Tomorrow is a huge turning point for this entire trailer process. The decision to continue with it or hold off for some time will have been made by the end of the day. We don't have the trailer with us today and were unable to make any progress on it, tomorrow will be day 25 if we work on it. We're suppose to be leaving this Wednesday for a cousin's graduation then 5 days in the Olympic National Forest. Will we??? For now...on to the flooring...
Once everything had been completely removed from the trailer, we were finally able to assess the damage. 1/4 of the floor was pretty rotted, we learned this AFTER the fact. The two front corners along the front wall were REALLY rotted. But the rest was actually in pretty decent condition. Looking back, I really do wonder if we could have left this as a front end project instead of a full-on-gutting-it project. Oh well, now we know.
So again...day 3 (and I believe day 4)...we removed a 4'x8' section of flooring, removed pink insulation, shop vac'ed crud out, painted bottom 2x2's with a wood hardener (surprisingly they were not rotted, but could use a little love), patched any holes that may have occurred in the bottom metal, filled back in with rigid insulation, measured area's exact dimensions and cut new 3/4" plywood to shape, before laying in place we painted it with 2 layers of Killz paint (a preventative measure I guess...again, just going with hubby's plan), laid it in place, nailed in good. Phew! 2 days just to do ALL that!
Man Hours:
Day 3: hubby 8, me 5, Total=13
Day 4: hubby 5, me 3, Total=8
Day 5: hubby 5, me 0, friend 5, Total=10
Day 6: hubby 9, me 7, Total=16
Money Spent: (who knows, I haven't even added that yet)
Here's what we had to pay for:
Dump Run
(3) sheets 3/4" plywood
(3) sheets 1.5" thick rigid foam insulation
Large bolts, nuts & washers that holds entire trailer to the floor & trailer frame
Killz (this may have been leftover from a previous project)
Hubby put in the new piece of panelling before I could take a pic of what he did to prep it. He measured the bathroom window opening and lower storage opening then cut them out using a handheld jig saw (I believe, I'm not the best at tool names). He measured those areas based on the existing openings because the existing piece of ROTTEN panelling was removed in hundreds of pieces therefore could not be used as a template. We then measured every rotten 2x2 that we pulled out to cut a new 2x2 of the exact same length. These lengths CANNOT be too long nor too short, they MUST BE EXACT. Now, because we were measuring rotten pieces, I'm guessing that hubby cut them somewhere between an 1/8" to 1/4" too long...I'll explain later further down.
Once you have all the pieces cut, you can start assembling them back into the back wall. BE SURE to refer to your accurately dimensioned diagram and install the horizontal pieces as dimensioned!! We did not measure the vertical distances and were off in a couple places but did not learn this until I put the metal siding back on. We also cut all the 2" thick ridid foam insulation to fit into each spot. I actually just used the hand held jigsaw. You can see the areas where I had to piece together pieces because of the duct tape holding them together. We only bought one sheet of it. We also cut two new pieces of plywood supports for where the tail lights get screwed into. We got all these parts in then hubby had to work two days in a row. One day I yardsaled, the other I put on the visqueen and metal siding. We chose to put a layer of visqueen because of how the metal siding forms condensation on the interior. Originally, the pink insulation was in between all the wood and the siding creating somewhat of a vapor barrier. Since we went with a rigid insulation that fit in between 2x2's, those 2x2's would still have been exposed to condensation buildup on the aluminun siding. 
Hence a layer of visqueen, that's what we had. I cannot say it's the best option nor the worst. It's just what we had on hand (we're currently finishing our basement too) without having to make another purchase.I installed the visqueen layer without hubby's help. Lets just say a slight breeze does not help and makes for a longer session of visqueen installation. Oh, and it was all done with a weak, weak staple gun because I then had to go back and hammer every single one. Luckily I had a friend take pity on me and come over to help install the metal siding back on. Lets just say it was also a lesson in patience for her (yes she admitted that), because this was the part that we realized we were 1/8"-1/4" too long for the width of the wood and we realized (more importantly) that we did not have horizontal 2x2's to staple each piece of metal siding into!
