angle in to the bottom of the front and back.

from the solidworks cad model above, i just made working drawings of the walls, like this:

right, i know this drawing is over dimensioned, it's just for me, so who cares. if you don't know what i'm talking about, then you're lucky. and the 4 decimal places is just so i know which 1/16" to hit, not implying tolerances at all, i make those up on the fly.

i sent the cad files to my brother jon in San Francisco, to cut out on his shop bot, a CNC router. takes him almost no time at all, and everything's close to perfect. even with $8 to ship the parts to me, it's a screaming deal. in the mean time, i get the walls ready.

so now i build the walls. this is the weekend of april 19th and 20th, i'm pretty sure:

during the next week, i put the end walls on:

the plywood for the walls is a new ish cheap ($20 a sheet, only need 2) 1/4 inch underlayment from Home Cheapo. they make the color really consistent for even bleed through of cheap vinyl flooring, so the back side actually has a nice color. we won't panel the interior, so i install it good side in:

at this point, i'm not using any plans, just copying the old parts laying around the yard.

you can see the pockets for the lifting struts

the winch is finally back in place. the actual damage from the deer and rot is fixed.

every single piece of anything gets bedded in caulking or glued together, to keep out water. the old one didn't have a drop of sealant inside anywhere. they relied on the exterior trim, installed with rv tape, to try to keep out water. probably worked for a few years, but cracked from vibration. once water got into a double sided wall, it never left, rotting every corner, the floor, no wall was free of rot.

april 28th. the end pieces have arrived (last week), and i can't wait to get them put together.

every joint is glued with gorilla glue (water activated expanding polyurethane, awesome to make water tight joints, and really strong) and screwed with hot dipped galvanized screws.

april 29th. every day after work i try to make some progress. the family is being really patient with my lack of attention, housework, crazy demands to come help me hold something up. i hope the neighbors are OK, a couple times i got a bit loud, stressed from having glue setting up on parts and kids wandering away back to some screen or device.

by the end of the night on april 29th:

ok, so this blog started off OK 9 years ago. just read the 6 days of BLOGGING I did, kinda funny to see a few days I have little recollection of many years later.

anyway, this latest adventure started last summer when a deer decided to not stop for me and our tent trailer. sad, but I think the volunteer fire chief had some nice venison for a while (he said he always kept what he could). elsa was riding in the car behind us with dana, said she saw the deer flying down the embankment, at least one leg flying off by itself.