CitaPita...Carmen

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?

Great job! All the hard work really paid off and I love the color combo!
We leave the fort on Nov 30th so I'll get to see it in person!

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!

It was meant to be at WDW.

How cool is that!  All I was seeing was something that looked like a wedge of lettuce behind the grid and all of a sudden, there it was, the Mickey :)

Disney
money
pins brought lots of money
Disney wants more
new something to collect

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!  :)

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.

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.
 

I would try, but I have a feeling it wouldn't make it to the post office. 
 

Unless we find out before then, I might get an answer on Thursday.
I'm meeting a bunch of Fiends at the Fort on Thur. afternoon and because I'm going directly from work, I have to stop at the Fort's Cast Services building to change.
If the CMs know what happened, I should be able to get a reliable answer.

Hopefully so and hopefully it was just damage to the RV.   Stuff can be replaced.

Thanks! I would have drawn Snarky, but my skills with the sand-blaster aren't quite that advanced. :)

It was chilly today, in the 50's which was a complete wake up call. We're inching closer and closer to time for our trip. My ticker is scaring me. Can we possibly finish Polly Luna in time for our trip? DH and I have even been talking about the dreaded contingency plan if we don't get Polly ready in time. I have to remind myself that the important part is the trip itself and not how we get there. Supposedly. 
 
So last I left off we were doing some totally professional body work patching holes and injecting Bondo botox into the stretch marks in the fiberglass gel coat. Pretty much every hour of the last several weekends has been devoted to these efforts and I'm glad to say that we're finally seeing the faintest hint of the light at the end of the tunnel.
 
But before I get to that, here are a few highlights.  
 
At some point before she came to live with us, Polly Luna's original door handle busted. Instead of purchasing a direct replacement, a previous owner just cut a giant hole in the side of the door and installed a generic RV door handle. Why?!
 

 
After a light amount of internet sleuthing we were able to find a direct replacement for the original door handle. It wasn't the cheapest, but totally worth it considering the "new" door handle wasn't even working anymore. 
 
Unfortunately, the hole in the door was far too large for filler. DH decided the best thing to do would be to fill the void with a piece of aluminum first, then use our friend Bondo to smooth it out.  
 

 
After the Bondo and **spoiler alert** filling primer, this is what the door looks like.
 

 
After tackling the patching of major body boo-boos we decided to ignore the little blemishes we didn't have time to fix (after all, Polly earned those battle scars) and start seriously prepping the body for paint. 
 
My favorite part of this process was running the sand-blaster on the aluminum body panels. It's time consuming but really satisfying.
 
A before shot:
 

 
During:
 

 
And some photographic proof that I'm thinking of you guys even when I'm not posting:
 

 
After we finished the final sanding and sand blasting we made the big move from my in-laws driveway to the back yard. It's the first time we've moved Polly more than a few feet since we made that field trip to the hardware store a few months ago. 
 
She did beautifully. 
 

Broke out my trusty DIT to Chamilla translating dictionary.
 
This should clear things up.
 

 
See how beautiful that bracelet is now, Dave?

This is seriously one of the best pieces of info I've gotten from this site. Good idea for getting to rope drop ahead off the crowds, too! 

I forgot to add my tips!  Here are two that we always use:
 
Always, ALWAYS carry snacks. Always. Buy a special cup for each kid so they are excited to drink out of it. This keeps them hydrated. 

We've always traveled with our kids, even when they were babies. My oldest DDs first camping trip was just before she turned three months. 
 
I always think it's funny when people stress about traveling with a younger baby. Really, this is the easiest time you'll have to travel with your kids until they are much older!  In my experience, traveling with infants is a breeze until they become very mobile. Once they are mobile, it's a nightmare until they are able to sit quietly and occupy themselves for more than twenty minutes at a time. For our girls, that was far after their 3rd birthday. 
 
We cruised on the Magic when our girls were 2 and 3 years old. I almost wished we had waited at least one more year so that my youngest could sit through the shows, or taken the cruise much earlier so that they were easier to manage. 
 
Obviously, not all kids are the same, but this has definitely been my experience with my three little ones. 

I'll give you a hint! Since Polly Luna is a Dodge product, we are picking an official Dodge color from the late fifties/early sixties. It goes really well with our theme! 
 
The golf cart (yet to be named) will be painted to match. In fact, we'll paint the cart first since it's our guinea pig.
 
You know, since we've never painted a car before and have absolutely no idea what we are doing. But hey, that's what YouTube is for, right?  We'll be experts in no time!  :laugh:  

Okay folks, sorry about the wait! I could make a bunch of excuses about how busy I’ve been (and I have been), but to be honest with you, this update is so late because for the past few weeks Polly Luna has gotten progressively uglier.

And do you know how boring body work is? You might have already guessed that fact, but until you spend 30 minutes sanding the same 1x1 foot area on a vehicle you really can’t imagine.

Fun fact: Excluding the roof, Polly has a surface area of around 912 sq ft. I figured it up to torture myself as I was sanding one day. Sanding for hours.

But you don’t tune in to read a litany of complaints. Here’s what’s been going on with the old girl over the past few weeks.

First of all, we got rid of most of the red. At this stage, I actually think she looks better. I was never a fan of the maroon red stripe. Even if the paint had been in good shape, I would have wanted to repaint her eventually.
 


As we were removing the old paint we discovered the original gel coat color. I wish it was in good shape, because it would have been cool to take her back to her original condition. This is the color combo she had when she was new (This isn't Polly Luna, but I wish!).
 

 
This is a very classic design for the Travcos. Solid color with a stripe. We’ll recreate this with the new paint, although with different colors. Which I’m not telling you about yet. :)
 
Another thing we discovered once the paint was sanded down was that there was a ton of damage on the back end, and some pretty terrible repair work that had been done. I'm no body work expert, but I'm pretty sure that bondo meant for metal cars doesn't work as well for filling giant holes in fiberglass. You could literally push the chunk of bondo out of the damaged areas with your hands. DH dug it all out. It was a scary moment.



Then he used some fiberglass mat and resin to fill the spots in again. A little filler (Bondo meant for fiberglass this time) and it still needs to be smoothed a bit, but it looks whole again. Whole instead of hole.
 
LOL, I crack myself up.



Speaking of cracks...
 
Remember the crazy "crazing"? Well, unfortunately the only way to make sure those don't crack through the new paint is to fill them with a fiberglass bondo that will expand/contract at the same rate as the fiberglass body around them. And hopefully not crack our new paint. Hopefully.

So we made Polly look absolutely stunning.



And then we undressed her again. I won't describe how tedious this was. You can probably imagine. Here is a picture of an hours worth of work.



It looks like we took off all of the bondo, but the cracks are now green so I'm going to assume they are filled. Because any other result might make me ugly cry.

This weekend we'll be doing our final sanding over the whole coach and also removing the red stripe at the top. Can you tell we've been dreading that part?

I think we're finally going to get to the point of spray filler next weekend. And then we have to sand the whole body. Again.

I have a few other random updates (interior and golf cart) coming soon! For real this time.

Evie got her first haircut at the barbershop on main street in MK. This was taken on the boat back to the Fort. Her hair is in a ponytail here. :) Not a mullet. 
 

Hazel riding Cloud, one of Cinderella's ponies. Our first trip in April 2013.
 

Evie got her first haircut at the barbershop on main street in MK. This was taken on the boat back to the Fort. Her hair is in a ponytail here. :) Not a mullet. 
 

Hazel riding Cloud, one of Cinderella's ponies. Our first trip in April 2013.