As we got closer to getting The Ithaca to her winter goals, I started pulling the carpet from the cab. From our previous experience with Serenity- this would be the easiest part in comparison to any of the carpet in the camper area. Afterall, this was only glued down to metal vs the thousand staple per foot method they practiced outside of the cab. 😃 Quite honestly though- we were quite lucky with The Ithaca because the previous owner had already pulled the majority of the carpet.
After the floor was cleared and cleaned up- it was time to bed line it. At this point we experimented with Dupont’s Duplicolor bed liner without Kevlar in it. The cost had spiked on the product with Kevlar- so we figured we would give this a go.
This bed-liner was alright- not as textured, but application was easier to apply and control than the counterpart we had used before. The biggest difference is that this was WAY let off way more fumes! By the end of working through the cab it was definitely getting to me. After the job was done I installed the seats that were originally from Serenity. (Sorry- didn’t take a pic) But the good news is that they were way taller in the mounting rack and seat- so RJ would have no problem seeing over the dash!
So next it was on to the camper floor. Remember this area?
Well- after discussing what RJ wanted to do with her layout, it had been decided we would remove the two chairs. We would build a bar across the whole area that would look out the nice big window above it. The box built over the wheel well that the rear seat was mounted into was way too tall, so the plan was to remove it, see how much we could shallow it down, and then angle it so it would be much more comfortable of an obstacle for someone sitting at the bar to rest their foot upon.
I removed the seat and the box and spent quite a bit of time measuring and figuring out the space that would be needed from the tire underneath for the new box top.
I also removed the two table post holders. (The one you can see in the picture above and there was one more between the chairs) I fitted insulation to and taped it into place to fill the holes. Since the floor was soft in spots the plan was we were going to put new sub-floor over the whole camper floor anyway, so the holes were not going to be an issue after this point.
The next day, Laura and I went to work, sizing, cutting, screwing in, and gluing the new layer of sub-floor into place and at the seams. We fitted the new wheel well box and made sure it was nice and sturdy for people’s weight to be put on it. Then we used the bed-liner and painted our way back to the entrance area. We decided to stop there because we were going to have to get the bathroom floor ready in the future, so we would paint up to that point then. Here’s how it turned out!
Once RJ was done re-finishing the interior walls this winter, we would install her new bar- most likely the next spring!
Geoff Murphy 3/10/2020