This was a day I dreaded. The day I would inevitably have to Michelangelo our Airstream. Friends, this was the day I needed to get under Airstream and paint the underside of the subfloor with undercoating. If you remember from a previous article, this is when I ended up getting this tar-like substance all over my hair. So, yes I was dreading it.
Luckily, the boys had a great plan. Dave created a ramp for both tires using spare wood we had at the farm. He layered 2x10s, one on top of the other at different lengths, gradually increasing in height. Once Dave completed this, we cleaned up under the airstream, including all metal rivets, screws, and metal shards that were in the way of tires. We set up the ramps and pulled her up. Well, it wasn’t exactly that easy. We had to shift the location of the ramps many times, with Brandon pulling forward and backing up so that the tired were securely on the ramps.
Friends, I highly recommend doing this if you are going to work under your airstream. With our skirts down (the exterior skins flapping down, not attached to a belly pan), raising it up was fantastic. It gave us almost a foot of extra room for me to navigate.
I cracked open my oh-so-favorite tar and got to work. To remind you- we chose to do undercoating of the subfloor because we decided NOT to put a belly pan back on. Yes, this is controversial because of our frame and subfloor being exposed to the elements. However, we wanted our frame and subfloor to be able to breathe and not have trapped moisture. It also would save us hundreds of dollars by not buying new aluminum sheets.
I used a roller for the largest sections, trying to get as much as I could in the nooks and crannies. This definitely helped. The roller reduced the number of drips and globs that fell on me as I was working. It also provided a more even coverage. Even better- it went WAY faster than a paintbrush. I used a 6 inch or so roller for this job, not a regular sized painting roller.
Well, I surprised myself. Yes, I did get undercoating in my hair and on my clothes. But, I was way more careful this time and made sure to avoid having myself directly under where I was painting. I made WAY less of a mess this time around. But man am I sore. The arm muscles I’m going to have after all this…..
Much love,
Lauren
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