CitaPita...Carmen

That is a great price for a Yellowstone! Those are very solidly built units. Probably my favorite of the "tin cans"

I forgot to say earlier, but I spy a hidden Mickey in your overhaul! 

You guys are so sweet!  That is one of my favorite pictures, made even better by Lou.   :)

Once we're done with the inside I'm considering doing something fun for the reveal. A video walkthrough of Polly given by the sisters themselves. Should be interesting...maybe we'll get another ghost story out of it?

Oh mercy... you all are doing such a beautiful job and (what you are doing) is SO MUCH WORK....pretty sure I'd mess things up for you.   Hope to get to see the Polly Luna in person one day :)

I hope so, too! :) Hopefully before my little ones destroy it again. LOL

I cannot believe you did all of this in five hours. That is amazing!

Come help me with mine, I could really use the help!

I know a few people that would get a big kick out of that Kevin Smith one!

Love it!  So much more cozy and comfortable. :)

If I had to guess, I'd say the faucets are your favorite part of this, right?  They look so much more usable.

Definitely stealing the chalkboard contact paper idea!

How long did this take you guys, start to finish?

Do it!!!! Seriously, my husband is so excited to see what y'all have done. He grew up working on cars and doing body work. His uncle still restores cars. It would be a blast!

Well, if not for Easter, we might be able to make it to the Memorial Day GG?

I used to live near Gainesville and have some family there still.  That might be an easier sell. :) 

April 3-12! And your kids would LOVE Easter at the Fort... Mickey and Minnie dressed up and tons of planned Easter activities (including loads of candy).

Sounds like a good time to me!  The last time we were at the Fort was the week after Easter 2013. We missed all the good Easter fun by a couple days. Would be good to make up for that. :)

 

Hopefully they'll have some left when we get there in 6 weeks. 

Took the words right out of my mouth!  They do seem to be a bit popular...

It looks really great! I hope I get to tour it someday. And if Jason's with me, you may never get rid of him. Ha ha ha

Well, whenever you're going to be at the Fort next let me know I'll convince Josh we need to schedule a trip. It's really no trouble at all!  I mean, what a sacrifice having to go back to the Fort. You'd really owe me one.  

Yay! I am going to love this! I love it when folks customize their campers!

Wallpaper glue is the WORST.  I'll bet you never thought you'd be so happy to see booger-y stuff on your wall. :) 

Totally awesome!!!! I hope I get to see it in person, we'll be there through Nov 8

I wish you could, I wouldn't mind seeing your rig in person, too! 

Unfortunately, we don't arrive until the 29th so we'll miss you this time. 

But we could always use it as an excuse to come back. :)

Added back the chrome trim, lights and bumpers today. Just a quick update with the progress!

OMG AMAZING!!  Love this update.  The transformation even just to this point is just incredible.

 

I'm excited that I get to see the "new and improved" Polly in person in November. 

 

And meet y'all of course!  :)

Looking forward to meeting you, too!

Something tells me you won't need a snarky sign to find us...

Thanks everyone!  

I forgot to mention that Hazel found something interesting in the generator cover yesterday. 

Anyone else see it?  It's like we were meant to have this specific Travco.

A hidden Mickey!

 

1. Disney
2. money
3. pins brought lots of money
4. Disney wants more
5. new something to collect

 

:rofl2:

Never a truer statement.

I have to say, though, I really love the Fort Wilderness friends. So adorable and really well done!

Following this. We are going to try and hit up the Grand Canyon in the next year or two. Excited to read that trip report!

Yep, I'm going to have one of those. :) 

I need a matching screen for every room of my house. That way, when guests come over I don't have to pick up all the toys everywhere. 

I'll take one for my yard, too, so I don't have to weed the garden. 

Brilliant plan!

Wow !!!

I love Poly's color!!!

 

That looks very professional.  All your hard work is paying off.

 

So pleased for you.

 

And your girls are so cute.

She is just gorgeous!  Your hard work is really paying off.  May she have many, many more years of adventures in her!

Thank you for the support you guys! It really does help motivate us. 

More work happening today. We're going to be putting the trim back on and we're finally installing the new door handle permanently. 

I think Polly Luna has always had nice lines and now they're even nicer.

 

The color combination is one of my favorites. Here's one of my creations, notice anything.

 

Lou, that is fantastic!  I have a thing for old gas stations, too. You have really good taste. :) 

I'd like to stop a moment to express how amazing it felt to finally be ready for paint. The feeling was a mix of relief, trepidation, worry that we had missed something, but most of all, hopeful. 

