Well I took a little detour even after Finishes and Finishing and getting the stain and two coats of poly on these interior furniture pieces. Since then I've been doing some repair work and priming on them, and also a reevaluation of the grey water tank support and it's associated re-do as shown in yesterday's post.
I wanted to show one particular repair in detail today - the front cabinet face of the fresh water tank compartment, which of course is also the cab-over bunk step up face.
When I first got into this camper rebuild last summer I did some major planning, including the proposed systems and sizes, ordering tanks, etc. And of course at that time I didn't have any idea the extent this project would end up taking.
As time goes on, one gets a little better at what they do. Plus you start getting more of the needed tools and of course materials. Scraps become available and perhaps most importantly, you gain an awareness of just how much effort is needed and how much (effort or money) you want to invest, in a given repair. Until you go through those levels of experience and change, you don't really work early on in the same way you work by now! That's how the whole "do it right" is of a subjective definition.
Today's post is an illustration of that. Here's is a repair I made last summer when I had no pneumatic staple gun (I now own a narrow crown stapler and have had access to one neighbor's larger stapler), few materials on hand (I now have multiple sizes and thicknesses of sheet materials and 1 by's), a pretty lousy sabre-saw - Crapsman, which is what they've turned into (I've been using the neighbor's nice quality saw - a brand incidentally that I'm sure I'll be getting now and for future jobs since Craftsmen - and don't get me started on Kenmore - has lost sight of their founding principles).
This is the back side of the cabinet face mentioned. The repair is the small darker brown 1/8" wood paneling patch at the lower right side. That corner is the upper left side near the fridge cabinet. The framing boards were loose one to another and the face paneling was the only thing holding them in proximity.
I lined things up, used basic yellow wood glue, and fastened the patch to the corner with brads to tighten the joint until the glue dried.
Some have mentioned wood glue is brittle, that it's a poor choice. I agree, unless you get the glue into the wood fibers and the wood fibers of both surfaces touching, then look out!
So let's take apart this bad patch and make it into a nice job. All we have to do is take off the patch since wood glue is brittle and doesn't hold well.
Then I ran the belt sander over the surfaces to smooth it out and find some more fresh wood under here.
I cut my new patch to size and clamped it in position to mark the back for the detailed cuts.
Giving me this.
I cut a new support block for the side without one and glued it in place.
Then laid out the rest of my glue lines and placed the patch, finally stapling it in tight.
While that dried I strengthened another less than perfect corner, but decided it was good enough and would work fine, especially with the added screws where only glue and finish nails had been used before. This is where I had cut the original face and jogged it out by about 5".
There are better ways to do a corner, but this corner will be supported from moving in a number of ways so I am satisfied with its strength - for now.
More gimp removed and now sanded to receive primer.
I also didn't like this recent modification, which was all screwed together - no glue.
So I made it like this using glue and staples. Now granted, one surface is sanded paper, the paper of the wood grain photo (thanks Travel Queen for using real wood paneling in the 60's) so I used longer staples into the plywood piece to assist in holding the pieces together.
And the outside view.
As stated before, most of the mod is hidden from view, but I like how the under cabinet door opening looks now with the absence of the bulky 3/4" material.
Over the course of a few days, I'd add another bit of primer here and there, generally ending up with two+ coats on areas to remain finished in white, and 1+ coat(s) on areas receiving additional finish colors.
Now work can move forward. Soon we'll be getting into a fresh water tank install and more work on the drain system.
