Day 34-35: Finishing Touches Hatch Gas Struts

Day 34 I went and got the temporary registration for the state of Texas so we can get it weighed and get the full registration on it to make it road legal. We took it on its first ever drive around the block.

After that we decided to work on the little detail projects we've been putting off. We wanted to install two, 12V outlets, one for the interior and one for the galley. We use a 1" spade bit to drill through the cabinet base and then a sanding dremel bit to widen the hole. The outlet fits and you can plug the car charger type cord up into the bottom of the interior cabinets.

The second 12V charger comes out the back galley cabinet in case we need it for anything in the kitchen. They are run through the solar converter so it should pull from solar power first before pulling from the battery. We tested it and it worked!

Our next project was to get the cabinet doors on. This has been a couple day process as we ran out of 1 1/4" wood screws. In the meantime, I made an attachment piece for the cabinet hardware. I used 2, 1 1/2" wide pieces of 1/2" plywood and glued the faces together. I then made a trim piece out of 1/8" luan to make a pretty face of the attachment point. If that makes sense. It should clear up in the below photos.

While the glue was drying, I checked out Dan's electrical work. He did an amazing job getting everything fitted in the tongue box and he built a battery holder out of wood so the battery doesn't shift around in the box.

Went back to Northern Tool and got a wheeled 1,000 lb jack for the front of the trailer. It's definitely not incredibly stable so we use the jack in combo with some trailer jacks that sit on the ground (plus a bucket) to keep it stable. The jack is bolt on so no holes had to be drilled or anything had to be welded.

Once my plywood pieces were dried, I added the "face" to the thin side that's facing outward.

We cut the doors out of leftover 1/2" plywood. 16 1/2" tall and 23" wide. We kind of winged it and super thankful it worked out.

We used flush hardware so you don't see the hinge and the face of the cabinet is right up against the bottom of the counter. We used the drill press with the 1" spade bit to drill holes like we did with all the other doors on the teardrop.

So glad all that is done. Cabinet builders are insane. That's a tough job. And we had an easy version...

After both the cabinet doors were on, we had $1 latches and just figured out how to make it work for what we wanted it for. We will still need to figure out how to secure the cooler so it doesn't slide around.

Got some cute doormats at World Market.. a llama one and a bee one. I thought we could put our shoes on it so they don't get the inside dirty. A wonderful idea until Dan informed me, "until scorpions take up residence in your shoes." Touche, Texas.

Our solar panel came in! We have a cord house that mounts on for where we drill it in, but it looks stupid so we are going to engineer another way to cover and keep the cords safe and waterproof the area where they go into the cabin. If you have any ideas, feel free to drop them in the comments!

Lastly is the gas struts to hold open the hatch. We've been using a hatch calculator and thought we had it all figured out and then the struts didn't hold the weight of the hatch. We ordered a new pair that are the same size but twice as strong, those should be in shortly.

Total time spent Days 34-35: 5.5 hours
Total project hours: 129 hours

Day 30: Installing Doors & Mattress

AHH we are almost done!! 

Today it felt real. It's mind blowing stepping back and looking at this and thinking, "We BUILT this." I'd like to say we're a good team. I'm an excellent micro manager and Dan is a hard workwr. 😂 But in all seriousness, I think we work well together, his strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa. 

We installed our custom doors from Challenger Doors by covering the edges with butyl tape, sliding them into the sidewall holes, and putting in pan head 1" screws and tightened them until about 25% of the butyle tape squeezed out. Then I took the little scraper and scraped off the excess. Incredibly easy process. We still need to install the rain guards but that involves a self tapering screw. Which we don't have yet. 

Since the fan is installed and we can close off the interior from bugs, we put the mattress in. We ordered a custom size mattress half an inch shorter than the interior dimensions from Love Your Mattress. The customer service there is phenomenal!! The mattress was pre rolled so we were able to unroll it inside with minimal effort. There will be a problem whenever we need to remove it but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

It's actually crazy comfortable and it's made with natural fibers, no bad chemicals, or by products. 

