floor 1st or leave until later?

[ken37917]

I'm a newbie hear and trying to start planning construction. So far I have the Kuffelcreek plans and may do the harbor frieght trailer (cub). I visited the outback site (larry and diane) and was impressed by how the set up the frame and were able to alot of the build prior to final flooring. This really appeals to me as I'm older and would like the extra room while working on the interior of the cabin. I'd appreciate hearing other's experience and pros and cons. Thanks

Ken Thorland

[An Ol Timer]

Ken,
You may want to look at Steve Frederick's site. I believe he did a lot of his build as I did mine. I'm older and a bit arthritic and with double knee replacements, so I wanted to do as much as possible at bench level and horizontal. I built the floor first. Then I did the sidewalls on the bench, completely, even down to the finishing and wiring. The outer skin of the sidewall was the shape of the profile, but the inner frames and the inner skin was reduced by the thickness of the roof spars and the inner ceiling panel leaving a ledge for the ceiling panel to sit on. I finished the ceiling panel prior to installing it. At this point I wired the ceiling and insulated it and then put the outer roof panel on. This let me do all my wiring and finishing without having to crawl around inside of the trailer. The galley and cabin cabinets were done as a unit and then put in place thru the hatch opening. This allowed them to be done on the bench also. I did probably less than 2% of the work from the inside, just touch up and some fixtures. Hope this is of some help.

[emiller]

Had knee surgury so I went the Outback teardrop way and built the floor last so I could sit on the chassis cross beams and work inside. Check out www.outbackteardrops.com

[emiller]

sorry heres the link to outback teardrops
http://www.outbackteardrop.com/

[ken37917]

for the suggestions, I put it to the general discussion forum as well. I appreciate the input

[webbedouin]

Don't put the floor in until you have too. There is so much more room to work in. You'll be thanking yourself long before the trailor is finished

[madjack]

...since my walls and front and rear bulkheads are cleat mounted to floor I had no choice but to do floor first
madjack

[webbedouin]

What i did was anchor every thing to a frame, which attaches to the trailor and worked from the top down. Didn't have to floor it until it came time to attach the bottom cabinets to the floor. The floor just laid in and attached to the frame and got trimed. The bottom cabinets, of course, proved to be the most complicated, but they are all in the galley so they are relatively easy to get to.