57 Sportcraft Rebuild

Thanks, kirkadie. I think it actually boosted my confidence: a lot less things to mess up now and a lot less places for mice to make a home later. (They move so quick! I had a nest after leaving the trailer alone for just a month.) Do you know of any similar projects on here? It seems like it'll be a straightforward project, but I'd love to get some tips.

Here's a brief glimpse at my attempts to rebuild Scotty;

www.flickr.com/gp/19442597@N08/A5s746

I'm old and slow, and although I'm farther along than pictures show, slow non the less.
There is another among us who started his in January and has already been camping.

Have fun.

I really like the ham shape of your trailer and 1957 is the same year as our Rainbow. Your Sportcraft looks to have the same/similar siding pattern as ours. I like your windows too. Good luck with the rebuild, I'm looking forward to reading your success story here!

Thanks, mountainsounds. I just checked out your thread and you're doing a beautiful job! Lots of inspiration there.

I also checked out your rebuild, mbrrwolfe, and it's very helpful, thanks! Do you have any photos of the interior paneling you added? I'm not sure how much I'll be changing things because I wanted to keep most of the interior cabinets as is, but I'm curious to see your solution.

I'm starting to realize why it takes so long to rebuild a trailer. It's not the hours, it's finding the time to put in the hours! It took me almost two months, but I finally got a full day to put in more work on Willie.

To start, we popped out the front panel, which allowed us to better asses just how warped the street-side wall was. As you can see, all the cabinetry was dropped and titled.



Then we put in some bracing on the dinette cabinet to level the ceiling and lift it up a bit so we could get the street-side wall out. The curb-side on this end is fine, so we were hoping to keep everything over there in-tact. Leaving these upper cabinets in while we worked gave us a lot of confidence because we knew everything would need to line up the right way when we replaced it. We also plan on replacing all of the ceiling paneling, so it wasn't a problem to mess these up a bit.


You can see here that the ceiling on this side has been lifted to the proper height, plus one inch. The bracing hasn't been installed on this side yet, but we essentially cut the supports to the height the needed to be, then installed them on top of another piece of wood that we could remove when we needed to lower the ceiling to the proper height.


We then disconnected the cabinet above the kitchen using a crowbar and somehow managed to keep it in one piece. We also added support to the ceiling in the middle of the trailer which lifted the ceiling enough for us to work on the side wall. (The curbing is so rotten that we can just push all the walls apart: not helpful in most situations, but certainly made things easier in the demolition.) Next we disconnected the kitchen cabinets from the wall, and pushed off and hammered out the two panels on the street side. Here's where it started getting pretty scary, though with all the bracing everything was sturdy and more square than when we started. (Edit: this photo is actually from after we fixed the cabinets, but shows the supports well.)


After that we had to spend quite a bit of time getting the cabinets back to how they were supposed to be. It's hard to tell from this photo, but the bottom boards had slipped below the floor.


We hammered it all back in and straightened it out.


I don't have a lot of photos of the next steps, but we essentially traced the old side walls onto the new plywood. (I ended up splurging for some nice 1/2in birch.) We cut these out, then I held them up on the wall while my dad screwed them into the cabinets and the floor board. (skirts?)

Heres the new wood next to the old wood:


We replaced the one interior "frame" piece that goes along the seams of the plywood, glueing it first then screwing from the outside in. It was hard to get a good photo since it was getting dark, but the wood looks so nice! We probably should have stained these first, but it's already chilly here in New England and today was too cold. It's also important that we get the structure ready before the snows hit, so maybe on my next trailer I'll make the time to do that the right way


There's a bunch of junk in the way, but you can see how everything's flush & lined up now. Feels so much better!


And here's on the exterior. No more rot.



Next we're hoping to replace the front panel. We measured a bunch of times, and we're pretty sure this is 1/4in plywood wrapping around the front, ceiling, and back. Has anyone found that in other trailers? It'll make finding the wood a lot easier (and less expensive) though I'm wondering how tough it'll be to bend it. We're also planning on getting the remaining j-rail off so we can replace some paneling in the back. We've got a long road ahead of us, but so far so good!

Thanks, kirkkadie. I did find a few places that carry the 1/8" near me, but I'm trying to replace things rather than rebuild them and don't want the measurements to be off. The 1/4" is so cheap, maybe I'll just buy a sheet and see if there's any possibility of working with it, and if not, we'll try to figure out how to get the 1/8" to work. The curbing on the trailer also looks like it was made from 3 sheets of 1/4", so we'll need to find some solution there as well.