Painting our Dream Inn

So here is our plan: 

White on top, aqua on bottom with a silver z-stripe down the middle cause every great vintage trailer's gotta have a z-stripe right?

Fist Step: Self Etching Primer

After thoroughly scrubbing the trailer down and sanding any chipping areas (not many as most of the paint was just simply worn off), we then gave the trailer a quick scuff with dry scotch brite pads and then a quick wipe down with some paint prep cleaner that a friend who does this professionally gave us I think it was called lacquer and varnish cleaner or something like that.  Then we sprayed the trailer down with cans of self etching primer- concentrating on the areas where the aluminum was bare so that the primer would stick to the aluminum and bind to the new paint.

The Primer and Sealer that we used

Me looking oh so fashionable!

Primed and ready to go- we borrowed an air compressor from a friend for the next step

Second Step: Sealer

 Here we go- first use of a spray gun/compressor (not too bad for newbies I must say- only a few drips here and there).  We started on the roof and worked our way down, had to wait for a day that wasn't too windy so that we wouldn't get paint on our neighbors houses or cars.

Ok- ready to paint now ;-)

Third Step: White Topcoat Paint

Here is what we used, ended up paying way more than what we budgeted for but hopefully it's worth it in the end. Almost $800 total to prime/seal/paint the trailer- probably would have been a lot cheaper and easier to pay someone else to do it! But that would have taken all the fun out of it now ;-)

Here is what she looked like after painting the top half of the trailer white.

Fourth Step: Aqua Topcoat on the lower half

Next we masked off the top edge of our z-stripe and masked off all of the upper half of the trailer. Ready to spray the bottom half aqua color.     

Spray, spray, spray before it gets too warm to paint!

Tomorrow we're Painting the silver z-stripe! can't wait to see the finished product, will post pictures soon (hopefully).

Finished interior wood panel replacements, now Paint Prep- Never ending!

Well we've got some blog catching up to do. We've been working hard lately on the trailer, and we took a break to get married last month! Needless to say we haven't been keeping up very well on the blogging lately.  We've got just about all of the rotten damaged wood inside the trailer replaced with new birch panels and new pine wood framing where needed (and easily accessible).

Replacing rotten wood frame on back side wall

look at all this rotten wood we had to get rid of

Back wall internal frame after some clean up

We took out the original back side panel and laid it over our new birch paneling to trace the exact dimensions

Here is the new back side wall with new foam insulation, and paper moisture barrier

We also put in new locks for our side storage compartments

Now we have Keys to lock up the hatches

Next step- exterior paint.  (We decided to make her look good on the outside first)

Removed all the windows, gutter rails and rain gutter things, ceiling vent and exterior light fixtures (all getting polished- that will be another post all in itself what a job!)

                                    Look what we found when we removed the kitchen sink outlet!

Then we masked off all the windows with plastic and frog tape

My sweet hubby hard at work

Then we washed her down with a good de-greaser/ grime cutter and scrubbed her good with scotch brite pads

Notice the new wedding ring ;-)