Help. I am drowning in a sea of aluminum!

It is a good thing that no one was here to witness my latest melt down, as I lay on the floor staring into space mumbling…”What have I gotten myself into?” What is it that has reduced me to a pool of snot bubbles on the floor? This pile of aluminum parts, pieces, and windows in my garage. All of these pieces need to be cleaned, repaired, smoothed, and polished. 

The only thing that makes me happy about this picture is my Chevelle in the background.

Here is a picture of some of the chemicals and things I have used so far on this pile of stuff. Some previous owner had a love affair with silicone sealant and it is on everything, just getting that off has proved to be a huge challenge.

Here is a picture of some of the tools I have tried so far to accomplish my mission.

I have read many tutorials created by people restoring their trailers on how they managed this process and have tried many of their suggestions. I am currently developing a process that works for me. Here is what one of the windows looked like before. 

Dirty, rusty, and just plain gunky. Pieces are bent, scratched, and otherwise trashed. It took me a couple of hours just to get this window apart, get all the old gasket and silicone cleaned off, and get the pieces all hammered back into some shape that resembles its birth shape. Two hours and I haven’t even begun the cleaning, filing, sanding, buffing, polishing. Here is a picture of what my windows won’t look like. This gentleman, I refer to him as the Aluminum Polishing God, has spent 18-20 hours per window just in the cleaning/polishing stage…does he have a life????? 

 While these look incredibly amazing (they look like chrome OMG!!!), I will be happy to have mine just looking clean and marginally shiny. Here is my progress so far on window one.

It hasn’t been polished and buffed yet, but is clean and all the rust and 52 years of smoke, food guck, pet odor, and the like are gone. I have spent a small fortune on things to help with this task and imagine I will spend more before the process is complete.Great aluminum polisher is a job I would have rather not added to my resume :)

We have walls!

Okay so they are not on the trailer yet...but we have walls!

We were going to try to sandblast the tongue of the trailer this weekend and get it all ready for gorgeousness but had a couple of issues with the sandblaster, not the least of which it is MESSY! Steve tried it out on his ‘48 Ford and that is as far as we got. Here is a picture of Steve sandblasting. Dig the bee keeper head gear. 

 

Despite the fiasco with the sandblaster, we did manage to get the paneling on the walls. We decided to use cherry paneling in our renovation. Most of the trailers of that era used birch paneling and applied amber colored shellac for a very warm (yellow) look. We decided to be different and use cherry. Here is a picture of the first finished wall. The cherry paneling is on both ends and in the middle where is looks slightly different we used birch. The reason for this is that the kitchen covers the whole area where the birch is, and birch is less expensive than cherry. Originally in the kitchen area they used ugly pressed board. 

 Here is the second wall. You can see the difference between the birch and cherry a bit more in this photo. On this wall the closet goes where the birch is.

  I don't know what we will get done this weekend. Steve needs to get his dad's Model A painted on Saturday. His dad it hot rodding a 1929 Model A. They are painting it bright red. It is going to be really cool. I may be stuck polishing aluminum all weekend.

The title revisited

As I noted in an earlier post, trying to secure a title for our trailer has turned into an adventure. Some adventures are fun and exhilarating and create wonderful, positive, life long memories. While other adventure…well for lack of a better term…suck! Unfortunately, this adventure falls in the latter category. 

Steve made it back to the DMV on Friday and was excited to see the lady that had given him the glimmer of hope was working. He was next in line and decided that if his number was called and she wasn’t available he would ask to wait for her. Just as his number was called…she went on a break…of course she did, remember this is an adventure. So he was forced to go to another agent. Here is a condensed version of how that transaction went.

Steve: I am here to get a title for a trailer that I purchased. I completed all the paperwork, I needed and am back to submit it.

Surly DMV Woman (feverishly rifling through Steve’s paperwork): But you don’t have a title, I can’t help you if you don’t have a title. 

Steve: (Thought bubble…DUH, I know I don’t have a title that is why I am here!!!)

Steve (taking a deep breath): I came and had a VIN search earlier, I have my bill of sale, and I filled out the support paperwork and I need to submit it.

Surly DMV Woman: But you don’t have a title so I can’t do anything for you.

Steve (trying hard to keep himself from reaching across the counter and strangling Surly DMV Woman):  I was here last week and spoke to the NICE woman that just left for her break and she told me to return with these documents and then you could submit them for review.

