Vintage Avion Trailer Door Makeover

Another day another project over here- and today is about another update on the vintage Avion trailer and what we have been working on lately.

Vintage Avion Trailer

You might remember when we brought this 1960 vintage trailer home last spring and it has been slow going on getting it all put back together again. Between work projects and house projects and a shoulder injury- I haven’t been out there working on it much- but last week my husband decided to tackle rebuilding the beds and redoing the inside of the door.

I know it sounds like a random thing to be redoing the inside of the door. And it kind of is. But here is the thing. When I look at the trailer and take photos- I love seeing that beautiful shiny aluminum exterior that it has. And the door on the outside is the same aluminum but when the door is open- it is an old painted finish. Aesthetically, I wanted the finish to match when the door was open so that it looked like the exterior. And in order to do that- we had to tackle getting that old airplane type paint off.

Before

Here is a snap of the inside of the door before. You can see the textured paint that had some splatters of black specks also. We weren’t sure how to get that industrial type paint off- and there were layers folks. It had probably been painted several times over the years. We found several ways to try to get the paint off in various airstream forums- and decided to go with the least toxic first to see if it would work. Citristrip was recommended as one that worked- so we went with that.

CitriStrip

If you aren’t familiar with citristrip- it is a paint and varnish stripper that is considered to be more safe and less toxic. It is easy to apply- grab some gloves (and a mask if you would like) and simply paint it on the area you would like to remove the paint from and then wait for it to do the work.

My husband put it on the door and waited a few hours and tried to remove the paint and it was not happening. So, he applied again and let it sit overnight- and it bubbled up perfectly.

He used a plastic razor blade to scrape the layers off and reapplied the stripper again several times before all of the old layers of paint came off and the aluminum peeked out just a bit. I think he applied and left the stripper on overnight for several days before all of the paint was off.

And each time it would bubble up a bit more.

All that shine

It was a process to get that shiny finish- and after the main area of the door was done- he had to add stripper to the areas of the door where there were screws or rivets and where the weather stripping had been and working a bit yet on getting those cleaned up. But here is where we are now before cleaning and buffing.

I am already obsessed with how it looks. You can see the old ‘stripe’ that was painted on the trailer and removed by the previous owner- that shows just how much this old Avion will shine up and be like a mirror reflection once it gets polished.

Inside the trailer- my husband is working on cleaning up the painted areas as well as building the beds and reframing the walls for the bathroom. He is also going to be adding back the sliding screen door. Something to note- inside the trailer is painted (as you can see in this photo below)

The inside shell is mostly aluminum under that paint- though there are some areas that are a plastic or something along those lines. Even though the citristrip was easy to use – I don’t think we plan to remove the interior paint but will keep you posted.

What do you think of how the aluminum door is turning out? You can see more of the vintage trailer in this post HERE: