Repairs Complete-ish...

 Well, for better or worse our repairs are 'complete.'   Meaning...we ran out of time.  When we came back from our brief camping excursion in West Virginia, we decided despite what may or may not be closed due to COVID-19, we needed to get back on the road, and we started making reservations for a departure on October 16.

In keeping with our previous post, the neverending painting continued neverending.  And, realistically, in the end there are still a few more spots we would repaint if we had the time...but you have to draw the line somewhere!

So, after the previous post, we continued repainting various panels on the RV.  After reapplying clear coat, we had to wait for it to cure, sand it down, and polish it.

We even dragged my mom to Princeton for a
weekend to help sand!

Polishing with the polisher from 
Walmart - we do NOT recommend 
this method

MUCH better polishing with the 
attachment for the angle grinder - use
with care!!

Our initial polishing sessions were quite a disappointment.  We bought a $30 polisher from Walmart that did basically nothing.  It gave a rough matte finish, but nothing like the gloss we expected with videos we'd viewed online.  We finally went to Harbor Freight and bought an attachment for my dad's angle grinder and that made ALL the difference.  We paired this relatively cheap investment with some 7" wool pads and Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and voila! - GLOSS!  Still nothing like what the professionals have, but perfectly good for us amateurs.

Half new polish with angle grinder and half old
polish with Walmart polisher - see the difference!

A note of caution if you decide to follow the same route - the angle grinder is STRONG.  If you get it stuck, it WILL burn through the clear coat.  We had to re-clear coat a couple of areas as we learned how to use it.

Our second biggest discovery that is quite relevant to share....2K clear coat.  The '2K' stands for 2 component (K = c??).  Aaron likes to talk about this as basically spraying epoxy over the paint.  The 2K clear coat comes in two cans - a paint and a hardener.  You mix the two and then have an hour to hour and a half to spray the clear coat on whatever surface you desire.  This stuff is AMAZING.  Instead of spray cans, Aaron used a paint sprayer for his air compressor from Harbor Freight, and the difference in the thickness, evenness of application, and overall gloss of the resulting clear coat upon initial application was AMAZING.  Seriously.  We regret that we wasted so much time with the spray can stuff from Rustoleum that we bought at Walmart.  Now, of course, this 2K stuff is more expensive, but it works SO much better we feel it is 100% worth the cost.  Most importantly, we were still repainting/reapplying clear coat during our final week of repairs, and this stuff cures in 4-8 hours instead of 7 days!

Applying the clear coat with the air gun

We ended up buying this from what we could determine was the only 2K clear coat retailer in the New River Valley - James T Davis, which seems to have a small unmentioned branch in Christiansburg in addition to a main hub in Lynchburg based on the website and receipt.  He carries ShopLine brand 2K clear coat, which worked great for us.  In the future, if we have more time for delivery, we might try some other brands on Amazon and whatnot, but this local option was great for our immediate needs, and the person working at the shop was able to give us great information on the type of hardener to get and all (it depends on your working temperature).  We did manage to get clear coat on everything before we left the farm, but we didn't get to the waxing, which we'll have to do in Florida!

While this was going on, Aaron had a huge side project he worked on with my dad - upgrading the electric at the farm to fix the voltage problems we had at the new RV parking spot.  First, they ran a new neutral line out to the parking spot, because the old exposed line was leaking electricity to the ground.  Next, they prepared for a new 200A electrical connection at the farm.  AEP had advised us to do this a few weeks ago to help with our voltage problems at the RV parking spot AND to just modernize the electrical supply for the house (and remove a bunch of fire hazards!).  This was a long involved process that I didn't participate in much at all, but it involved relocating the meter so the incoming wire no longer draped over the garage and rerouting the power flow to the garage underground.  Here are some photos!

The subsoiler Dad used to dig a trench
for the new neutral line along with his
fabricated PVC tube to lay the line.

Dad and Aaron preparing to lay the 
new neutral line.

Adding the equipment for the new
meter location.

YET ANOTHER new trench my dad
dug to bury the line from the new meter
to the chicken coop.

After all these upgrades and the new line run from AEP, the 50 amp power supply for the RV is in great shape, and we've removed a bunch of electrical fire hazards from undersized and iffily-joined wires supplying electricity to the house and garage on the farm.  Win-win!

And one last thing...right before we headed out, Aaron cut up one of the old desks he made for our house in Christiansburg AGES ago and made me a new dining table for the RV.  This new rectangular table should be much more functional than the circular one that came with the RV.  Assuming we like it, we'll work on getting a cherry-colored one in the future!

Yay for rectangles!

This should be my last repair post - next up, our new adventures on the road in the times of coronavirus...stay tuned!