Not much else to report on, but it looks like it's almost ready to go!

Total time spent today: 2 hours 

Total project hours: 119.5 hours 

Day 29: Skinning the Hatch Part II & Installing Trim & Fan

Today was one for the books! After getting started, we had our only fluke (the front of the aluminum didn't quite adhere and popped off) but the rest of the day went completely in our favor! We kept working to get tons done.

We cut the 4'x8' aluminum sheet down to roughly the size of the hatch and cut it with the jigsaw. (It worked eons better than cutting the diamond plate.)

After that was done, I applied a liberal amount of contact cement and we let it dry for 15 minutes and then put the aluminum on and clamped it since the strap was being used on the teardrop.

The aluminum had popped up in the front of the teardrop so we took an aluminum trim piece and installed it on top of the aluminum and diamond plate to hold it in place.

We finally got to put on the trim! We first ran butyl tape for a waterproof seal on the edge of the whole side and then place the trim on and pre-drill through the aluminum and into the sidewall. Dan then drove 1 1/4" exterior screws into the molding every three inches. After cleaning it all up and using a scraper to clean the butyl tape that pushed out from under, we added the black trim and we were done with one side.

Knocked out side two in about half hour since Dan had to keep changing bits.

Last step with the roof was to route out the hole the MaxxAir fan is going to sit in. You always need to have air flow in a teardrop as since it's a small, airtight space, it can totally kill you. No bueno.

We used the recommendation from Vintage Technologies and used the rotozip drywall bit with guide point and it worked like a dream! We sprayed it with the silicone WD40 and it went perfectly.

We're getting SO CLOSE to being done and we are SO THRILLED with how it looks!!! 🤩🤩
We are hoping to be finished in around 10 more hours. I also realized I'm not dual counting hours where both of us are working on it. I count my hours and then Dan's and then our joint hours as the same so I suppose it's not incredibly accurate. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Total time spent today: 6.5 hours
Total project hours: 117.5 hours

Day 25-26 Trimming Hurricane Hinge and Installing Luan

Day 25 was a hot afternoon and Dan had a long day at work so we figured out the workings and how to install the door latch and then trimmed our hurricane hinge correctly and drilled holes in the flat bar. Contrary to my prior thought of the 3/8" offset of the galley hatch door, it needs to be more like 1/4". The flat bar was cut so it will sit up against the aluminum molding trim and the other vertical "foot" was trimmed down to match as well. The picture below is how it will be installed.

Total time spent Day 25: 1 hour
Total project hours: 95 hours

Day 26 I finished the interior cabinets (after messing it up AGAIN and installing it backwards 🙄🙄) and NOW it finally is finished.

I used the orbital sander and sanded the galley hatch frame so everything is smooth for when we skin it with the Luan and aluminum.

That took most of the afternoon and when Dan got home we cut more of the radiant barrier insulation and installed two layers between the spar on top of the interior roof.

We purchased a Brad nailer and decided to skin the teardrop with our first layer of Luan (1/8" plywood). No pictures of this part because it took both of us plus our roommate to get it done.

Since our trailer is only 4 foot wide, we decided to bend our luan the long ways so we only needed one sheet to cover from the back where the hatch attaches to the front. We started in the back with everything clamped and released the back clamps on the spar where the hurricane hinge will be and covered about 12 inches back with polyurethane glue. Then, we clamped it back down and use the brad nailer to put in about 15 nails on each spar and along the sidewalls. Then we moved forward and put polyurethane glue along the entire top and then took turns using the Brad nailer to secure the top and then we did the front curve and bent it slowly so the wood wouldn't crack. Once we put a bunch or nails in, it hit us that we FORGOT about all our wiring. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

We figured with all the nails that we had hit the wiring and there was no way to check it so we got a tip from a friend (shoutout to all_i_do_is_hobby on IG) to put in 1-3.5 amp fuses in and connect everything to see if the circuit had shorted. Nothing blew and we measured the current and every wire still showed 12.7v so I think we're okay!! But we probably have nails through our wires...

