Moving forward, slowly, on three fronts:

 My project has been delayed by some joyful travel and rainy weather. Last week, we spent the remainder of our frequent flyer miles to visit our son and his family, in Texas. A late plane/missed connection, extended our trip by a day, United put us up in a hotel. It was nice, and the delay gave us an opportunity to have a lovely meal and a great visit with some dear friends. Rose and Tom served at Faith Church in Guam. Tom was our pastor. They "retired" a year before us and live in the Chicago area. 

It was all great, but none of it advanced the renewal of the Frolic. Jesus gives new life instantaneously, not so, when Howard does it.

Anyhow, I've been able to spend a couple of days working on the trailer this week. Partly because it has been rainy, and partly to stave off boredom with some tedious tasks, I've adopted a strategy of going back and forth between several tasks.

1. I'm continuing to remove the skin, where needed. It looks like all of the wall siding will be off before I finish this task. With the skin off I can deal with the framing rot and deterioration.
2. 
   This trailer is different than some others of the era. All of the canned ham type trailers
   (I think that's how one would describe the 68 Frolic, even though its lines are a bit more square, like the next generation of RVs that restorers call "toasters" (The picture to the right is a "canned-ham." The one below is a "toaster.") The roof on this type of trailer is really a continuation of the front and rear walls. Often it is aluminum, just like the sides. The Frolic has a galvanized steel roof. 
   In reality, in its present condition, the roof, both the galvanized portion and about a foot of the aluminum in front of and behind the steel section is mostly composed of a thick coating of fibered aluminum roof paint. Think what your grandpa put on his leaky barn. In some places, the coating is 1/4 inch thick. It has to come off. I can stand the task better if I do it a little at a time. If I just have an 
   
   
   hour or so, to work on the trailer, I get on the ladder and work on that, or sometimes I'll break from other stuff and scrape a couple of quarts of the gunk off. An old electric heat-gun, that's hung around my shop for years has been a great help. (Obviously, one of the Frolic's previous owners subscribed to the strategy of, "It leaks somewhere, so I'll paint gunk everywhere in order to get it sealed. Since the gunk doesn't address the underlying issues, it really, as far as I can see, didn't help at all.) Standing on the ladder for too long hurts my feet--old trailers aren't the only things that deteriorate--so that's another reason to do this task in smaller increments.
3. New skin for one of these trailers is expensive, and aluminum doesn't rot, so I'm using the original siding. As near as I can tell, over the last half-century, the little camper went from white and copper, to tan and copper, to white and red. The paint jobs were accomplished by brushing on latex house paint. The same standard of "more is better" that was used on the roof was applied to the sides. Since the process of removing this involves paint remover, I have adopted the procedure of brushing on the remover, covering it with plastic so it doesn't dry out as fast, and then doing some other work while the chemicals proceed with their task. You can see more in the pictures.

Along the way there are tasks, including going to the store, that have to be done. 

The rear of the trailer skinned. You can see there is need for some replacement.

Most of the framing removed. You are looking at the backside of the interior paneling. I'll take it down, use it for a template to cut a new piece of paneling, install it, and then put new framing on top of it. (By the way, paneling, which used to be ubiquitous as a cheap remodeling option, is pretty well a thing of the past. I think I know where a couple more pieces are. The higher-end restorers use birch veneer plywood. The Frolic had cheaper paneling when it was new. I'm saving some of what is already there. The new and old will be painted to match. I'm not after a true restoration, though the character of the original will be preserved.

Remembering how things go back is an important part of the process. I try to give the engineers that designed the trailer some credit. I put marks on the back of the paneling and will use the old paneling as a template for cutting out the new piece, but just in case I laid the old framing out in the general configuration in which it needs to go back. Most of what you see will be replaced with new lumber.

This is the upper piece of the rear siding. You can see the roofing gunk, that remains after one dose of scraping, along the upper part of it. This piece has gone through the first step of the "de-painting" process--power-washing. Next is paint remover, then another power-washing, then sanding, whatever else it needs, primer and paint. I'll post some more pictures of this process in another post.

I made a trip to a "man's yard sale" this morning. I got some lightweight tile that will work for a backsplash in the kitchen area. I'll go get some 2x4s and a piece of paneling later. The 2x4s are like gold right now. If the rain holds off, I need to mow. Hopefully, I'll have some time to make some further progress.