Laying the cherry wood Floor

Now that I've got the walls up I've turned my attention to the floor. I will finish the ceiling afterwards. I need to get the floor down so I can get the couch and refrigerator in the camper, they have to come in through the front window opening. The door is only 24" wide but the window opening is 26" tall so I have 2 more inches to work with. Once the couch and fridge are in I can finally put the front window in and seal up the camper.

The flooring is engineered cherry that I got on closeout and was cheaper than most of the ugly laminate they had. I went to the store with the intention of buying laminate but then I saw this and realized that the weight is pretty much the same. If I remember correctly I got it for $1.19 sq ft. Cant beat that for real cherry!

First thing I did was clear the camper out completely.

Then I put down heavy weight felt paper.

I measured several points along the camper front to back to find the center and snapped chalk line along those points.

I then measured from the chalk line over to the first piece so it would be perfectly square with the camper. I'm having to scribe all the pieces that touch the front of the camper because the wall is curved.

Here is how far I got last night.

Hopefully I can finish up the floor and then finish the ceiling this weekend.

Fixing Leaks

It's been a while since I've been able to work on the Spartan but I finally got a chance the other day.

It's been raining a lot so I really needed to finish sealing all the leaks. I went around the inside of the camper and caulked all the seams that I had marked when it was raining with Dicor.

The next thing I did was to install some foam weatherstripping all around the back window, it was leaking through the window really bad.

I also needed to make the patch for the roof where the heater vent was.

A few months back I removed the homemade vent stack. They sure weren't stingy with the roofing tar. My original plan was to just put a small circular cap over the round hole but then I realized two things, one, the hole has a lip, and two, the plate is metal, not aluminum.

I decided to go ahead and remove the plate and make a new one out of aluminum.

I cut the new piece out, drilled all of the holes and then riveted it into place. I used Butyl tape around the edges and lots of Dicor inside of that.

I then trimmed the excess butyl tape off.

I'm using Olympic rivets but I dont have a rivet head shaver. I'm going to try my hand with a dremel first. If that doesnt work I'll look at possibly getting one.

Here is the inside of the patch.

It rained three days straight after I installed this and no leaks!

The next thing I did was drill the holes for the window drain tubes.

I will be replacing the hoses soon.

The last thing to do with leaks are the two doors, I have a lot of work to do on the door frames to stop the leaks there. Hopefully I can do that this weekend.

Bolting Down the Shell

I spent the day bolting the shell down to the floor and frame.

I used 1/4"x2" carriage bolts with a flat washer, lock washer, and nut.

I have a few that were in awkward places that I still have to tighten by hand. I also need to finish bolting the floor to the frame.

Sub-floor is in!

I finished installing the sub-floor today.

The front section of sub-floor proved to be quite challenging. The original sub-floor was very rotted and came out in pieces.

I was able to put half of the front back together for a template to trace out the curve.

I traced the curve on to some kraft paper then cut the paper and used it to trace the curve on the plywood.

The piece fit perfectly.

Each section is held in place with two bolts so I need to go back and install the rest of the bolts and then install the bolts that hold the shell to the floor.

Sub-floor work continues

Here are some more pictures of the sub-floor going down.

It's about half way done now. Hopefully I can get it finished by this weekend.

Starting on the sub-floor

This weekend I began replacing the sub-floor. There are some pretty large areas of rot so I decided to replace the entire thing.

I started in the back.

First I located all the bolts holding the shell down to the sub-floor and cut them out with a sawzall. Then I had to remove the two corner aluminum wraps on the outside back of the camper to allow the shell to be lifted off the sub-floor.

Then I got under the camper and used the sawzall to cut the bolts holding the subfloor to the frame.

I sprayed the frame with a rubberized rust inhibitor undercoating.

I used the old piece of sub-floor as a template to cut the new piece, then I primered the bottom of it and installed it. I'm having to use carriage bolts because I couldn't find any elevator bolts.

The next piece of sub-floor I removed is 10' long and runs front to back. I'm going to have to figure out a different layout since I dont have any 10' plywood.

Removing this piece was much harder, I ended up setting my circular saw to 3/4" depth and cutting the piece out in chunks.

This is as far as I have gotten. Hopefully I can get some more done later today.