Smooth Like A Well Pulled Espresso
After the process and progress of de-rusting the exterior wheel wells, today’s focus was to sand and treat the entire interior - in one day. Challenge accepted!
Because I can’t wait to get to the fun stuff like painting, decorating and opening The Traveling Pheasant for business, I also wanted to tackle tearing out the top layer of flooring to see the condition of the boards below. And the bars on the window had to go. I couldn’t stand them another day!
Not too much to ask for a day's work? ;)
I started the day with removing all of the screws from the side boards and floor and detached the rubber mat from the ramp. I waited to pull the floor completely out until after we were finished with all of the sanding so that we could keep the base boards as clean as possible.
Window Bars
Next on the agenda was the jail break! Using the grinder, we sawed the bars over the windows clean off. This was my first experience with metal work and I loved the sparks flying everywhere because they reminded me of fireworks.
I was intimidated using the grinder at first but then as I moved from patch to patch smoothing out the areas of where the bars had been, I got more comfortable with it. I am certainly learning a lot through this horse trailer renovation processes!
LIVE & LEARN TIP: These photos were of my first time using the grinder. After this quick go, I put on a mask and leather gloves which I highly recommend.
Interior Walls & Ceiling
Once the bars were removed, I moved on to the front wall of the trailer. The previous owner had a wooden frame around the window, so I removed that to help lighten things up. On the day we started the de-rusting, we tested the Rust Kutter rust inhibitor on the areas we sanded on this front wall.
Discovering that as it dried, it broke down additional rust leaving chalky residue and flakes that needed to be re-sanded. Using an electric sander with a 120 grit pad, I sanded down the treated metal area again. The result was a very smooth finish, even though it does not look like it from the coloration in the photo. Learning from this, I adopted this as my method for rust treatment and sanding.
Thanks to help from my stepdad, we were able to sand down the two side walls and the ceiling using the multi-step process below:
First: We used the used the wire cup brush on the electric drill to break away the large, heavy duty rust chips
Second: We went back over the area manually with the hand held wire brush to sweep away debris and remove any further rust, as it has finer bristles than the electric attachment
Third: For the really stubborn areas where rust has left little indentations in the frame, I used a grinder to sand down the metal itself which not only removed the rust but helped to smooth out the overall surface area.
Forth: Wiped down the area with a microfiber rag to remove the dust particles. PRO TIP: Ideally using a compressor with an air gun attachment would have been the best option, however we did not have that attachment at the time but will need to purchase one to remove all particles before painting!
Fifth: At the very and of the day, we sprayed the rusted surface area with the Rust Kutter rust inhibitor to allow it to sit for a few days and do its thing. (We will sand down everything again that the Rust Kutter flakes off on our next renovation session)
Before & After sanding around the window
Flooring
Removing the prison bars over the windows was top of my "can't wait to do" list but tearing out the peeling floor was certainly number two.
At the end of the day, I could not contain my curiosity about what was under the top layer of flooring any longer and ripped it out with great satisfaction! Luckily, the majority of the base boards are in excellent condition and only about two of them needed to be replaces due to water damage. The doors will then need to have a weatherproof strip installed to stop this from happening again.
It was a long day but lots of progress was made. The mobile coffee bar is another day closer to serving up those hand-crafted cups of heaven!
Follow along next week and see what we will be sanding next!
Nursing some sore muscles,
Heather
Comments