The Dutchmen gets a new tent

 As usual, I had big plans for the winter in terms of maintenance and improvements for The Dutchman. As usual, I sank into the Minnesota fetal position when the temperature dropped below 30 degrees. You know how it is, right?

Now that the cardinals are singing and the ice is melting, I'm quickly catching up.

As previously noted, the big project this year was the removal of the rear roof wood, which was rotted and leaking. That wasn't fun and all but before winter set in, that was completed. Today, I'm going to do a little more waterproofing of that section. Water and moisture is death to pop-up campers so, yeah, I probably have gone overboard on the waterproofing.

The big task this week has been putting up the new tent (the camper's windows and siding) which arrived from Canvas Replacements in Loyal, Wisconsin late last year, but which have sat in the box because I wasn't sure whether icy cold weather was a good time to be handling vinyl, which usually gets brittle in the cold. This product, I've since learned, is resistant to that sort of thing.

I couldn't be more impressed with the workmanship from this company and the replacement (so far, I've still got two sides to go) has fit perfectly. And, it's clean and gorgeous.

The other thing I wanted to do this winter was get underneath the camper and replace the steel cable that raises and lowers the camper roof. Maybe it could surive another year, but at 21 years old, do I want to take that chance? To me, it seemed like the cable was on borrowed time and I hate the thought that it could snap while a nice family was trying to have a fabulous weekend.

Yesterday, I decided that I'll let a pro handle it so I've made an appointment for next Wednesday for the nice people at Hilltop Camper and RV take care of it. 

That leaves the only other thing on the list: Flooring and painting the interior. I'm going to wait on the painting and next week  I'll see what the big deal is with peel and stick flooring (some pop-up camper owners seen to like it). That seems preferable to gutting the camper just to put down new flooring. We'll see. The only linoleum looks too much like, well, old linoleum.

I'm still on the fence about replacing the awning and am considering just removing it. Few people seem to use it. 

We've already got our first rental request of the year and with things suddenly progressing faster than I thought, I may open up rentals to May 1 instead of June 1.