Part 7: Mostly naked, some decisions, and a change of venue

A weekend at a time, I've managed to get the bulk of the skin off, including the roof. The good news is that the very first corner I uncovered had by far the most damage, and nearly everything else has been some kind of pleasant surprise.
 

 

Even the roof framing around the vent, which had the most visible damage, is fairly solid (of course,  it's gotta come out anyway to replace the damaged plywood).

 

On the not-so-good front, there's some fairly heavy damage concealed by the tall cabinet, both at the top and the back (covered up by a PO), which explains the odd hole I'd uncovered in the door side wall earlier. I'll likely need to pull the tall cabinet in order to fix it properly, which means I'll likely end up removing the rest of the cabinets, too, in favor of sheet marmoleum rather than tile. Ah, well, what's a little scope creep, anyway?

I was also treated to a hail of hardened putty patches when I removed the roof skin (continuous from just above the front window all the way to the back bottom edge of the trailer) from countless patched holes. 

There were holes that looked like they'd been drilled through the skin to fish new taillight wires, holes for random lights and reflectors that had been swapped out at some point, holes from random gouges, you name it. I have to admit that the PO had done a very nice job hiding them with putty- while it was painted there was no indication that there were any problems of any kind, and I'd held out hope that the putty revealed when I stripped the paint was just hiding minor dents and dings. No such luck. A closer inspection of the backside of the front and side skins revealed more Swiss cheesery, if that's the word I want. Add that to the longish stress cracks at the top edges of the door, and the probable need to remove the tall cabinet (and the possibility of fitment issues that follow), and my hope at retaining the lovely patina of the original skin is fading. Ah, well.

...and it was lovely.

I had one more less-fun surprise when the phone rang while sitting down for a week-early-to-accomodate-family-schedules Thanksgiving dinner- a call from the owner of my storage unit. A tenant in the unit next to mine had apparently complained that I was using dangerous chemicals, specifically, a can of odorless mineral spirits he'd spotted on my work table. On the one hand, I figured my neighbor would have had a coronary if he'd realized I'd been stripping paint in the same unit just a couple of months ago (I'm meticulous with drop cloths and nightly shop-vac work, so everything is nice and sanitary). On the other hand, I was a bit irritated, since I'd told the owner what I was up to before I'd even rented the unit, and a half-can of odorless mineral spirits is pretty tame, especially when the neighbors on each side sport gas cans. On the other other hand, the owner was wanting me to relocate ASAP to a much smaller unit with proper walls rather than wire fencing, and those units have power. In fact, they were exactly what I'd wanted in the first place, but there weren't any vacancies, and the extra space definitely came in handy. To be honest, I was getting tired of firing up the giant 7k watt generator every time I needed a worklight or to give the space a vacuum, and with the days getting shorter...

Moving from a 12x37' to a 12x23' is a squeeze, but it should be much more pleasant for working through the winter, door closed, with a little space heater running. I didn't argue too much.