The Xmas Break

Over the Xmas-New Year break I was able to get some more work done on Clarabelle assisted by my wife Abbie and my Dad and his wife Thi, who came over for a visit from Sydney. Being generally hot and too uncomfortable to work on the outside (not to mention dangerous – that Sun was lethal!), we focussed our attentions on the inside. Specifically we spent a lot of time and effort bringing the main bedroom into line. 

The bathroom bulkhead showing new yellow walls and new white gloss on the ceiling

First order of the day was to strip out all that we could, including the luggage racks, shelving brackets and rub rails. We even went to the lengths of removing the end seat for better access to the walls. Then there was a bit of carpentry to be done completing the frames around the working droplights. Lots of bogging to fill holes and gaps which then required lots of sanding. I installed a dust barrier between the main cabin and the main bedroom using a disposable drop sheet and loads of masking tape. Flimsy but effective – despite being blown around a fair bit by the slightest breeze, it did a pretty good job of keeping the sanding dust out of the main cabin.

The northern wall with new paint after stripping out rubrails, luggage racks and even the end seat. The end (western) wall will be left in original condition.

Then it was a good clean up and vacuum around before painting. Initially we started with brushes but dad suggested that we paint the yellow with the spray gun for a better finish. This meant many hours masking up areas where we didn’t want to paint yellow until we ran out of masking tape. This does mean some overspray issues but nothing that can’t be sorted with a brush of the appropriate colour. And, at the end of the day, we got a good depth of solid colour in this problematic and thin paint. So all those hours masking up were probably worth it!

The bedroom door. worth comparing to a similar shot from a previous post.

More painting is required before I start putting the room back together again and installing the bed but this is all brush work. You can see that I’ve started painting the ceiling in a white gloss – pain of a job but I think it looks all the better for the effort.