During that time I got the spar urethane layer on the galley counters to protect them and now all we need is cabinets on the bottom and the galley interior will be finished!

Dan tested all the wiring for the fan, solar, and 12v outlet and none of them shorted. Thank goodness. We really wouldn't have any good way to fix it if it had and that would have been many hours down the drain. Big lessons learned today.

Our interior reading lights have a blue light setting. Cute.

Dome light works and is surprisingly bright! It will work really well as a game light. We will be installing a pull out table under the lower shelf.

We finally have the first roof layer on! It's looking real now! We've passed most of the hard busy work and now it's on to finishing and securing the electrical in the tongue box. We are going to cut a layer of the Luan to install on the front with a hole for the wiring. We figured that would be easier than cutting it in a giant 8 foot sheet of the Luan. We are going to source our aluminum from Wrisco I believe and hopefully get that on Thursday! We've also broken the 100 hour mark!

Total time spent Day 26: 7 hours
Total project hours: 102 hours

Day 23-24: Hatch Part II & III

Yesterday we glued together our 1/2" plywood pieces and clamped them together. We then used our 1/4" plywood to inset the galley hatch frame while constructing it so we had room to freely move the finished hatch up and down.

We cut our top and bottom spars and glued them and held them til it dried with nails driven in at an angle. (Spoiler alert- it didn't work.)

While the glue was drying we tackled some more electrical work. We soldered and connected the other reading light and prepped the fan wiring and the dome light wiring. The second reading light is broken so we had to order a replacement light so we can't put the roof on until we get it.

We purchased the 2 1/3 cubic foot tongue box from Harbor Freight and it's perfect for our needs. We drilled holes in it for the existing bolt and extra holes for the U-bolts from underneath. Dan built a wooden platform for the tongue box to sit on and I sealed it with our low VOC wood sealer.

After the hatch frame was "dry", we pulled it out and the nails didn't hold the glue so it snapped apart. We decided to reinforce it by cutting two more ribs and gluing them together. That way we would have two , 1/2" ribs glued together on the outside and two, 1/2" ribs on the inside. The upper and lower cross beams of the hatch are 1 1/2" thick so in order to fit the interior ribs in, we had to cut them down that length on either side.

We had to head to the FC Dallas game and it was super hot so we took plenty of breaks. Got around 4 hours of work in.

Time spent Day 23: 4 hours
Total hours spent: 87 hours

Day 24 was spent entirely on hatch work. We installed the vertical and horizontal pieces on the outside and then measured and cut the center two beams. We predrilled all our holes and used 2" screws on the vertical ribs and 1 1/2" screws on the horizontal beams.

We used a square to make sure the hatch wasn't going to be all wonky shaped and shown here is all the pieces installed except the center two beams.

We did a dry fit and lost our 1/4" gap. :(

We removed the right side cross beams and shaved them down 1/4" or so.
Before installing them back in we decided to do a dry fit of the hurricane hinge from Vintage Technologies.

We had to cut down the underside that attaches to the galley hatch so it sits inside of the sidewalls.

Since we didn't notch our sidewalls down, we have an offset hinge that allows the hatch door to sit up 3/8" so we can install the trim and galley hatch seals have room for the door to close and latch.

IT OPENS AND WE HAVE OUR 1/4" GAP!!

You can see here where I cut a notch out of the hinge. The part inside that is in focus used to be flush with the entire end but it wouldn't fit inside the sidewalls so I took a hacksaw saw and chopped out a rectangular piece. (Not recommended. Terrible sound.)

We messed around some with some little things for awhile before we called it quits for the weekend. Happy with what we got accomplished and looking forward to getting this bad boy finished up soon!!

Time spent Day 24: 7 hours
Total project hours: 94 hours