I’ve made some progress in the last couple days. We’ve had no rain for several days. I’ve pulled off the front. Here’s how I started (I already pulled out the front windows).
With the lower panel off you can start to see how bad the rot is up front.
After removing the second panel, the 2×2’s, and that horrible crepe paper insulation you can see more. The crumbly bits in the center of this picture used to be wood.
There are the horizontal 2×2’s. The worst is one step short of dissolving.
After marking the locations of the 2×2’s and cutting the new horizontal supports I pulled off first two panels of the inner skin. The whole front of the trailer is now open. Then I made some rough L-brackets and attached them to the side panels so I can replace the lower part of the corner curved beams. I guess you’d call them beams, although they are pretty weak. Here’s the left side.
And the right side.
Those ensure that the shape of the new beams will be the same as the old ones. I’ve already ripped something like a dozen layers of doorskin. You see those in the last picture above lying against the wall. I intended to do the lamination today, but the right side is a bit wet. Not bad, but enough to prevent good adhesion. So I’ll let it dry overnight and see how it looks tomorrow.