We finally got all of the interior skins/walls up and into place and have been in the process of polishing off the remaining glue residue that was left after stripping the vinyl. I’m not sure that it wouldn’t have been easier to do this prior to putting the walls up, but then again we were tired of bending over the darn things to work on them, so 6 of one and half a dozen of the other I suppose.
While Jamie was inside polishing I was up on the roof with a palm sander roughing up the aluminum around each buck rivet. Word on the street is that if you don’t do this, the roof coating will “bubble” up around the rivets. Once finished prepping/sunburning, I taped off the area to be painted and put down two coats of dicor (in perpendicular directions. This used up the 1 gallon that the nearest RV shop had, but I’ve since bought a 2nd gallon and plan to put on atleast one more coat as it still seems a bit thin to me and based on what Dicor recommended I think I need a bit more thickness.
By the way (Since I find this interesting) here’s a bit of info on Elastomeric Roof Coatings: Putting this product on the roof of an Airstream gives 2 big advantages, the first being that it creates a seal on all of the roof seams, Even without “leaky” rivets, if rain is combined with wind, it can sometimes blow up under the seam where panels overlap. We haven’t really experienced this, but it was sort of a nice secondary advantage to using the coating. The second advantage and primary reason we decided to coat the roof was to keep the interior cool. From the start of this project we’ve really wanted to ensure that the inside of the Airstream will be both cool and efficient, which is why we opted for the new dometic AC and closed cell spray foam over the easier/more affordable fiberglass batt insulation.
Current State of the Pickle 