Flora's First Trip

A very quick update:

We worked like crazy for six days before heading to Twelvemile Beach in the U.P last week.  Here she is:

Flora, July 2013

We still have interior work to do, but she is ready to go whenever we are.

Until next time - Rachel & Gail

Further Updates (long delayed)

We didn't have Flora done in time to take her to Maumee.  In fact, she's not done yet, but we did bring her home to finish. 

Our goal was to have her skin on with no loose parts before we moved her.  So, here is what we did:

• We sent the skin off to be painted.  We had the green on the Scout matched and have a stripe at the top of the trailer and a stripe at the bottom painted that same color with the rest being bright white.  We purchased new roof skin so there would be no seams.  Had that painted white, too

Curb-side post-paint

• We installed the walls.  

This is 1/2" birch with a layer of bubble insulation.  The supports are for the rear window.

• We installed the dinette supports and seats. 



Curbside dinette seat - with distribution box inserted

 

• We installed the 1/8" ceiling pieces (birch luan) starting from the back, working forward.  We left the front open so we could get big pieces like the kitchen cabinet in and out before their final installation.  Thanks again to Nancy Kroes for her invaluable assistance with getting this done.

 

Kitchen cabinet (looking in through the door)

• Installed the front ceiling piece and then the overhead cabinet.

Front overhead cabinet

• Put all of the skin on and moved her out

Flora on her way out - the front side

Flora on her way out - the back side (we had a lot more room than it looks like)

Flora made it home in one piece

Wall, bed stands, fabric and other miscellany

So, we've been working pretty hard on getting Flora moved along on her re-build.  We committed to attending the NSSO camp-out at Maumee Bay State Park in August: http://www.nationalserroscotty.org/campouts/maumee.html so we have a deadline.  Posting a few pictures of where we are now.

 

Found this picture and had to put it on here: Gail using her angle grinder to cut off the trailer jack.

Street-side wall attached to the frame.

Street-side wall with the bed frame and one part of the bed top installed.

We got the Scout back a couple of weeks ago, after some major maintenance and took her to the Tin Can Tourists (http://www.tincantourists.com/) Spring rally in May.

Here is Mable Kroes in her Scotty giving her stamp of approval to Pokey (the Scout).  Thanks for the picture, Nancy!

Back to the trailer: Here is the street-side bed stand installed.  We used a mix of golden oak and cherry for the stain.  The bed has the first coat of varnish on it.

Another view of the bed stand.

A pic of the VIN.  Gail worked with the angle grinder for a long time before we could see this.

Sweet find:  plastic glasses with burlap sandwiched between the layers.  The serving tray tips up so the glasses stack on top of each other.

Flora's awning material.

Cushion fabric.  We've started the piping (43 yards of it) which is the green of the leaves in the fabric.

Trying out the curb-side dinette fit.  Nancy Kroes sent us a tracing of the dinette seat and table.  We'll eventually make a scaled copy and post it for others to use.

Removing the window from the door that needs to be re-built (like everything else). The window has to be out before the door skin halves can be separated.  On this window, we ran a knife blade between the seal and the window and then popped the window out. 

Putting the inside frame of the door back together.  Next, we will have the door skin painted and then the window will be reinstalled.  We'll use safety glass instead of the standard window glass the previous owner used.

That's about all for now.  We are scrambling to get the skin ready to paint and expect to pick up the re-furbed windows in the next few weeks. 

Until next time.  Rachel & Gail 

Been a long, long time

Yep, it's been a while but really there wasn't much to see.  OK, I take that back, we have made huge progress!  Without much narrative, here is a series of pictures we have taken:

Flat Flora - here she is all torn apart (this is where we left off in the last post).

A tiny picture of the trailer ready to go to the trailer repair guy - we were going to have her sandblasted.  The guys at the store treated us so shabbily that we decided to clean the frame ourselves.  And we bought a new axle, too, and installed it. Nancy Kroes came over from Kalamazoo to help us put it on and change the angle so we would have more clearance.  Thanks, Nancy!!

Gail spent hours with her angle grinder cleaning the rust off the frame.  It looks pretty good and we found the serial number.  Discovered that Flora is a 1966 Scotty, not 1962 as the seller thought.

We used POR15 on the entire frame.  Nice and shiny!

Here is the doorstep.

We didn't save the floor (a mistake we won't make again), so we had to figure out a way to determine where the floor supports go

Here is the floor (3/4" plywood topped with luan).  Glued, stapled and filled.

 Here's Gail, wielding her paint roller and can of exterior paint.  Two coats.

Here is the floor on the frame.  Just trying it out for size.  

Here is another lovely view of the floor.  It's a bit cattywampus because the wood is a bit warped.  We were reasonably confident it would flatten out after bolting it down.  

