Soaked bunk area -- leaking water from recent rains...

Ok.. To fix this will be a future series I'm sure.. I noticed this morning a fairly frequent dripping coming from a few holes in the bottom of the bunk area on the drivers side. After talking with Ramon, he suggested pulling up some of the panelling up in the bunk area to see what was underneath -- that sounded good since we're supposed to be heading to Oregon tomorrow.. I think some of the water was coming in from a scrunched end-cap on the passenger side (fiberglass in this case) -- in doing some caulking I found a missing screw on the drivers-front end-cap over the bunk area -- now sealed up with caulking -- until I can properly fix it. We also re-sealed some of the end-caps on the front bunk area (my sister-in-law and I) and will do the same on the vertical end-caps on the rear of the rig tomorrow AM. By the way.. the rear window is now installed and sealed up..

In the picture below, notice the decayed wood on the passenger side front edge

In this last photo notice the puddle of water -- this is on the drivers side. We mopped up about a cup or perhaps a little more of dirty water.. We've been stuffing paper towels up there which eventually get saturated with water and we toss and put more down.. So far we've done this about 6 times.. The water is apparently still weeping out of the soaked wood.. At least it shouldn't slosh around when we drive.. When we get home after Thanksgiving, I can open it up and do the appropriate repairs.

More work on the side & rear windows...

Ok.. More rehab today -- the entire day.. I focused on getting the right rear window taken care of -- the first pic shows the state of things after I removed the spare tire mounting hardware (4 bolts protruding through the LD and into the inside) along with the plywood that was underneath the bolts...

The pics below shows the first sheet panel in place after drawing up a template using cardboard... No nails yet...

The next pics show the panels glued up and nailed.. I used PL poly construction adhesive..

Below are pics with the gel stain applied... along with a pic of the stain we used..

Here are the final pics for the evening -- we got the window installed with the help of my daughter who put in the first few screws as I held the window in place outside.. Unfortunately I ran out of caulk to complete the task -- mental note -- this window takes an ENTIRE tube of 3M 5200 caulk just to install it -- I still need more to go back and cover up the rubber as it's showing in a few places and to make the seal look neater -- a task for tomorrow.. Luckily this stuff doesn't cure for 7 days -- plenty of time to monkey with it..

More rear window rehab and wall prep...

Below are some of the latest images in the rear rehab saga.. I rebuilt the right corner using kiln dried 2x3's that were run through my ShopSmith table saw to size down to the proper size used as studs in the walls. A single 2x3 can make two full-length studs to pair down to the desired sizes. Works great if you've got a table saw!
One thing to note is the odd angle of the back wall to the rear shelf. There's a small piece of wood in a triangle shape holding that rear window lower sill plate at the right angle -- ours was not in good shape but enough was still in tact to allow a new one to be fabbed up -- unfortunately I didn't take any pics of it.. That rear shelf is an 8" wide piece of 3/4" plywood I had as left-over from a bookshelf project a few months back -- in maple -- our new plywood will also be in maple so it matches itself (but not the old LD plywood). More to follow..

Below are a few photos showing the new insulation installed in each of the wall cavities.. The insulation used is R-Max -- a combination of a 1" thick sheet followed by a 1/2" sheet which appears to be perfect to fill the thin wall cavities.

Below is a minor mod I chose to implement in the rear wall corner above the couch/bed. It'll be a flush mount cubby that should protrude into the empty wall area about 5.5" -- if you add in the stud thickness you can add an inch since the studs are 1"x1.5". I used our Fein Multimaster tool to cut the plywood out of the opening -- easy peasy! That is a must tool for this type of work -- excellent tool for trimming the crap off of dry-rotted studs so you can sister in good wood with the old.

Below you can see how deep the cavity is at the bottom of the opening. The opening is 9" tall if you're wondering.

So -- this is what I did yesterday.. I know it looks like a mess and I'll admit that it was a bit of a mess to get it to this point.. Yes, I will be replacing all of the panelling with something -- more than likely both walls will be re-done by the time I'm done (hopefully this coming weekend). As you can see in the wall, there's a piece that's bare aluminum on the inside (left) and the rest has a thin piece of plywood between the wall studs and the aluminum -- not sure why.

It took me an hour to remove the rear window -- 99% of it because of 1 screw that was stuck in place and wouldn't budge.. I had to drill it out and cut the head off. Once that was done I could see the condition of the wood hiding beneath.. Luckily the sides and top plates are in very good condition -- however the bottom plate is completely destroyed on both the left and right sides.. The middle is fine however. But I've decided I'll just replace the entire bottom sill and any other material needed.

So, as I mentioned earlier I was thinking about taking the entire wall apart and that's pretty much what I did.. Here you can see just how bad the corner is and you can also see the stub wall that allows space for the spare tire compartment.. Ever wonder about why there's a piece of carpet attached to the back wall? That's there to cover the bolts that secure the spare tire mount which are visible if you remove the carpet. By the way, the rear horizontal surface is made of 3/4" plywood that is SECURELY stapled to the framing beneath.

The plywood beneath the aluminum on the outside is stapled every ~2 inches to the stud plate (the furthest one back) which made it rather difficult to remove that lower window sill!

There's also a thin triangle piece of wood that runs under the window sill piece to accommodate the angle of the rear wall in relation to the window sill.

Here's what the space looks like between the vertical rear wall and the rear of the LD. You can see the cans for the tail lights below -- luckily there's not much damage that is visible down in the bottom of the false wall.

Passenger side rear window rehab.. Ugg!!

ok.. So last weekend I removed the passenger side rear window -- the large one on our model and found where the termites had been chomping along with nasty water damage in the rear corner. Below are a series of random photos showing the work area and damage found..

As some of you may know.. Our model had been retrofitted with a full-time bed in the rear -- the factory sofa/bed had been removed along with the seat belts by a prior owner. To the left is what things look like with the bed removed and out of the way -- also notice the a prior owner had removed the sink and put a box in place to hide the plumbing left-overs.

To the left is the area with the bed/seat plywood removed showing the framing attached to the walls. The corner in the center of the photo is the problem area -- lots of rot hiding beneath the nice looking plywood panelling -- as can be seen in the close-up photo below...

In the photo below you can see the corner with the plywood panelling removed -- you can see the extent of the damage -- the corner beam is completely dry-rotted out and after plucking off the worst of the bad stuff only about about 1/2 of the beam remains. The beam to the left of the corner is mostly eaten by termites.. This window is a work-in-progress-- more to come later..

Front window (bunk) rehab..

Ok.. Since the last post I did the bathroom window which was in horrible shape -- now good enough to keep the water out. Last weekend I did the front window which you can see to the left...

Below is a close-up photo -- as you can see the paint has flaked quite a bit -- to be addressed later.

As you can see the window glass has been pulled out sometime in the past and the person was messy with the black sealant -- I've since cleaned the window up using a putty knife and a careful application of some mineral spirits to get the remaining sealant residue off the glass where it was removed.

The window did not show any major issues with water damage luckily. The window was reinstalled and appears to be in good shape again.