As I chip away at freshening up Miranda’s exterior, I’ve come to accept that part of the job is going to be re-striping her. That’s RV parlance for removing all the decals and putting on new ones. Funny that that should sound like such a small job, but it’s a real bitch. Frankly, I don’t get why RV graphics aren’t just painted on. I’m not convinced that the hassle of apply vinyl neatly is any less than that of programming a graphic into a spray painter.

Today, I began the onerous task of de-striping the rig. Most of the teal stuff comes off easily with a high pressure spray, but the rest won’t be so easy. The goal here is to get a completely white rig that I will then buff to a smooth and hopefully uniform finish. I have a couple of ideas for how I will be re-striping, but that’s not a priority right now.

peeling stripes on the front end

part of the teal came off easily with a stream of high pressure water

bottom stripes are all gone, but notice the grey line: that’s adhesive. It’ll take a buffer to get rid of that.

While I had the hose out, I also took the time to Poli Ox the bottom half of the rig, which was the most stained and battered. This was just a light pass with a soft cloth. I will be doing a thorough going over the rig with a buffer later.

I considered these lines to be stains; no amount of elbow grease would lighten them

black lines are GONE!!! Poli Ox is awesome!

top half was scrubbed with a vehicle detergent and rinsed with high pressure water; bottom half was lightly rubbed with Poli Ox and rinsed with a gentle mist

The most onerous part of the afternoon was picking up all the bits of striping that blew into the yard. I’m sure I didn’t get it all and that I’ll be picking up pieces into the fall!

This once over with the Polix Ox helped me set some spending priorities. The first is going to be resealing all my seams. That’s going to be a job and a half since it will involve removing all the aluminum capping, scraping it and the rig clean, and then applying the Dicor.

I could be really cheeky and call this post “Exterior Makeover Kickoff!”, but I’m not feeling that ambitious today.

But it is going to be the first of hopefully many posts about the work I’m going to do this summer to improve Miranda’s exterior appearance. I’ve thought about how to blog about these projects and have decided to do them outside of much, if any, context. I’m just going to present the day’s project, but will not be going into any detail about what it is I’m trying to achieve until I can provide before and after pictures.

One of the most pressing things is to get rid of the gunk left over from the skirting tape.

Front bumper before:

Two hours of work with no. 0 steel wool, WD-40, a scrapper, and Goo Gone (borrowed from Jody so I could see if it works before buying some):

The major thing I want to do this summer is to completely buff Miranda with an oxidation removal compound, then shine up the fiberglass. Much research and many testimonials later, I decided to try Poliglow (Canadian site), a fiberglass restoration system. They had a special this spring with free shipping within the US, so I ordered my kit while I was in Blaine even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to the project for several months since I would pay twice as much in Canada (I’m getting smarter!). Along with the basic kit I ordered a bottle of Poli Ox to get rid of the worst stains.

This is what I’m talking about when I say stains:

The powder did not work as I expected it would. I thought I would need to put in a lot of elbow grease. This is what I got by lightly rubbing with a damp paper towel onto which I sprinkled the Poli Ox:

Impressive!!!

Gary has a buffer I can borrow, so now I know that what looked like a super daunting task won’t be that bad!

Last winter, I made a ladder to access the loft now that the dinette is gone. It was never meant to be a permanent solution.

As the months have marched on, getting in a permanent, angled, ladder was becoming a more and more pressing matter, but it’s not one I was procrastinating on. It went to the top of the list for inside projects for this summer, however.

So imagine my delight when Jody offered me a ladder from an old bunk bed to try out for size. It was perfect!!!

I left the old ladder for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is super solidly built and installed so securing the new ladder was just a matter of a couple of screws and putting some non-skid stuff under the feet.

The other reason is that should I ever decide to not sleep in the loft any more or, heaven forbid, get rid of the rig, the prototype ladder is much more sleek.

Finally, both ladders are hidden behind a curtain. I was going to paint the straight ladder but ended up not having nearly as much of the brown as I thought I had left.

The angle is going to make it much easier to get in and out of bed, and the step spacing is an improvement. Getting onto the first step of the straight ladder always involved a bit of a hike and the new ladder is just a couple of inches lower. And the worn brown painted finish is perfectly suited for my decor.

This is definitely a case of one person’s clutter being another person’s treasure!