OMG, it felt great not to have to work on another window! LOL

On Saturday, we started trying to decide our next steps. It was a long, rough week, so we decided to pluck some low-hanging fruit. As we go along, I add tasks to a list. These are typically little details that, for whatever reason, we didn't finish with the original project. For example: the hardware that opens/closes the windows and finding suitable replacements is on that list ;)  Another thing on that list was getting the front two stabilizing jacks installed. 

Mike had installed the rear two stabilizers last summer. But we didn't have great tools to do it, so he was pretty frustrated by the project, and dropped it. We've since gotten the proper tools, and HOLY COW! The right tools made the job SO much easier! And Maude is super stable now! THIS trailer ain't a-rockin'!

Not shown: We also snipped some pieces of the belly pan off that we'd been meaning to since we did that project LOL

On Sunday, we again hemmed and hawed about what project we wanted to tackle next. We landed on getting the front end cap installed. If you'll recall, the rear end cap was NOT FUN. It took weeks and weeks of pushing and shoving and reshaping the end cap, and in the end we accidentally cracked it (repairing the fiberglass is on the list! LOL)

​But really, the front end cap needs to be installed so it'll be out of our way for moving forward with just about any other project in the trailer. Here's what we started with!

We got Reflectix insulation installed in the front curve. I'm kind of in love with spray adhesive! It went really smoothly :)

For the rear end cap, we insulated with Reflectix and Rock Wool. Even though we cut the Rock Wool batting in half (it comes 3 inches thick), it still felt too thick for the 1.5" space between the outer skin and the end cap. We decided to change materials and bought the 1" purple insulating foam you see above.

The difficulty with the foam board is that it's flat. Airstreams are NOT ;) In order to help the board flex into the curves, we scored the back side. It worked fabulously! Gaps between the pieces of foam board will be filled with spray foam insulation. 

We only got as far as the picture above shows, but we're excited for next weekend to finish up the insulation and to start getting that end cap installed!

​Until next time! <3 Becca

Warning: This is going to be a short post ;)

We got the last window done!!!!!!!!!! 8 windows with an average time of 3 hours per window to clean and reseal each pane. What a pain! ;)  But it's done! And this last window was, by far, the easiest one. What a nice treat for all of our hard work!

The rest of our weekend was spent driving to pick up this cutie!

Meet the newest member of the Seitz Household - Fig the Hedgie Pig! She's 13 weeks old and a total sweetie :) 

​Until next time! <3 Becca

Howdy! We got a chance to get some more work done on Maude this weekend! 2 more windows are DONE! The only one remaining is her rear window :)

The first window we did this weekend was GROSS. Some previous owner(s) had tried to remedy some leaking, but went about it all the wrong way. Like a previous window, they used some products for home windows, not aluminum windows. But on this one, they ALSO used silicone caulk. You're not supposed to use silicone on aluminum - my understanding is that a chemical reaction happens between silicone and aluminum that is undesirable. We got to undo it all! LOL

Here is a closeup of the frame. In that little groove where you can see moss growing, it's PACKED with that home-window product. Unfortunately for us, we HAD to get it clean so that our new window seals would sit in that groove properly! It meant spending a HUGE chunk of time trying to scratch it out with a razor blade, because it's not just a groove - it has a little lip to help catch and hold the seals. Some dental tools would have been super handy! All of the white stuff you see around the frame is silicone that at least came off super easily with a wire wheel. But there was a TON of it!

Buh-bye, last of the nasty dirt/mouse excrement on this frame!

Hello, pretty new window pane! Mike's really getting good at cutting glass! LOL

Pretty new window and seals! Sorry for the picture with so many reflections PLUS our house THROUGH the windows! LOL

The second window we did this week went really smoothly! The original glass popped out nicely, they hadn't used any of the cement-like product! It went so smoothly I forgot to take many pictures! The good news is that this isn't your first rodeo seeing windows resealed on this trailer ;)

And here's Maude's front window all cleaned and sealed up!

Honestly, we've come such a long way on Maude! Her exterior, aside from not being fully polished, is looking clean and straight! 

We picked up Maude 2 years ago on August 25th. We've had SO many ups and downs, times I've doubted my life decisions (LOL) but the progress is undeniable! Getting these windows resealed is helping to renew my love and excitement for Maude. We're almost completely finished with her external projects and we're getting ready to move on to her interior!!

