and on the fifth day...

The kitchenette is gone.

and on the fourth day...

I realized that updating this blog regularly eats up a ton of time... I'll add more pictures to it at some point. Honest.

Decided this project was a good reason to pick up a few new tools. I was looking for a well reviewed line of cordless power-tools, with a modest price point, and ideally 18V.

This is what I ended up going with.

At that price, and qualifying for free shipping, it was pretty hard to go wrong... and there is a $25 rebate if I actually manage to send it in on time.

If I'm happy with the power and battery life of the set, I'll probably grab these in the next few days.

Almost forgot, also picked us this little guy, hard to pass it up when I was already placing an order..

Carpet pad/backing is removed, down to bare plywood floor. However, still need to spend an afternoon pulling carpet staples...

The only cabinets left are the above the windows in the middle of the RV. They are actually somewhat well designed and out of the way, so they will probably stay as-is until much later in the project.

The Coleman furnace has been removed, good riddance!

The kitchenette is currently in the process of being removed, fridge is mostly disconnected, range hood is gone, range guts are now exposed and being disconnected tonight.

Spent the afternoon with a co-worker this weekend identifying random shite in and around the engine (thanks Andy!).

Now that I can see the original flooring there are a few places where the seal between the wall and floor has grown old and expired, which is easy enough to reseal. There appears to only be one section of wall with any damage. Still no signs of any roof leaks!

I'll post up some links later this week to the elements for the solar panel system I'm ordering... I actually found some great articles on making your own solar panels as well.

Epoxy cells to a sheet of glass.
Run 2 lines of solder across the cells.
Sandwich cells between another piece of glass of the same size.
Attach some sort of frame.

What I'm most likely going to end up doing is ordering a 100W-150W panel initially. Then order the supplies to build my own. This will give me a nice finished product as a blueprint for my own, and give me something that a professional hast built to test performance against.

and on the third day...

The once golden carpet is gone, never to return! There was a filthy cloud of shite in the air most of the day, and I really should have been wearing a dust mask more often than I was... Maybe that's a good reason to get a sweet mask that I would want to wear... like a gas mask from the army surplus...

Removed the wardrobe, which housed a Coleman furnace in its base, and the seats on either side of the wardrobe, which contained the duct work and vents coming from the furnace. If what I'm reading is correct the old furnace is extremely inefficient when compared to modern electric heaters, so the Coleman will most likely get uninstalled tomorrow night and tossed up on craigslist.

The lounge has also been removed. The passenger side of the lounge was supported by the housing for the generator, while the driver side of the lounge was supported by the propane tank housing. Beneath the seat of the lounge and between the two housings sits the fresh water holding tank.

At some point today I realized that by the time I'm finished with this project I should be able to design a kit to turn a box truck into an RV... because I'm pretty sure that I'm turning an RV into a box truck to then turn it back into an RV...

and on the second day...

Removed all inactive wasp nests, formulating plan of attack for the one active nest located in the 4" steel tube that is the back bumper.


So the lower half of the grille, which is normally installed between the headlights, was stashed in the back bunk... Based on the dent in it, I would suspect that it had been involved in the rear-ending of something with a trailer hitch. Hammered it back into shape and reinstalled.


Moving on to the rear hatch, which is the access to the fresh water holding tank and the back side of the breaker box. This one is in fine shape, aside from needing minor repair to one of the chains that supports the hatch when it is sitting open. Cleaned out some more odds-and-ends from here as well, quickcrete, several exploded tubes of some sort of adhesive, a pair of unsafe looking safety goggles, etc...

Replaced all external occurrences of bent-up-rusted-old-coat-hanger with actual fasteners... this includes both license plates, passenger side mirror, and several sections of the grille.


Began removing odds-and-ends from the bathroom, random towel hooks, medicine cabinet, odd little baskets mounted on the walls. Now all that remains is the toilet, sink, and shower drain.

The external hatch for the generator housing was tweaked pretty bad, so I removed it and bent it back into a shape. As the previous owners had sold the generator, this area apparently became storage for old 5 gallon buckets of paint (pink & blue), a rusty old saw, several large tarps that had seen better days, and a large pot one might boil crabs in... The hatch still needs a lot of work, but at least it sits flush on all sides when closed, and the housing is cleaned out and ready for a new generator.

and on the first day...

Removed all miscellanea from the internal nooks and crannies.

Removed all the screws, nails, hooks, curtain rod mounts, etc that had collected on the walls over the last 40 years.

Repaired the latch on the front grille that gives access to the coolant tank...

Installed the propane tank.

Reinstalled the external hatch for the battery compartment.

Removed the carpeting from the dog house and reinstalled the latches.


Started removing the light fixtures... the bulbs for them ran so hot that they melted or burned every fixture... The one above the sink managed to burn a half inch hole through the base of the cabinet that it was mounted under.

and in the beginning...

I found a 1971 Winnebago Brave D-20 in Addy, Washington... Don't feel bad, I didn't know where that was either.