Josh and I took a day off work to drive to the nearest shop where we could have our paint mixed for us. It was a great day, a little shopping, lunch at one of our favorite places and some final sanding on Polly. 

Yes, this is what a date looks like for us. 

We chose our paint color a few months ago. Our first thought was to keep Polly Luna in a stock Travco color, but none of them really appealed to us. We settled on keeping the traditional look of the vehicle (white mid-body stripe and roof), but decided to do an untraditional color for the main body areas. 

After looking through years of old Dodge vehicles, we found it. It's a color that originated on Dodge trucks in 1954 and just happened to fit nicely with our beach wagon theme. 

The color we chose was Banner Green. 

First order of business was laying on the white stripe and roof. For this we picked a creamy white that reminds me of melted vanilla ice cream. 

After it dried (supposedly), we taped off the areas we wanted to keep white. More plastic sheeting and the useful Gorilla tape made a second appearance. 

Time to bring on the green. Cover your eyes, folks, because the next picture is a little scary. 

Don't worry, I was scared, too. This was the first coat and I think it looks a little like a radioactive pickle. 

Also, you may have noticed that we painted our tires. That was our way of saving money on whitewalls. Great idea, right?!

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.

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Just kidding, we're getting new tires next week so we didn't care if they got a little messy. :)

Finally, three coats of Banner Green coated the rig and it was time to remove the tape to see what we had done. 

Here is Polly Luna's new dress. 

I hope you like her!  I think she's beautiful. But then I always did, even before we woke her up a bit. 

Before I dive into this one, I just have to warn you that I might turn up the cheese a bit in the next two updates. A bit more than usual, that is.

We've been working so hard on Polly Luna. Practically every minute of every weekend for the entire summer has been spent with either a power tool or a piece of sandpaper in hand. I've flat out forgotten what it's like to have free time. My kids, too, have probably forgotten what it's like to just stay home on the weekends and not jet off to Grandma's to work on Polly as soon as our eyelids have opened. 

I guess what I'm saying is that we've worked so hard, and this weekend is the first time I've really felt rewarded for what we've put into the old girl. 

So, let's begin where we left off. 

We pulled Polly into my in-laws back yard. The neighbors were probably over the moon. The eyesore was finally hidden from view!  Josh took one last fancy panorama picture before the transformation started.  *note the version of E in the middle with three arms *

First order of business was tape (we had started this in the picture above). Everything we didn't want to paint was covered with either tape or plastic. This was a much more frustrating process than we thought it would be since we very quickly discovered that painters tape doesn't like to stick to itself. The final recipe we used was painters top on the bottom, plastic sheeting in the middle and Gorilla tape to stick the sheeting to the painters tape. Yes, Gorilla tape. After our first efforts at adding the sheeting blew away in the wind, we stopped messing around and went right to the good stuff. 

Once her windows and other bits were properly protected, we got started on the part we'd be waiting on. Polly Luna was finally going to be a solid color again. 

Albeit, that color was gray.

The "paint" Josh is laying on here is actually a high-build surfacer known as Slick Sand. The idea is that if you have a few blemishes on the body you put this stuff on, then sand it smooth. Since we had more than just a few blemishes, we thought this would be a great idea.

But note the part I just said about how after you spray this on you have to sand it down?  Fun times, especially since this time we used fancy automotive sanding blocks and hand sanded instead of using our now tired and kind-of broken orbital sanders.  

And as if the fact that hand sanding hadn't upped the difficulty level enough, my back chose this time to majorly go out. Josh was alone for the sanding. He managed to finish sanding all 27' x 2 in one weekend. I should ask him where he keeps that magic wand...

Once the Slick Sand was appropriately slick, it was time for yet another coat of gray. This time, 2k primer, which is a build-able primer that helps fill small blemishes. You can see that after working so hard to sand Polly, we were getting a bit paranoid about those stretch marks making an appearance in the final product. 

So, anyone want to guess what happened after the two coats of primer were covering Polly?

If you guessed that we spent another few days with sandpaper in our hands then you win one of FF's newly minted gold stars. 

We hand-sanded the entire body down to 400 grit, then cleaned the dust away with a gentle pressure wash. When the primer was wet you could see colors in the reflection. That's a positive sign. 

Next update (in just a few minutes): Polly puts her clothes back on.

Stay close to your computers tonight, Polly Luna fans. Major update tonight!  

We had a very good day.