Our first outing with our little Layton took us on an overnight stay just 20.09 miles from home to a military resort at a nearby lake. Sounds simple right? The week prior to this one night outing (which went smoothly, therefore I will not touch on) was a wee bit rough, so we thought, until we experienced our second journey (which will be a whole other blog post). Five days prior to travel date, we take the tarp off so that we can deep clean it. Did we check the weather forecast?? NOOOO!! Should we have?? YEEESS!! Assuming the week would be sunny and clear, mid-week we get a quick overnight rain storm that dissipates by mid-morning, leaving POOLS of water on top of the camp trailer. Well, I thought, this can't be good. Sure enough, I check the interior and there is water dripping in this whole area...
Okay...so we have a roof leak, how bad can that be?? I sponge mop up all the rooftop pools, peel off the lamination to allow water to drop instead of collect, then head inside to do some internet research. Well, it turns out, if we had done the proper research PRIOR to purchasing our little Layton, we would have seen the obvious tell-tale signs of roof leakage. Not just in THIS area, but in FIVE areas!!....maybe six, one seems a little iffy.
LESSON NO. 1: THOUROUGHLY INSPECT VINTAGE TRAVEL TRAILER PRIOR TO PURCHASE FOR ROOF LEAKS WITH A SIMPLE TURN OF THE HEAD TOWARDS THE CEILING.
This knowledge WILL save you from a money pit, or as I like to call it, restoration project. However, for clarification, we are not restoring it to it's original condition. We are fixing it's current problems. Therefore I need to use the terms refurbish, rebuild, renovate, and/or revamp. Having clarified that, I will do my best to use proper terminology from now on. I felt pretty glum for the rest of the week having learned about roof leakage and it's super damaging effects on poor little camp trailers. But we managed to deep clean the trailer and get on the road just 55 minutes later than scheduled departure time. 24 hours later...this story became but a minimal memory, but that will be in the next post.
Happy Travels!
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