Other Pursuits.
My wife's best friend has a camper. It's one of those '60s era ones, not nearly as desirable these days as a canned ham version, and it's completely beat to shit. The paneling got wet at various times, parts of the wall frames are rotting away, the musty smell of mold pervades the carcass, the electrical is terrifying, the propane system is almost as bad, and the décor has seen better days. About the best thing I can say for it is at least most of the appliances and tanks had been removed.
If it was mine, I'd find a cliff and push.
However, this friend has limited resources and this is her family's method of getting away from it all. Thus, I was tasked to make it somewhat safe, weather-tight, and freshen up the interior a lot. A whole lot. A butt-load.
In other words, dump a ton of money and time into it. Money and time that will do little to increase the value of the trailer, but maybe that will make it more pleasant to be in. As it is now, I'd rather spend a night in a low-rent Burmese opium den.
So, we had her drag it over to the house and I started inspection and demolition. Once I started ripping off paneling and seeing how everything went together, I saw some of it wasn't as bad as I expected. Some of it was worse. Nothing that a lot of time and money couldn't fix. Yay. This isn't to say I'm not still scoping out likely-looking cliffs.
The worst part about this is that instead of using normal phillips or common screws, they used clutch-head screws. On every. single. screw. So I had to go out and find bits to remove them, because nobody in their right mind uses them anymore. Once out, they are replaced by phillips truss head screws, because I'm not putting those obscure things back in.
After the first day, I had the front half of the interior pretty much stripped and a decent idea of what I was facing. I started making lists and plans, then headed for the home improvement warehouse for what will be the first of thousands of trips.
In the interests of making the thing a bit lighter and lessening the chance of it exploding, I'm removing all of unneeded propane lines. There are seven of them at last count, all of which snake up into the interior and then are capped off in a somewhat questionable manner. Neat. I have no idea what they were all originally used for, but since the stove and the furnace are the only things that use propane now, I'm going to go with two. The rest will be properly capped off underneath, where the chance of killing the occupants is somewhat diminished.
The 115VAC wiring may have been in compliance with some sort of code at one time, but now it's just scary. I'm ripping it all out, and the extent of the 115VAC will be a single 15A breaker and two single gang, two-outlet boxes mounted within four feet of the point where power enters the camper. Running power through deteriorating cable in rotting walls is not my idea of fun. Your mileage may vary.
There wasn't originally a 12VDC system in the camper, so all of the lights and outlets were run off of 115VAC. I'm going to replace the vast majority of it with a limited amount of 12VDC run off a single battery. A couple ports for USB devices, a few LED lights, and the furnace fan will be the only drains on the battery, and a simple 1-bank battery charger will hopefully keep things functioning.
That's the interesting (to me) stuff. Before doing that I have a whole lot of carpentry, painting, flooring... It's like a puzzle, trying to figure out how to make something somewhat useful out of this huge pile of crap.
Figuring out what to do when is hard enough, and then I have to find the time to do it. What that means is that I don't have time for riding and my body is going to be beat up sufficiently that even if I did, I probably wouldn't want to. On top of that, I'm sure the black mold is going to do wonders for my performance.
Like riding into a headwind, all you can do is put your head down and grind it out. Sooner or later it will let up.
If it was mine, I'd find a cliff and push.
However, this friend has limited resources and this is her family's method of getting away from it all. Thus, I was tasked to make it somewhat safe, weather-tight, and freshen up the interior a lot. A whole lot. A butt-load.
In other words, dump a ton of money and time into it. Money and time that will do little to increase the value of the trailer, but maybe that will make it more pleasant to be in. As it is now, I'd rather spend a night in a low-rent Burmese opium den.
So, we had her drag it over to the house and I started inspection and demolition. Once I started ripping off paneling and seeing how everything went together, I saw some of it wasn't as bad as I expected. Some of it was worse. Nothing that a lot of time and money couldn't fix. Yay. This isn't to say I'm not still scoping out likely-looking cliffs.
The worst part about this is that instead of using normal phillips or common screws, they used clutch-head screws. On every. single. screw. So I had to go out and find bits to remove them, because nobody in their right mind uses them anymore. Once out, they are replaced by phillips truss head screws, because I'm not putting those obscure things back in.
After the first day, I had the front half of the interior pretty much stripped and a decent idea of what I was facing. I started making lists and plans, then headed for the home improvement warehouse for what will be the first of thousands of trips.
In the interests of making the thing a bit lighter and lessening the chance of it exploding, I'm removing all of unneeded propane lines. There are seven of them at last count, all of which snake up into the interior and then are capped off in a somewhat questionable manner. Neat. I have no idea what they were all originally used for, but since the stove and the furnace are the only things that use propane now, I'm going to go with two. The rest will be properly capped off underneath, where the chance of killing the occupants is somewhat diminished.
The 115VAC wiring may have been in compliance with some sort of code at one time, but now it's just scary. I'm ripping it all out, and the extent of the 115VAC will be a single 15A breaker and two single gang, two-outlet boxes mounted within four feet of the point where power enters the camper. Running power through deteriorating cable in rotting walls is not my idea of fun. Your mileage may vary.
There wasn't originally a 12VDC system in the camper, so all of the lights and outlets were run off of 115VAC. I'm going to replace the vast majority of it with a limited amount of 12VDC run off a single battery. A couple ports for USB devices, a few LED lights, and the furnace fan will be the only drains on the battery, and a simple 1-bank battery charger will hopefully keep things functioning.
That's the interesting (to me) stuff. Before doing that I have a whole lot of carpentry, painting, flooring... It's like a puzzle, trying to figure out how to make something somewhat useful out of this huge pile of crap.
Figuring out what to do when is hard enough, and then I have to find the time to do it. What that means is that I don't have time for riding and my body is going to be beat up sufficiently that even if I did, I probably wouldn't want to. On top of that, I'm sure the black mold is going to do wonders for my performance.
Like riding into a headwind, all you can do is put your head down and grind it out. Sooner or later it will let up.
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