Well, all the walls are out. What’s next? The floor!
We have a lot of empty holes in our floor from rotting and water damage. From the start, we could see sections of subfloor already due to chunks of missing carpet and tiles missing. One of the things we noticed when we first looked at the airstream was that the floor was going to need to come up. We also knew we would need access to the frame, due to those rotted sections.
I was not participating in this day, as I think the boys ripped it out while I was at work. Luckily, Brandon took some pictures and documented their progress!
This project was tackled like subfloor in a house. At least that’s the thought they had when they started….
Tools used: Drills, sawzall and blades, angle grinder, chainsaw, breaker bar, pry bar
In addition to removing the screws that were clearly holding the subfloor in place, they used a chainsaw to cut on either side of the horizontal metal frames. Once doing this, they removed large chunks of subfloor between the metal supports and could better access the rusted-on bolts that held the subfloor to the frame. Countless grinding wheels and sawzall (yes, I did have to consult Google for the spelling of this… 🙂 ) blades later, most of the subfloor was removed from the frame. Many of the spots where the aluminum exterior walls were sitting on the frame, the subfloor was already rotted out, so they used small chunks of wood to hold the c-channel (bottom lip between subfloor and “ribs” of the interior side of the exterior walls) up off the frame so that the walls would not fall or buckle.
The subfloor around the bathroom was a mess. It had completely rotted through at parts. All of us stuck our foot through it at some point during demo days. The problem with the bathroom floor was that even before they ripped out all the floor, they could see the ground, meaning the belly pan (what we are calling the aluminum underside) was completely rotted out here. This was their first indication that the belly pan had some serious issues.
Overall, Brandon said that, “this sucked- so much more difficult than in a house.” Just because it is less space, doesn’t mean it will take less time! His tip? Remove the belly pan first. This is because our airstream had foam insulation between the subfloor and the belly pan, so it made accessing the rusted on bolts and cleaning of the frame a “?!@*ing nightmare.” 🙂 Brandon’s words, not mine!
Brandon had originally thought that there would be some plumbing and gas lines we could save. He was extra careful working around those. However, he realized that it was so much easier just to rip it all out and start fresh. By working around these things, it took so much more time and caused much more stress, if they nicked it with a pry bar or blade.
Doing all of this took them a few days, but they finally got it all out! They exposed the frame of the airstream and saw MUCH MORE work that needed to be done… more soon!
Much love,
Lauren
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