THIS is why it is SO IMPORTANT to measure all those distances and write them down on a little drawing. Below is a pic of the siding as we were taking it off. You can see the bottom portion of it is folded into an "S" shape. The lower half of this "S" bend gets stapled back into the horizontal 2x2's (this was where we made a mistake.) The lower piece of siding fits up into this "S" bend. Once again, the purpose is to keep out moisture from the inside. Two whole rows did not have a single spot to staple into along the bottom edge, just on the two ends at the corner joints.
Once my friend and I got all those back metal siding's on, this is what we were left with for hubby's third day of work...in need of a window installation, a storage door installation and two corners to be re-puttied and screwed back in.
Well, I once again managed to NOT take pictures because we were down to the wire. Over the weekend, I went to an RV store and purchased three rolls of 3/16" thick putty tape. Putty tape is not easy to come by! I knew it was at the RV store just 20 minutes away, but shouldn't the hardware store(which is closer) carry this stuff too?? Apparently they don't. I was surprised at the number of people who have never even heard of the stuff!! I grew up knowing what this stuff was, for some reason I thought it was as common as duct tape. WRONG!
Well, I feel that this post is long enough. In part 4 I'll go into putty tape and our process for the corners. But before part 4 a quick tip.
After tearing out all the 2x2's and panelling, we layed out the 2x2's on the driveway for a visual layout for when we're ready to build the wall again. IMPORTANT STEP: PRIOR TO REMOVAL OF 2x2'S, MEASURE VERTICAL DISTANCE BETWEEN HORIZONTAL MEMBERS AND WRITE IT DOWN ON PAPER. IN FACT, DRAW THE WHOLE WALL FRAME ON PAPER WITH EVERY MEASUREMENT. That's a huge step to remember to do, once you build the new frame, it all must be EXACT. You cannot build the framing a 1/4" longer or shorter, it screws up A LOT of other steps down the road...as you will soon see and learn from our mistakes (if not in this post, then in following ones)...
Once the whole back end is opened up, even more rot was exposed here (bottom left corner, that yellow is the original laminate flooring)...
...and here (bottom right corner).
I really, REALLY wanted to save the yellow laminate, but it was rotten too, I guess. Once we removed it, hubby just dug right in.
It literally just crumbled apart, so we pulled out the shop vac, it made for quicker removal.
See how much of that corner was rotten and is left?? Basically NOTHING!! The only thing holding it all together was the aluminum under-siding. And to think, I kept stepping on it to show people how soft the floor was. I'm lucky I didn't fall through!!
After clean up, hubby pulled out the circular saw and cut away to good stuff. Now it was time to rebuild. We purchased a dozen 2x2's, one 2x4, one sheet of 1/2" plywood, 2" thick rigid foam insulation, wood screws (all of which will be added to the sidebar showing our spending as 'Back End Remodel') and we had visqueen to use as a vapor barrier already. For some reason, I guess that single 2x2 on the end there was not rotton 'cuz it loos like hubby added new floor supports and attached them to it. There's also one piece of rigid insulation there on the left. Then next step was to measure and cut a new piece of plywood flooring, as shown in pic below.
Okay, so a little back story now...the reason we tore at the entire backend of the trailer in the first place was because we needed to install a new black water tank. Okay, you're thinking how does black water tank equal and back end tear out?? Well, hubby did not want to install the toilet back onto a 'soft' floor. We started by removing all the bathroom parts and pieces. Did you know that many parts and pieces of a travel trailer are installed BEFORE the front, back or even side walls are put in?? Yup, we learned this tidbit the hard way. We could not remove the bathroom vanity until we removed the shower liner, which both are in excellent shape so we wanted to keep them. Well, the bathroom liner was installed before the back end was sealed up because there is NO POSSIBLE way to get that liner in that tiny little door to the bathroom. So...that was our extended thinking of how black water tank replacement ended up being an entire back end remodel. Here's our new black water tank installed, which is a whole other blog post in itself...maybe later...on to remodel.
New plywood floor, shower liner back in, toilet back in,recycled peel-n-stick laminate flooring on new floor...now where is the vanity??
Ah, there, and I even didn't rotate the pic...
The next step after installing the majority of the bathroom components back is to start with the back end wall framing...but that will be in the next remodel post. 
