Deconstruct
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Dorothy Parker
Elvis arrived at Trailer Buff in December, 2008. Dave and his crew started work on Elvis in July, 2009. Most any vintage trailer restoration will involve a certain degree of demolition. Simply making things look nice on the surface doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to see where your real problems are before you can develop a plan.
Besides gutting the interior, I anticipated that the sub-floor would need to be completely replaced. New electrical and plumbing, some creative skin patches, etc. However, tearing down Elvis revealed several subsets of problems that neither Trailer Buff or I had anticipated. The degree of frame rot, engineering flaws, flood damage, and evidence of an inadequately repaired streetside collision were game changing.
These photos, most are courtesy of Trailer Buff, document some of the process of deconstruction. You will find in this process that vintage trailers are sometimes, in the words of Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”