First phase complete????

Well you might say that we finished our first phase in the reconstruction of "Tin Man". We have removed all of the aluminum sheeting on the inside of the trailer and removed all of the insulation (Thank God that is over). Now we are at a bit off a cross roads because we arent sure if we are going to use the current electrical system, which is in very good shape, or rewire the whole thing. I have a friend who can help us rewire it and he also has a few hundred feet of copper wire that we can use but Im just not sure if it needs it or not. But meanwhile, we can start working on refurbishing the aluminum that we took off. Some of it needs to be stripped of its old paint and polished and some just needs to be sanded down smooth. We decided to paint all of the sides and leave the ceiling portion polished aluminum. Hopefully that will give it a nice feel. We are also thinking about puting in a wood burning stove or pellet stove instead of replacing the existing furnace. But these are all pipe dreams until we get ourselves jobs and can actually pay for all of these extravegant visions that we hope will simplify our lives (kind of ironic I guess). But for now we are at a stopping point and will keep doing little things like repairing aluminum, drawing out floor plans, ets.

This is a shot looking from back to front

This is another shot from back to front but you can see more of the ceiling

And finally, from the front looking toward the back

First day of real work!!

Well, as I said before, the first thing we are going to tackle is removing the inside panels so we can replace the electrical and insulation. We started today drilling out the rivets on the inside (it seems like there are thousands to remove). Erika started drilling out the rivets on the inside while I tried my hand in grinding off the backs of some "buck rivets" that can not be drilled. Below is a picture of the buck rivets that have to be removed with a grinder.


Once I ground the backs of the rivets off, I had to drill through them from the back to get them to release.While I was grinding, erika was drilling out the rivets with a 1/8' drill bit. Although we do not have safety goggles, we do have swimming goggles. We figured that its better to be safe than to look cool;)
This is a picture of the inside of the "Tin Man" with the first panel taken off, the insulation is still on though.
Now we have taken the insulation out, it is pretty nasty stuff although we didnt expect much better considering the insulation is 45 years old (its just a little older than my mom;).
We had a little visitor(shekena), we called her our airstream bandit. While she did not steal anything tangible, she did steal our valuable time by just sitting on the wheel well and doing nothing. But in her defense she did help us take down the first panel because it was so big.
After we got the first panel off we had to bust the back of the rivets out of the framework.
Erika decided to take a self portrait of herself in her wonderful isolation mask;)
We managed to get 4 panels off in about 2.5hrs and this is me getting rid of some old fiberglass insulation. Nasty stuff I tell you!
This is our final stopping point for the day. Unfortunately we also have school obligations and must study some too. But we have a pretty good starting point and should be able to get the rest of the panels off in another half day or so.
Also as a side note :as soon as we started taking the insulation out, the sun started busting through the outside panels and really heating up the trailer. It felt like it was about 150deg inside when we finished. Thank God for windows and a brisk breeze!

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