Sunshine On A Cloudy Day

Hello everyone!

How is our manor today?

Sunshine On A Cloudy Day

We had some big plans today to shine up the Spartan to a mirror like finish, but we had some set backs. If you live in Florida you know what the whether is like; rain at any moment. We had no idea it was going to rain, and with any outside project you are at mercy of mother natures mood swings. 

We spent most of our day shopping around at different pawn shops to find the right tools to polish the Spartan. From watching YouTube videos about how to polish aluminum trailers, we learned that we needed a high speed tool such as a side grinder, with a 3 step polishing methood useing different types of polish and treatments. We had first thought about buying a new polisher but the price was too high or the store didn't have what we needed. We ended up buying a Porter Cable buffer for $90.00 and a rivet gun for $30.00 at a local pawnshop. We also bought a buffer pad from Lows.  A little side note, if you by a buffer at a pawn shop, make sure you get the tool or have a tool to take the pad off. We had bought it without the tool come to find out Lowes didn't carry them sepretly. We lucked out when Justin found one in his tool box that he bought from a garage sale.

So this is what Justin was able to polish
Before the rain started.

We also made a trip to the local doller store and bought 3 more gallons of awesome to clean the roof with. We still have no idea what we are going to do about getting the tar off. If anyone has any ideas please leave your comments in the comment section below .
Right after Justin began to spray the roof with a mixture of awesome and water, the sky turned black and the rain fell! Oh no! It is not a good idea to be on the roof of, well anything, while its raining so that was postponed.
However he was able to rinse off the chemicals from previous day where I had cleaned and now we have a beautifuly clean surface to work with!
We hope to finally lay subfloor tomorrow. Fingers crossed ^_^

Pictures of the roof and as you can see it needs a lot of work

More to came very soon and hopefully the weather holds out for us tomorrow!

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**Thanks so much**

Spring cleaning in the fall

                                                    Hello everyone! how is our Manor today?
                                                                 Spring cleaning in the fall

On Thursday Nov. 14th, Justin and my grandpa began to remove the wood paneling from the walls to expose the frame of the traler. Underneth they found the old insulation and come to find out it was asbestos! Asbestos was used as insulation before it was known to cause cancer. More facts about the risks of exposure to asbestos:http://m.cancer.gov/topics/factsheets/asbestos

**please know that if you are redoing and old camper to use cauton! Do the proper research before redoing an old camper to see if you might encounter harmful substances or materials. Please take the proper procauton and procedures. Teams are available to get rid of this problem. Please do not attempt to remove it yourself without doing your reserch. **
                                             

 
We began to remove all signs of asbestos using the proper equipment. After that was done Justin also removed the old toilet. That was almost a whole days work in itself. The nuts that held the bolts down where on the under belly of the Spartan and they where very hard to remove. This gave Justin a chance to teach me how to use power tools! Fun for me and scary for him. Justin had to crawl underneath the old plumbing and hold the old and rested over nut with a wrench while I was on the inside of the camper with a drill thing to lose the bolts. We almost had all of them off and eventually gave up. Justin then went inside the camper with sledge hammer and broke the toilet into tiny pieces to remove the bowl of the toilet. He then used a ripsaw to cut out the plumbing that was left. He also removed the aluminum shower pan with a sledge hammer. In the original 1946 Sparton Manor the slower and toilet where one unit and we plan to recreate this in our new layout to conserve room.
         
                                                       

Now that we had it striped out completely we made yet another trip to Lowes. We where on the hunt for subfloor! Whle enterining lowes we saw a man loading supplys into his truck.justin had the idea to ask him for advice on what type of plywood to use in a camper. He told us that what is stander in mosrt homes was 3/4" thick plywood and that they even make some that is marien tretedthat is garuteed not to rot or get water damaged but we where going to pay a pretty penny for that. Justin knows a good bit about remodeling and knew that 3/4" thick plywood would be too heavy and we went with a lesd thick plywood. We are trying to keep the weight to a minamum. We have a 25 foot trailer that is 7 feet wide so after a helpful employee at Lowes helped us do the mat he told use we would need 6 sheets. The total cost for the subfloor was $200.00. We also looked for a buffer to polish the trailer but came up empty handed. We checked auto zone but they where extremely expensive. We plan to check our local pawn shops in hopes to be more successful. We did however buy some aluminum polish for the future. (Side note: justin used some "elbow greese", a rag and the polish and its already shining up like a diamond! Woohoo!)

The next day we had some delays. My grandpas truck broke down and Justin had to help him replace new spark plugs on the truck. Seemed like an easy task for justin. He has done all of the work on our jeep and replacing sparkplugs was and easy task. Not if you have a 2000 ford ranger. It took forever! In the mean time while they worked on the truck I rememoved the rest of the left over residue left over from the asbestos with a shop vac. I also used a mixture of "Awesome", water and "Mr. Clean" in a pump sprayer and lined the whole inside of the trailer. This helped with the smell amensly! At first we had considerd water and bleach as a cleaning agent but after some resurch and priceless wisdom from grandpa, we found out the bleach oxidizes aluminum and will cause it to tarnesh. Its always in your best interest to look around for other alternatives. Do your homework for sure before tackeling any project!

