May I introduce to you... "Tin Man"

OK, so for those of you who don't know or are interested, Erika and I have purchased a 1964, 24ft airstream Tradewind Landyacht. We plan on rebuilding him back to living condition and living full time in it until we pay off our student loans (probably 5-7 years). The Frame, shell, axles, wheels and floor are in excellent condition, however the pictures below will show you that there is really nothing on the inside of it. He is totally stripped of his previous glory and ready for his new organs. As is turns out, airstreams traditionally have names and when we purchased him from the original owner, the name was "Glory" (as in "no guts, no glory"), as you can tell there were no "guts". We have decided to rename it to "Tin Man", but not for the obvious reasons. If you recall in the movie "the wizard of oz", the Tin Man was in need of a heart, and we have decided to be this airstreams heart. With out us it is just a peice of junk metal sitting in the parking lot. So first things first. We have to clean him out and sort through all of the parts left in him from the previous owner. Once we go through everything and salvage what we can use and get rid of the rest we will start the real work.

We have decided that since we do not know where we will be living in "Tin Man" and there is a possibility of cold winters, we need to put in new insulation. Considering that the insulation is from 1964 I figured it would be a good place to start. We will have to drill out all of the rivets that hold the aluminum sheets onto the frame of the body (it seems that there are thousands of rivets). Once we have the aluminum sheeting off, we will take out the old insulation and start cleaning up the salvaged aluminum. While we have the inside taken apart I figured that we better run new electrical because Im not sure what condition the old stuff is in. This is our starting point and after we get the aluminum back on the inside we will start working on the plumbing. Once the plumbing is all squared away it is just a matter of buildnig the interior which will be time consuming but I know more about that than I do electrical or plumbing so I will be more confident in my work;)

This is the outside of "Tin Man"

He is in need of some good polishing but will clean up just fine

This is the inside looking from the back to the front

This is the inside looking from the front to the back
Some original emblems that we will try to restore