The Left Barn Door Gets a Facelift
Today is a short installment of The Traveling Pheasant’s continued refurb progress on the back side of the trailer. Now that the ramp is completed and the wings are still a work in progress, I turn my attention to the left barn door.
I had sanded and refinished the right-side door some time back after the bottom ledge had the welding repairs. Up until now, the back looked rather sad and unbalanced with one side primed and the other side not. Not only do I want to move the mobile coffee bar progress forward, I hate imbalance!
I began sanding the front side which was pretty straight forward with the exception of the handle. Compared to the right side, this door had some serious dents – almost as if it had been stepped on a few times. Knowing that the surface will never really be perfectly flat, I still wanted to try my hand at filling in what I could with Bondo. However, before I moved to that step, I wanted to complete the sanding on both sides, as well as the hinges.
Side not on the hinges, I really like them because they allow for the doors to be removed. You need only lift them upwards out of the bracket, although they are quite heavy and getting them back on is much harder than taking them off. Its far easier when you have someone to help line up the pins as you lift them back on.
The back of the doors has dimensional frames the way the ramp did, meaning more surfaces to sand. Not to mention chipping the paint and sanding around the latches required some detail work. Luckily, I did not need to concentrate too much on the area within the frame because I plan to attach a chalk board and a pin board to the inside of the doors concealing this area.
With the back sanding finally complete it was time to move on to the Bondo. The first round was pretty terrible. After using the same product all over the outside of the trailer for over a month now, for some reason the compound didn’t harden properly. Trying to sand off the semi-hard paste was not pleasant. It ruined a good amount of sandpaper and I had to resort to scraping it off.
Frustrated, I tried again and was racing the clock before it was due to rain. I was able to get the second coat on but had the same issue! To say I was extremely irritated would be an understatement. It was not until later during another working session I discovered the reason to be temperature. The compound was too cold and out of the required temperature range.
On the upside, I was able sand and prime the hinges before the rain set in. Also, watching the rain roll down the trailer, I gained some interesting insight. I noticed that the channel along the roof steers water to fall right on the hinges of the barn doors and ramp – helping to explain the severity of rust damage on the inside. I will need to address and possibly replace this channel, but certainly not at the least adding grooves and holes to better direct the water runoff.
Next week, I will put the barn doors on hold (I need a break from the Bondo fiasco) and begin work on the back arched frame of the trailer. See you then!
Living & Learning - fueled by coffee,
Heather
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