Worked in the trailer

Today I put the screen material back into the frames. It was so cold in the warehouse that I moved my sawhorses and work surface into the Airstream. The Airstream now has heat and I was glad that it was working. It was a nice 65 degrees in the camper and a cool 25 degrees in the warehouse. I chose the black fiberglass screen. I like the look of it and it makes the windows look tinted. I'm almost ready to prime the interior walls.

Fill the holes

Today I tore down the upper cabinet that was above the sink and contains the systems computer. As it turns out, the computer is not part of the upper cabinet. I secured it with a strap to the ceiling and drilled out all the rivets that held up the only remaining upper cabinet. I then removed the 2 plastic cabinets that were attached to the wall near the window, and the plastic spice rack that was next to it. I am close to paint, so I need to prep the interior. I have a bunch of holes in the ceiling and walls where the old cabinets were riveted to the interior skin. At first I was going to bondo the holes and then decided to just put a rivet in each hole. The interior skin has a bunch of rivets, so I figure that I would just put some more in. They look fine and after I paint, they will almost disappear and look perfectly normal in an Airstream. After I ran out of rivets I took out all the old window screens. The screen material is a tan color that looks old and crappy. I already replaced the screen material on the door. I took the screen material off and spray painted the frame with some aluminum color spray paint. When it dried, I thought it looked pretty good. I then took all the screens to the paint booth. I tried to clean the 2nd screen with lacquer thinner and it took off the tan paint. I then sanded the frame and it turned the same color as the painted screen. At this point, I deceided to sand all the paint off the frames and will leave the frames raw aluminum.

Honey I "almost" blew up my boys!

I tried, but was unsuccessful. Maybe next time. Here is the story. First of all, if you are reading this blog, you probably know how cheap I am. I need a furnace for the cold days. First of all I need one this winter so I can work on the interior. I plumbed the system with propane and after I had the old furnace hooked up with gas and electric, I tried to fire it up. No luck. I could not get it to fire up. I then looked to the internet to give me some clues as to how to try and fix the furnace. Most people say to just scrap it and buy a new one. Since I don't expect to use the furnace very often I really dont want to spend much money to get it back in operation. I was told to pull the burner out and hacksaw the slots in the top open and that should fix my problem. I did just that, and put it back together and hooked it up. Guess what? It worked. It lit right up and I thought, "great I just saved myself $600" As you can see in the following picture you can see the blue flame. This is great! I decided to let the thing run for awhile so that it can get up to full tempeture. It shut off after about 5 minutes. I go over to the thermostat and shut it off and turn it back on. I then hear the furnace go "pop". I figure, that was interesting. I shut it off and do it again. I hear "POP". (that means a little louder) I do it again. "POP". The fourth time, it goes bang, and my ear start ringing. After I check myself for schrapnel, I decided not to try again. As you can see from the picture, the furnace blew out the sides of the burn chamber. I dedided at that point it was worth it to purchase a new furncace. I called Palamano RV in Florida and purchased a new one for around $350. If I knew that it was going to be around that price, I would not have hesitated and would have saved myself from death. I got the new one 2 days later and hooked it up. It works perfectly and now I have heat in the Airstream.