So, lots of stuff is missing here.  We moved Flora from Rachel's parents' garage to a location much closer to Ann Arbor.  A friend offered to let us keep the trailer and work on it in her heated barn.  It has made the process so much easier.  

Unfortunately, we picked the only snowy weekend of 2012 to move her.  We rented a moving truck with an auto hauler and went to pick up Flora and all the parts we hadn't attached yet.  Got stuck in the driveway (twice picking her up and once dropping her off).  

We finished the floor, built the drop-down floor and bolted the whole thing down.  Put two coats of Herculiner underneath.  

Here is the floor with part of the Marmoleum tile installed.  This is Rachel's first attempt at laying a tile floor (anywhere).  It went reasonably well considering the frame is crooked, which means the floor is crooked, which means it's really hard to lay straight-edge tile in a straight line.  

And here is the floor with the tile installed and partially trimmed out.  Still need to get the cove molding for the drop down. (And notice that the floor did flatten out after it's bolted down.)

In between all of this, we built the street-side wall.  Here it is, stained and varnished.  

That's it for now!  Until next time (and hopefully not too long) - Rachel & Gail

More work, more stuff

It’s been a few weeks since our last posting and we have done a lot.  Where we last left off, Gail and I had removed the windows and doors, stripped out the inside cabinets and rotten wood.  

 No Door Flora

We were back at it July 31^st.  It was so incredibly hot, especially climbing around on scaffolding attempting to remove as many of the screws as possible, chipping at the silicone caulk, putty, tar and whatever else was used in an effort to seal the roof seam.  

 Putty, putty and more putty

 Removing stubborn screws

Gail worked along all of the edge seams until we could lift off the skin in pieces.   

 Back skin gone

We got the roof off and then, watching the walls sway in the very light wind, we figured those needed to come off too. 

Basically, we were left with flat Flora.   

Flat Flora

We covered her up and left her to rest for a while.

Until next time,


Rachel & Gail

Finding cool stuff

We discovered that if you look through all of the drawers in various bins throughout the antique stores in Bay City, you will find some pretty cool stuff.  Here are a couple of hinges and a few drawer/door pulls we found over the July 4th weekend.

Gail is very patient when it comes to searching for things like this.  I just get squirreled (this is a reference to Up) by all of the other shiny objects and weird things that are found in antique stores.

Yep.  It's a skeleton (with a skull between its legs).

 What can I say?  This is pretty eye-catching.

We purchased this great Standard Skotch water jug with an amber glass liner.  It's not exactly in keeping with the interior designs we are thinking about, but for $8 I couldn't pass it up.

 

 Standard Skotch water jug

We also found this toaster that is identical to the one Rachel's mom has had for 40+ years.

Might be worth just keeping this one at home!

Speaking of interior designs, we have been looking at retro flooring, retro fabric, retro counter tops, retro, retro, retro.  The one thing I've noticed is that things that were pretty darn ugly in the 60's are still pretty darn ugly today.  However, there are some great on-line sites where we've looked at lots of samples and even ordered a few.  I'll post some pictures when the samples show up.  We found some commercial flooring we like at Home Depot. 

We got a lot of work done on Flora on July 4th, but we didn't manage to get any pictures.  I was busily snapping lots of pictures (do digital cameras "snap?") and then, later, when Gail picked up the camera, she said, "I guess you didn't see where the screen says there's no memory card..."  Uh, yeah, I didn't see that.  There are advantages to actually reading the messages that pop up on the camera.  I am usually the sign/screen/directions/fine print reader, but not this time.

It was really hot so we got as much done inside her as we could in the morning.  We pulled out the cabinets and what remained of the benches, plus the front and back windows.  Remarkably enough, the more we take off Flora the better she looks.  No, really, she does. 

This is the front left side with the two windows removed.

Last Saturday (July 16th), we were back at work, finishing removing the bed/couch, linoleum, the remaining window and the roof vent.  There is something definitely wrong when you can unscrew the fasteners from the inside. 

Roof vent removed (inside)

The roof vent removed (outside)

 

Here is the can partly full of the screws we removed in one day.

Many Scotty owners note that they pull hundreds and hundreds of staples.  Well, we're pulling drywall screws, hex head screws and square drive screws.  A few nails are mixed in there, too.  Most of the screws we removed weren't fastened into anything more than rotten wood.  Some of them were so rusted, the heads just broke off.  For a couple of weeks, we have debated whether we can save the floor.  No.

Left back corner floor

  This is definitely a complete tear down.

Out the back window (notice the big gap in the support piece - completely rotted)

The last person to "fix" Flora's leaks decided that caulk, window putty and silicone would work. 

 

Check out the putty and caulk used along the door frame

Next is to remove the trim (more drywall screws) and the top skin.  Then we'll deal with removing the sides.

Until next time.  - Rachel and Gail