Francesca's got skin!

First off, the Maryland Ren Faire was AWESOME!  My son proposed to his wonderful girlfriend there--with all their friends and family in attendance.  Of course, she said YES!  And we had a wonderful day of running around playing pirates--I LOVE that part!  But all good things must come to an end and home again to work on my Tuscan girl, Francesca--yes, I've finally decided on a proper name for her!



The BIG MOMENT has finally arrived--Francesca is getting her skins back on!  All the framing is on and the foam is in place.  We got right back to work to get her covered up since winter is knocking on the door.  I scrubbed down all the skins, taking off all the stickers, etc., and making sure that all the old putty tape was off.  Thank goodness we had a few warm days!  Then one by one, each piece is put back on and stapled in place.  Everything is lining up pretty good.  We have a little extra space on the edges--I sure hope this doesn't mess us up when we go to put the edge strips on!  And more importantly, that it doesn't cause a leak problem further down the road! 

After

 

Before

 

The roof skin is a little stretched out in the spot where it had been sagging for so long.  I came up with the idea to slide some Reflectix (a silver coated bubble wrap insulation) in between the framing and the skin where it sags to lift it up a little.  With a few small pieces and moving them around just right, it seems to have made a really nice difference--not perfect, but acceptable.  Once we solved this problem, it was time to screw down the edges of the roof to the front and back skins.  I used putty tape--I guess I could have/should have used butyl tape--and 5/8" stainless steel screws with rubber backed washers.  Comes out looking pretty nice!

The final task for the week was to cut out the front and rear windows and the vent hole up on the roof.  Ted cut out the vent.  I tried my hand at using the saw to cut out the front window--a little shaky at first, but I did get better.  The hour got late and rain was in the forecast so we had to wrap her up without getting the rear window cut out.  That's the first thing that will get done when the rains pass...

I ended the day with Francesca looking more like a camper than she has in over 3 months!  It brought a tear to my eye to see her looking so good!