Cab Over Demo Ends & Rebuild Begins

As we continued taking the cab over bunk apart, we realized quickly 

we were going to be doing a rebuild and not just repairing some areas. 

We were working until very late at night due to the 

predicted snow storms on the horizon.

With the bunk interior removed, we can now formulate a plan of action.

We pealed back the fiberglass. It was only attached securely on the curved nose piece.

 The bunk floor was made up of two pieces of 3/4" ply. 

The front piece (orange arrow) was completely rotten. 

The rear piece (blue arrow) was damaged where it butted up to the front piece. 

We removed the front piece and cut the rear piece back to solid wood. 

The nose frame was very damaged in the corners. 

We decided to remove the frame, salvage what we could, and rebuild the rest. 

We did not remove the window frame. It was fairly solid and 

we were afraid we wouldn't build it square, so it stayed. 

We cut and installed 3/4" treated ply. Yes, treated ply. Treated ply does not contain 

arsenic (read your label to be sure) and is ok for interior use as long as it's not an eating surface. We attached the ply with self tapping metal screws and adhesive. 

We used brackets to attach the new front ply to the old rear ply and adhesive.

This ply will be sealed on all sides, covered with fiberglass on the bottom, and covered with a layer of insulation and hardboard on top when the rebuild is complete. 

Did I mention, we also began removing the carpet? Yay!!

We removed the swivel chair by the door. We will replace this with some type of 

cabinet with a desk top to contain our daughter's toys, books, DVDs, and crafts. 

That's it for this weekend. More to come next weekend.

Lesson learned:

• The ply we removed measures 3/4" exactly. The ply we installed is 3/4" but, as you likely know, does not actually measure that size. To get ply with this exact measurement to match what you remove you would have to go to a lumber yard and pay out the nose. 
• I would have loved to use marine grade ply but it's 3 times as much as treated ply and only found in one lumber yard near where we live. The main difference between marine ply and treated ply is that marine ply does not contain core voids...ie it's structurally stronger. It is glued with the same adhesive as treated ply. Treated ply is typically a softer wood. For our purposes, I was ok with using the treated ply.