BeCeejed
Member
So here is my new-to-me trailer, which I am naming Rosaleda, pulled by my jeep, Astarael.
Rosaleda is wood, and was left in the colorado sun and weather for a year before I obtained her. The paint is cracked all over, peeling in some places, and a few of the seams pulled up. On some advice from the forums I'm gonna reseal the seams in the skin with some epoxy.
Monday (06/08/26) afternoon I got the central workshop cleaned up enough that a bay was open and Rosaleda could be sheltered under the carport for this work.
The paint is peeling and flaking in some places so Tuesday (06/09/26) I pulled out my little detail sander to sand the layers of paint down where the sun and weather had damaged it.
There's a dark grey underlayer beneath the white, so I'm trying to sand until neither layer flakes off, and we have a smooth transition either from the Grey layer to the white, or from the wood itself.
So after a day I have smoothed the flaky paint off most of the body so that everything that remains is firmly adhered.
Today (06/10/26) I removed the doors, the windows from the doors, and some locking brackets the previous owner put on since they lost the keys to the t-type door locks and could no longer keep it closed on the road. Also the rocket lights, which were not actually attached to the trailer wiring yet so only the bumper lights were working, and the plate on the front of the trailer.
My elder Lady Dog supervised.
I removed the gas struts holding up the galley hatch. They no longer worked, and I am a bit taller than whoever installed them so I need to replace them such that the galley hatch sits about 6 inches higher when open to make space for me under it.
Then the rubber protecting the hinge gap is old, stiff, and cracked in a few places so I need to replace it, so I pulled that off.
Now, when sanding the flaking spots, I realized that the gray layer under the white layer was actually fiberglass, not just another layer of paint. In the flaking spaces it had worn incredibly thin, but is adhered to the wood over most of the body. My original intention was to sand all the paint off, but I don't really want to do a full fiberglass peel...I also don't want to basically re-fiberglass the trailer.
So, I'm resealing all the seams with epoxy, will give a light thorough sand with like 60 grit sandpaper all over, and then primer, paint, and topcoat over everything. I might use Bondo to smooth out some of the patchiest spots where wood is exposed before sanding smooth in preparation for the primer.
There's a bunch more I will do as I progress in this 're-build,' but first we gotta get her skin smooth and weather-tight. We'll see how much I can get done tomorrow.