Until next time :)  <3 Becca

Howdy! More window this week! Surprise! LOL
​Last weekend we did the top window. This weekend we did the bottom.

Some previous fool decided to use the types of materials one would use to glaze windows in a house. It was a COMPLETE PAIN to deal with in a trailer situation! As you can see above, we had to chip off the material that was like a plastery-concrete material to uncover the edge of the window pane.

Then we used the heat gun to release the window pane from the tacky material that helps hold it in place. We managed to keep the original window pane in tact! WOOHOO! If you recall, we broke the last one we tried to remove from the frame ;)  A little acetone and a razor blade got it all cleaned up and looking beautiful!

While I was cleaning the window pane, Mike was chiseling out more of the plastery-concrete stuff. Once he got it all chiseled-out, he used a wire wheel to clean up the frame. Check out how NASTY it was! You can totally see the difference in the picture on the above right!

And just like all the other windows, the pane got placed with new tacky stuff and then the rubber sealing-strips that you see in the above photo! Doing these windows is tedious and really frustrating in the heat (the tacky stuff gets SUUUPER tacky and prefers to stick to fingers over the aluminum frame!), but MAN, they look really pretty all cleaned up! PLUS With the new seals they actually seal now! We're hoping that these windows were the main source of our remaining leaks!

3 more windows remain! 

Until next time :)  <3 Becca

Between weather that is just too hot (115 degrees, are you INSANE?!?) and vacation, combine that with a bit of lack-of-motivation - It's been a while!

But this past weekend we got another window pane reseated and glazed!

I totally forgot to take a before picture - oops! But just imagine it with a piece of plexiglass taped into place ;)  Above is the one we did this weekend, the bottom is on the slate for this coming weekend!

For those of you who are curious, we took a road trip to Wisconsin for vacation. We drove there in 2 days and took 3 days to drive home. LONG driving days were hard, but in between was one of the best vacations we've been on in a LONG time!

We visited our friends on Madeline Island in Lake Superior! A short ferry ride brought us to THAT gorgeous view :)

We also go two new stamps in our National Parks Passport Book! Yay!

A good break from routine is wonderful! Rest. Have fun. Rest some more. And now we're ready to get back to work and working on Maude! 

​Until next time, you guys! <3 Becca

Howdy! You'll recall that last time we were reseating the window pane (or I guess, in this case, actually installing a real pane) in the middle window. We found the frame to be separated at the corner. We tried to repair it with this aluminum welding stuff and accidentally overheated the aluminum and deformed it. We stopped while we were ahead. Or less behind? ;)

With fresh minds and bodies and a pop-up tent over our work area so we didn't have to compete with the rain, we fixed it! It's not as pretty as that first fix, but with some metal putty to fill in the gaps, it's "Better'n it was!"

I can't remember if I've talked about Maude's motto on here! Whenever we come up against something we're unsure of how to do, or something doesn't quite turn out as we'd hoped, we tell ourselves it's "Better Than It Was." Which cracks us up! ENDLESSLY. Because seriously, it's just NOT saying much! LOL

All new seals!

And window #3 of 8 is all done! We propped the window open while the caulk for the seals dried. Eventually, we'll get to fixing/replacing/whatever all of the internal hardware, but for now, at least these windows can latch shut and, as far as we can tell (LOL!) don't leak! Woot!

I'm kind of stupid excited to get the rest of the window panes reseated/replaced/resealed because they really do look SO pretty when they're all fixed up :)

Until next time! <3 Becca

Howdy! :)

This week we moved forward with more work on the windows! 

Here, you can see the new glass that we got last week, since we couldn't find it at a hardware store in a wide enough piece. Having it custom cut was pretty nice! It was a bit less stressful than cutting it (and possibly breaking it!) ourselves :)

Isn't that gorgeous!?

These seals go in the frame on the shell of the trailer and help seal the sash to the frame. It was PRETTY tough to try to figure out which replacement seals we needed, as the old ones were either missing or really difficult to tell their original shape. But through the magic of Google, Mike found which shapes we needed and a place that sells them! :)

This photo shows a couple of things! 1. See the smooth gray seals around the edge of the frame? Those are the new seals in place! 2. See how clever they were with the design of the windows? The whole sash just lifts up and slides off! Super cool :)

This is the frame for the middle window. We got the old plexiglass pulled off and discovered that the corner seam had split apart. Ugh! 