                                              **Attention Attention**
We need some help. I have taken a couple of picters of the paid checks that we found in the Sparton. I have no idea where to start to figure out who these belong to. If anyone can give me some insight I would be very greatful!

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Home at last

                                       Hello everyone! How is our Manor today?
                                                                  Home at last
   
   On sat November 10th,  Justin and I officially ended our year and the our career in the carnival business. Saying goodbye was hard but we are ready to start our new life. We packed up the Jeep and began the long journey of our homecoming. We traveled from Grovetown GA to Deland FL, a six hour drive in total. The drive felt as if it would never end! We wanted so badly to see our beautiful new home!

   While we are renovating our Spartan we are staying with my grandparents,  otherwise we would be living in a tent. So I just want to take  moment to express our gratitude for their kindness. We truly would be lost without them. The wonderful thing about being here with my grandparents is the fact that not only is the food wonderful every night, but my grandfather is a skilled handy man. He has had,  in the past,  owned his own renovation service. He has also built,  from the ground up,  their beautiful home. So, Justin and I have a great resource of wisdom for all of our unknowns. They have also been a big part in us obtaining our Spartan. When we where still on the road,  we started looking for trailers. We begin our search on Craigslist and we were not having much luck. We turned to airstream forums, vintage trailer groups and places all over to try and find the perfect trailer,  nothing was to be found. When we fist started looking for a new home,  we where only looking at airstreams, until I had kept seeing Spartans. So, we begin the search again. After looking on Craigslist again we found a guy named Troy who had the Spartan we have now along with an airstream.  In the end we fell in love with the Spartan and we contacted him. Come to find out he only lived 10mins away from my grandparents! It was perfect! He was very helpful and sent lots of pictures to give us an idea of what we where in for. He was also kind enough to met my grandparents at their home to talk to them. After we purchased the trailer, Troy was kind enough to even bring the Spartan to my grandparents. Thanks to them we where able to come home to the Spartan and get to work right away.

   As Justin and I pulled up in the driveway we saw her! Justin and I almost began to cry  because she was just so beautiful, even more so in the moonlight. Words could express our the true happiness and joy we felt seeing the Spartan for the first time! I began to think of all the hard work we had done to get to this point. All the long days and nights, day to day sacrifices we made where all worth it for just that one moment in time.  We where home and what a wonderful home she would be! To me, it's a shiny silver medal of honor to remind us what we worked so hard for.

  

     

                                                            

   After getting a very much needed nights rest we woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to get to work! We went to the dollar store and picked up some cleaning supplies and sanitary equipment. The goal was to clean and clean we did. We first started by spraying "Awesome" on the outside of the smaller to get ride of years worth of residue. It came of very easily a day I would recommend it to anyone I the future. We scrubbed a day rinsed and scrubbed and rinsed.  We couldn't believe how shiny and beautiful it was coming get out just from this simple process! While cleaning the room Justin noticed something. The previous owners had put tar on Saturday strip down the entire roof. We assume it was because of the vents leaking. Other then the air vents leaking, so far we haven't found any leeks do the roof is completely solid.
   While cleaning out cabinets Justin made a wonderful discovery. He found a couple of paid checks from the 50's. The checks where from Atlanta GA and have names with what we hope to find to be the original owners.  We also found the original soap dish which I plan on keeping and reusing along with odds and ends.
The fist day mainly consisted of eating and a but of striping off some of the walls.
                                                 
                                                                       Day 2
   This was the productive one! Everything was striped out. The walls and floor pulled up.  It's  now completely striped out! Yeah! Justin has also banged  out the big dent in the front corrner and it looks almost perfect! The hard part has begun,  planing time. Time to find a place for all of the wiring and plumbing. Something we have no idea about. Much thanks to the my wonderful boyfriend Justin, the guys at Lowes and my very talented grandpa!

                                                       More to come very soon^_^
                                                             Thanks for reading!
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 ** or**
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A new beginig

   Hello everyone! Hows our Manor? Well she's missing us:(

   This being the first post I figured I would give some insight as to the purpose of this blog and the project. We are reaching out to the community to tell our story in hope that others could give us advice and share experience with us about their Spartan project. We also hope that through this blog we help others in the future learn from our experience with renovating their own Spartans.
   Also,  I would like to give a bit of history to why we ended up with our Spartan in the first place.
It all started with two very different people meeting by chance in this crazy world we live in at just the right place, at just the right time.