Surly DMV Woman (calling out to her supervisor): Could you come over here, this man doesn’t have a title.

Supervisor (looking through Steve’s paperwork): He has all the right paperwork, and now we just need to submit it for review.

Surly DMV Woman (panicked because this new revelation has rocked her belief in at that is right in the world): But what code do I use, there isn’t a code for this.

Supervisor: Use this code.

Surly DMV Woman (looking at Steve): Oh, I guess we can do that.

Steve: (Thought bubble…you are freaking brilliant) Thank you.

So now we wait. The supervisor said it could take 2-3 weeks to hear back as to weather they will grant us a title. Everyone keep your fingers crossed!

The exterior tear down

A couple of weeks went by and a brief vacation, of which we spent a bulk of the time discussing, designing and brainstorming about how we wanted to restore the trailer. We got home from our trip on Friday afternoon about one and by four we began the process of disassembling the trailer. On Friday we got the windows out, the door off and the drip rail off the edge. Saturday we took the siding off, removed the walls and took the paneling off the walls. We found much more damage to the sub structure than we anticipated, but it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed.  Sunday we spend repairing all the damage to the sub structure. On Monday, I took up the layers of linoleum and cleaned the sub floor, which was actually in really good shape.

  Not much left of the framing around the cargo doors. 

 We expected damage on this side because the siding was all caved in.

 This side had lots of damage too.

 Rear framing gone now. Braced the walls to get the rest of the roof off.

 And then there was nothing left but the floor. Looks so small...oh wait...it is small!

 Passenger wall before removing the plywood.

With the plywood off you can see all the damage around the bottom and around the front window. 

Framing is all fixed now. We used pocket screws instead of the staples that were originally used. Makes the structure a bit more stable. 

You can see how deteriorated the wood at the bottom of the walls was.

Now...tackling the title issue.

We found that it depended on who you talked to at the DMV as to how daunting this task would be. The first DMV official told us that we had to donate a kidney, sign over our house, and make them cookies weekly for life. The second person was a bit more sympathetic to our plight and made the process a bit easier, however she did have an issue that we had a bill of sale for a 1956 Westerner and we wanted to title it as the correct year of 1958. She said if we could get a new bill of sale from the previous owner that it would expedite the process. Luckily, we saved the contact info for the previous owner, called her up and she was more than happy to get us a new bill of sale. So we now have the new bill of sale and have to get down to the DMV again to get the process started. What a pain!!!! I am not sure I would buy another trailer without a title. After reading many of the posts on Repairing Yesterday's Trailers most people advise against buying a trailer with no title. Live and learn!

Who made these Westerner Travel Trailers?

We immediately started researching the origins of our new purchase and found that there is very little information about Westerner Trailers. An Internet search returned only a couple of relevant links for us. One of the links was to  Repairing Yesterday's Trailers which is a discussion board on YUKU. We searched that and found someone who was restoring a 1958 Westerner and as we looked at it we started questioning that ours was a 1956. After reading several of the posts from this person, we started to realize she lives in Vancouver WA just a half hour from us. I contacted Jan and began corresponding about trailers and comparing notes. We also found two Westerners on Sisters On The Fly, a 1957 and a 1958. Again, ours looked just like the 1958. Another clue was during demolition we found the date stamp on our sink and it was January 1958. Jan encouraged us to search for the VIN#, because it includes the year and month of production, and showed us where it was located on the tongue of her trailer. There was nothing that even resembled stamping on our tongue. Of course there was so many layers of paint of the tongue you probably could have hidden an elephant, so out came the paint stripper and ta da there was the VIN# which confirmed we are the proud owners of a 1958 not a 1956 Westerner. 

The trailer gets some radical cosmetic surgery.

One week after dragging the trailer home, we completely gutted it. I know you are probably wondering why we gutted it before dealing with the title, but we were roofing Steve’s garage and had a dumpster at the house and decided this was good incentive to get rid of the yucky, stinky interior. Plus because you have to take the trailer to the DMV for a VIN inspection, we thought we might get a more favorable response if it didn't smell so bad :) Here are a few pictures of what remains in the trailer. 

 Looking back at the cargo doors. The framing was completely rotten around these. 

Looking towards the front. Lots of water damage.

Looking towards the back. The appliances were all in remarkably good shape. However we won't be reinstalling either the ice box (I need a real refrigerator), or the oven (did anyone ever really use this???).

We found all kinds of interesting things during the demo. This was Steve's personal favorite. LOL!!