The Odyssey had 2 points where there were signs of water getting in. The first and foremost was the rear bathroom skylight. As I had mentioned before- the previous owner’s solution to the broken rear skylight was to place a piece of plywood over it and use 2 ten pound weights to hold it down. The second leak point was the bed area on the drivers side above the cab. The paneling was completely separated at the seam along the bottom and it was allowing water to saturate into the bottom of the bed.
So the first thing to do was get the skylight situation fixed, or at least stabilized for the moment. I ordered a new skylight from Amazon and within a week the skylight was no longer an open hole.
Next- I was going to start tackling the water damage from the rear skylight. The ceiling and rear wall of the bathroom were pretty badly damaged- and that seeped all the way down through the wall of the ceiling and side wall of the closet next to the bathroom. We began to go through and evaluate what we should replace and what should be encapsulated (sealed in) and refinished. We started by testing and peeling out what was obviously rotted to the point of no return. I determined within the rear passenger corner there was next to no substantial support left. Between that and it needing a new entry step built right next to the problem corner (Check out what the previous owner left 😲), I would need to open up the back corner from the outside to see what would need to be done from there.
First we removed the awnings from the RV, knowing that we were going to refinish the whole rig anyway with Gaco. One of my overall goals was to move the placement of the awning. (See the photo above) The original owner had chosen a really odd way of installing in it- in which they cut out a portion the propane door around it- pretty much completely ruining it. I intended (after deliberation of best placement) to shift it to the rear of the propane door, thus adding to the necessity of re-building the rear corner. So I carefully removed the fiberglass from the wall and found this…
There was pretty much nothing left of the back corner 😓– so I proceeded to remove the propane compartment, running light, and the taillight. Then I cut out plywood to where I could find substantial enough of material to build off of. Next I proceeded with measuring and building the new support framing for the corner.
Once the new supports felt extremely sturdy I re-installed the tail light and the propane box. Then cut and laid in the new paneling. Side Story at this time: The buddy of mine that owned the Dolphin with the blown engine, he showed up while I was working on this part. He provided some fun company and conversation but one part of the conversation really stuck out to me- he stood back and while he watched me work on it he exclaimed, “Man! You’re really doing it!”. I turned and looked at him, slightly confused by the statement and asked, “Doing what?”. He said “It, you’re actually doing it- I’m so busy all of the time I just didn’t feel like I wanted to be working on mine at the end of the day…” I was was confused by it, he was a carpenter by trade- so the motorhome work shouldn’t have been to hard for him; but to each their own. (I understood the mechanical part) Anyway- it was an interesting response. At the end of the day though I was a bit proud that she was coming together. 😀
There would be more steps on finishing the wall, but with at least the structure of the wall re-built it was on to the next step- the entry step that is…
Geoff Murphy 2/7/2020
Boy that was bad, you did a good job!!
Thank You! I’m stoked how solid everything came out. 🙂