While stripping out the cabinets we found what you find in a lot of these vintage Airstreams - the floor in the bathroom had rotted out.

The problem is the sandwich construction they used at the time. The only good way to replace the entire floor is to separate the body and the frame, remove the channel the body attaches to and replace the floor.

Some people have had varying degrees of success patching but the generally accepted best practice is the separate and replace way. It also allows access to repair/repaint the frame.

In the sketch below you can see how the plywood goes all the way under the walls and how the bellypan wraps around the floor and into the wall.

It was about this time we had a changing of the guard. Mike, my long time friend, was going to do this project but that was before we gutted it and decided to have custom cabinets built. That was also before the floor and before we decided to replace the axle.

Mike didn't have the equipment for the custom cabinets. We needed to enlist his friend and his friend's garage for the floor and axle. So somewhere in the floor/axle project, they sat me down and told me Ren would take over the project.

This is how I met Ren - not his real name but we'll get to that in a minute. Ren can do pretty much anything build/design/paint-wise. Metal? Mechanical? Wood? All stuff he's done along the way.

Ren did the Airstream, made custom furniture for me, painted a Rixe Tandem, painted the LI175, welded the frame for the Moto Stool, and he consulted (held my hand) on the Elevated House project, as well as doing the building plan drawings, kitchen cabinets, beam/floor straightening, deck and all the finish work on the house. Basically, if I come up with a crazy notion, Ren makes it possible.

Ren - not his real name. Ren prefers to remain anonymous and let his work speak for him. A bit annoying but I'll play along. I call him Ren on theseeker.com to respect his wishes. Ren is short for Modern Day Renaissance Man. If you skimmed the paragraph above, read it and you'll see why I say that. I thought about shortening it to Ren Man but the obvious jokes came to mind. Mo Ren wasn't much better.