We tried using a metal epoxy putty (the same stuff we used to repair the bolt holes in the Land Yacht plaque!) It didn't work. ;) We decided to do some more research to figure out how to fix it. 

So in the meantime, we used the wire wheel to grind off all of the REALLYHARDGUNK (TM) that some previous owner had used to try to keep the window from leaking. Remember, I already scrubbed and scrubbed on this stuff with acetone and mineral spirits when we reseated all of the windows! THANK GOD for wire wheels!

And all clean! It's wild the transformation!

End of Saturday - Two of three ain't bad! 

Mike did some Googling Saturday evening and found these aluminum welding rods. Watched some videos and it looked pretty simple! (sorry for the cruddy picture with my finger in the frame! I'm an acupuncturist, not a photographer! LOL)

Our first try didn't work quite right, but our second try turned out pretty good! 

EXCEPT - when we were trying to clean it up just a little bit, it cracked again, so we cleaned it AGAIN.  Unfortunately, this time, we overheated the aluminum frame and ended up disforming it a bit! :(  We tried a bit to fix it some more, but I called it. I think because we were trying to get it done before the rain came in, we were making things worse. It's a bit of a disappointing note to end the weekend on, but I think it's better to stop while we're ahead? Or at least not as far behind as we could get ourselves LOL.  Such is the way of working with Maude! Ups and Downs.

Until next time (when there will hopefully be more ups and fewer downs ;) )  <3 Becca

Sorry guys, not a huge update on Maude today - we went camping! It felt really good to get some time in the dirt and the fresh air. SUCH a gorgeous view with sounds of the creek in the background :)

But we got home pretty early on Sunday, so we started on Maude's next window :) If you recall, this was the replacement window we found on Ebay. Time to get it reglazed!

Unlike several of Maude's original windows, this one had an actual glass pane (as opposed to plexiglass or nothing LOL!) We tried our best to remove it so we could reuse the glass.

Shit. LOL! This window had a slightly different black adhesive to keep the pane in place - it was SUUUUPER sticky! It didn't want to let go of the glass, even with a heat gun. *sigh* Oh well!

​You can see in the above photo that we had spare glass on hand, except that it's not wide enough for this window! We made a run to True Value, Home Depot and Lowe's. NONE of them carried glass wide enough (short just 1.5"!!). So we finished cleaning/wire-wheeling the frame and taped on some plastic sheeting - sorry Maude, lookin' trashy again! - to seal her back up until we can get the new pane put in.

Yesterday we found a place that has wider glass and they were able to cut it to size for us, for about 4x the cost of the panes we got for the smaller windows ;) Oh well! It seems to be the way things go with Maude LOL!

<3 Becca

This week we decided to start reglazing the windows. This particular window had no glass pane at all when we got her, so we used plexiglass and duct tape to help waterproof her until we could get to this point.

This is where we started!

The windows are pretty cool on an Airstream. You remove all of the hardware, open the window as far as it will go and then slide it off to the side! Here, the pane was already removed (sorry, taking the window off was REALLY fast and easy - so much so that I forgot to get a picture! LOL!).

Fun surprises still await us in each of the windows, apparently! ;)  BLECH! (those are dead insects)

So, this is what we were starting with!

Some previous owner had used something SUPER hard to try to reseal the leaking windows at some point (prior to be there being no panes, I assume ;) ) We tried scraping it off with a chisel. It didn't work so well.

So we broke out Ye Olde Heat Gun (TM) to see if that would melt it enough to be able to budge it. This worked really well, particularly when we combined it with the wire wheel (not shown, again, it went pretty fast and I slacked on getting a photo!) 

