It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for… Demo Day!
The day has arrived for us to gut our girl! We have been dying to share this huge step with you, as it is the first real work that has been done on our Airstream.
When we first purchased Aurora she had been used as a clothing boutique, so she was full of shelves and hanging racks, as well as having a dressing room in the back. All of these items were constructed with wood and heavy galvanized pipe, and the dressing room had several extremely heavy mirrored doors. We were excited to get all of that interior removed so that we could see how much weight Aurora would drop, and also start to see the bones of our final product.
The demo was incredibly satisfying, as you can see in our video below.
As we started to rip out the interior, we found several large ant nests and mud dauber nests tucked up under some of the fiberglass in the front and rear of the trailer. (We later found a bunch up under the floorboards as well.) Fortunately we were able to get these guys out without anyone sustaining any injuries, although we did kill some little ant babies.
After tearing out the interior shelving and doors, we got to work on removing the old wooden floors. These were much easier to remove than expected and were up in a matter of minutes. From there we started on the interior skins. Initially we planned to save these, but after removing all of the rivets and screws we realized that they were in pretty rough condition, and ultimately we decided that we are going to replace them with new skins.
All of the windows and window hardware had to come out, and then came the messy job of removing the old insulation and wiring. We would highly recommend wearing a respirator for this job as it is quite dirty and inhaling insulation particles is *not recommended*. Some insulation, generally from years prior to 1978, contains asbestos so it is important to be careful during this process.
The only other major tear down was the canopy, which we intend to replace with something in a better color than bright orange. The two of us are both Texas A&M grads (Gig em!) and there is absolutely no way we are driving around with a giant orange canopy on our Airstream.
Once our girl was completely gutted and cleaned out it was time for us to prep for the exciting process of removing the shell!
We’ll have a follow-up post outlining just how much weight Aurora lost during the demo and the weight change as we repair and restore her. Feel free to check out our photos of the demo below.
auroratheairstream.com 