With the interior ripped out and structural repairs finished, it was time to gussy this old bessy up with a fresh coat of paint and some new flooring. I've read about people making American Clay stick to raw aluminum, and given my proclivities toward plaster thats' certainly the direction I'd go if I wasn't certain that the process of chemical stripping an entire trailer of it's interior vinyl wouldn't have me in chemo within a year. Also, I'm just a little bit lazy, so paint won out. Off-white makes small spaces seem big, reflects a lot of light, and goes with everything, which is important, because I don't exactly know what the interior is going to look like yet. The top hit on a quick search on my smartphone yielded the notion that "white dove" was a good color for art gallery walls, and because other people on the internet seem to be getting Benjamin Moore 'Aura' paint to stick to the vinyl clad aluminum inside old Airstreams, I was off to the Benjamin Moore store to get a gallon of White Dove, and a gallon of the fiercest primer I could apply without scuba diving equipment. Not exactly "green" but this is vinyl we're talking about and I had misgivings about anything non-toxic actually being able to "bite" into the surface.
G and Henry and I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the walls with TSP and hot water, yielding a creepily sticky texture to the vinyl. As a person inclined toward risk taking, I slapped the primer up anyways and rolled on the white dove. A week out everything seems to still be sticking.
G and Henry and I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the walls with TSP and hot water, yielding a creepily sticky texture to the vinyl. As a person inclined toward risk taking, I slapped the primer up anyways and rolled on the white dove. A week out everything seems to still be sticking.
Next up was floors. Even with the couple hundred pounds it adds to trailer, I knew I wanted real wood, both to create a flat stable surface to build off of, and because I have a moral aversion to laminate flooring. For this I headed down to see my buddy Ben Deumling of Zena Forest Products who owns a sustainably harvested forest outside of Salem, OR. If I can't cut it down and make it myself, Ben is my go-to guy, and there was certainly no way I was going to mill and dry tongue and groove flooring, so I picked up some really nice fir from Ben for a decent price, albeit in a less than ideal vehicle. Somebody buy me a 1 ton Dodge Sprinter for Christmas! Please?
Laying the floor was easy with a borrowed flooring stapler although scribing into the round corners takes a bit of time. I played Russian Roulette with the unknown moisture contents of the subfloor and flooring and lost. I got a bit of swelling but nothing terrible. Next time, moisture meter. It's the only way to be sure.
For a top coat I rolled on a gallon of Vermont Natural Coatings Poly-Whey in three layers with a light sand with 220 between them. This is a neat product that uses polymers derived from a whey, a byproduct of the cheese industry, which surprisingly, is a pollutant if not treated properly. The finished surface looks great and will make building up from here a lot easier!
For a top coat I rolled on a gallon of Vermont Natural Coatings Poly-Whey in three layers with a light sand with 220 between them. This is a neat product that uses polymers derived from a whey, a byproduct of the cheese industry, which surprisingly, is a pollutant if not treated properly. The finished surface looks great and will make building up from here a lot easier!
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