Beautifully clean! Yay! Shown here is a roll of black sticky stuff that we placed along the rim of the window. Later, the pane gets put into place and sticks/seals really well to the frame. The brown paper gets peeled off after application ;)

This here is Mike's pride and joy! We've replaced glass in our house plenty of times, and it usually takes several tries (and panes of glass) because it's pretty easy to break it when you're trying to cut it to size. NAILED IT on the first try! I guess practice DOES make perfect? ;)

The glass is in place in the frame! You can see the black sticky stuff better in this photo :)

With the black adhesive and the pane in place, you then press this silicon glazing strip into the frame and it locks it all into place while also waterproofing it all :)

Cleaning the frame using the wire wheel! It really is a great way to clean this stuff ;)

And here's the window pane back in place! We started reinstalling hardware, but the replacement crank (left side of the window) that we bought was missing a part specific to our setup. We're going to need to try to problem-solve this ;)  That's for another day, though! In the meantime, the window latches shut!

And voila! I keep staring at this window! It's beautiful! It's funny how this detail has really felt like we've accomplished something. So many projects on Maude don't look that different than when you started. This one is NOTICEABLE!

On Sunday (Mother's Day), we bought some new plants for our all-native backyard, and as we were admiring how beautifully everything is filling in, we decided to tackle a smaller project on Maude ;)

Once Upon A Time, this was the vent for, I think, the stove. We'll be installing an electric stovetop, so it's not needed for that. Originally, the bathroom was in the rear of Maude, but we're moving the bathroom to the center. This vent will be PERFECT to repurpose for the toilet vent! Time to reseat the vent cap so we know it's waterproof and all pretty ;)

Removed and polished for reseating!

Polishing it up a bit now so that it's not so tedious later!

I've read TONS of horror stories about insects building nests in vents, so we added some window screening to prevent them from making it all the way down to the toilet LOL!

Obviously, some steps are missing here, but you know the drill by now - butyl tape around the edge to seal the vent cap to the shell and rivets that are caulked into place, trimmed and shaved.

Lookin' good, Maude!

Until next time, <3 Becca

Today's blog post title courtesy of Mike! LOL

Since the weather was going to be nice all weekend, we decided to tackle the bigger project of manufacturing a new main door drip cap! Below, you can see the mangled old one complete with tears. (Apologies for the OLD picture! November 2019, to be exact! I forgot to take a new "before" photo ;) )

And here it is, in all of its disassembled glory! I got to clean where it butts up against Maude's skin. A little acetone cleaned it up, ready for some polishing.

In order to fabricate the new one, we had to figure out what-the-heck shape we needed to cut from some fresh aluminum. Mike flattened out the original so that we could trace it :)

Traced it!

Cut it out!

Aaaaaand foreshadowing! Here is where we made a mistake. We were worried about the rivets ripping out of the new drip cap, like the old one, since the flange (through which the holes are drilled) was pretty shallow. So Mike added on a little bit more material.

The drip cap is pretty tricky, in that it has a curve to it so that it wraps over the top of the door, but also that flange where it attaches to the skin and a rim so that the rain will roll off down the sides, not down the front edge of the drip cap. Above, Mike is working on bending in that rim.

While Mike was working the metal, I couldn't help much, so I decided to tackle the door latch! It's just a little latch that will keep the door propped open. UNFORTUNATELY (LOL!) the original holes don't line up with the bracket that it catches on the door! Ugh! So, I now either need to remove this latch (and probably redo the patch too!) to align it properly, or move the catch on the door, which will involve some patching. I decided that was a problem for another day. A little disappointing LOL

Also disappointing! After 4 hours of fabricating the new drip cap, we started trying to fit it to the skin and it tore. Remember that added material on the flange for extra rivet space? Yeah, that made it so that we couldn't get that curve to fit. We were DONE at this point, so we called it a day ;)

Day 2! We had a new plan. Keep the exact shape of the original. Also, start with the curve to match the shape of the door and THEN add the flange and the drip rim.

This second plan worked SOOOOO much better :)

Look at the progress! And that final drip cap!

Here we were dry fitting it and drilling the holes to rivet it into place. Lookin' great!

We added butyl tape (a material that we also used on the windows to help seal the drip cap to the skin). We caulk each rivet and push them through the butyl tape, making for a pretty darn good seal :)

And here it is all finished! Not shown, I also caulked the insides of the rivets.

Even though the first day was a bit disappointing, it's a good thing Mike and I are so stubborn! The new drip cap looks fantastic!

As an aside, check out that shine! Someday, Maude will be completely shiny and gorgeous!

​Until next time! <3 Becca