                         
   I was working at Cracker Barrel and going to school full time at the local community college. It was the day before Thanksgiving almost two years ago and I was slamed with preparations for the day to come. For Cracker Barrel, Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year. For the the people that work there,  that means running around like a chicken with your head cut off getting the store ready, baking pies, taking pie orders,  and taking take out order early.
That night I had just finished up with some of my work and actually had time to breath when a guy walks in wearing a Fedora, shorts and a Carhartt jacket. I immediately knew that this guy wasn't from around here. Though it is the sunshine state it does get cold in FL and November is when the shorts go away and the pants come out.
This guy takes a quick walk around the store, then walks casualy up to the counter where I was working. He took my breath away with those amazing eyes peering out from his thick framed glasses. Then the life changing moment happened, he spoke. "Do you know what geocahing is?"  I had heard of it but honestly had no idea and for the first time in my life I played it cool,  well at least I thought so. "yeah! Sure! Why? Is there one here?" he looked at me and smiled and that was it! I was hooked, smitten I could have died a happy girl. He had the most amazing laugh and smile I had ever seen in my whole life and I had the dumbest look on my face and I knew it. After a beat he said "yeah? Well this one is called" off your rocker" and I have looked everywhere and I can't find it. Would you happen to know where it is?" I had never clue so I was honest and told him the truth that I didn't know and after a few more moments pondering and another world shattering smile he told me he was going to go look for it and he would let me know if he found it. He gave me a wave and went back outside. Then I realized, wait! I didn't even get his name! Oh well, another missed opportunity come and gone.
   Some time latter a guy I worked with came in and told me this strange guy was looking around on the porch, looking under rocking chairs. I laughed to myself and went about my business. Then I saw it again. That tan Fedora out of the corner of my eye. He looked dead at me this time and was wondering around the store once again. I knew what his plan was so I played along.
   After talking some more I learn that he was working with this guy who owns a food stand and travels to different events selling fair food. But this was only temporary. From March to November he worked with a traveling carnival selling tickets. I thought it sounded like fun but it didn't sound like something I would ever do. Later he gave me his name and told me "look me up on Facebook and maybe we could hang out sometime." I stuck the paper he gave me into my apron and life continued on.
   A couple days later after life settled back down, I was cleaning out my apron and found a little piece of paper with the name "Justin Bowers" written on it. Panic arose, I couldn't believe it! I forgot about him! I ran to my computer and got onto Facebook. Typed in the name and over 50 Justin Bowers existed.  Just my luck,  I know. After looking through all 50 plus persons with the name, I gave up and started adding them all. Over half didn't even have a face as the picture. I figured the right one would respond. Later in the day I got a message and it was him! We went out on a couple of dates and we where inseparable. The only problem was telling my family. I knew they wouldn't approve of a carnie being my boyfriend but I didn't care.

   After being thrown out of my house we started our life adventure together. Justin already had a tent that he was living in in the middle of the woods  so I just joined him and we spent all those nights talking about how we would make it and how we would prove them all wrong some day. That we would be better off than all of them because we would be happy and it's happening now. I don't really see my family more or less turning on me as necessarily a bad thing because I love where this path has taken me. After being unable to find a job Justin decided that he would go back to work with the fair in March and send money to me to save for us. I couldn't leave my job and quit college,  I worked too hard. I thought long and hard and figured out that this life had nothing for me and I was ready to run away from this place as fast as I could.  So we did,  we got away from the unhappiness of my family and started life the way we wanted. So we packed up my Nissan sentra and headed to Georgia.

   After working with the fair for a year and living in a tent,  we bought a jeep and a pop up camper.  We got used to the minimalistic life style and really enjoyed the idea of being able to virtually live where ever you wanted.
   The pop up was good for the time being but we had bigger dreams.  One day Justin said to me "hey baby, do you know what an airstream is?" It seems that all life changing moments happen when Justin asks me a question phrased this way.
After hours of research and the development of dreams we fell in love with the idea of owning a vintage airstream camper. We where determined to have one and worked this past year again at the fair and saved like mad men.
   In the mid of the year our pop up tore apart. The mechanism that lifts the roof off of the living part failed and we could no longer lift the roof. This left us again homeless. We where more than ever determined to get our airstream.

   We looked and searched all over the place for a camper but the price range was so high. This caused stress and arguing. We then decided to just wait until we get to the end of the season to find one.
   One day, with hope still in my heart that I   could find one before the end of the year,  I was looking on Craigslist and there she was! A beautiful 1946 Spartan Manor!  I had talked about getting one before but it just seemed that airstream had a larger gathering and in the end would make it easier in the end with renovation.
In the end we fell in love with the style of the Spartan. It just seemed to have a certain attitude about them. The style and shape gave it character and made it stand out.
Our only delay was it was in Florida and we where still on the road. Favor was kind to us. The Spartan was located 5 minutes away from my grandmother's house and the guy would deliver within a 100 mile radius. We where so happy and waisted no time. She was ours a couple days latter.
   Right now she's sitting on my grandmother's property waiting for us to come home to her. When we first looked at the camper we noticed that it needed a lot of work and that's exactly what we wanted. We wanted a trailer that would be gutted out or almost gutted out so we could remodel it to meet our living needs.
We can't wait to get started on the renovation! Stay tuned to see the progress!

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Advance is welcome and very much needed!
Thanks So much!