Farmington, NM. My goodness, how long has it been since I had a paintbrush in my hand? Seventeen years, perhaps? But there I was in Home Depot, actually looking at color charts. I smiled, reminiscing about seeing women looking at these charts. They were transfixed -- it was some kind of religious experience for them.
You know what? It was kind of fun. The color shade of "Navajo Sand" caught my eye. But say, which earth-tone color should a traveler be loyal to? Think of the reddish tones tones of Utah sandstone, the pallid calcareous tones of West Texas and New Mexico, and all the colors in the geology of our travels. Which one was best?
Who thinks up all these names that are used in the color charts? What was their college major? You'd think they would run out of words. I'm not sure the words are even that accurate.
Now then, what color is best for the floor of my new cargo trailer? Forget 'pretty'! Some sort of buff color, resembling dirt and sand, is best.
You know, it was actually fun to paint the plywood floor. The truth is that I always liked to paint when I had a fixer-upper house. It was the thankless drudgery of surface preparation that got tiresome. There are several techniques that make the difference between loving home improvement and hating it.
I sometimes wonder if seasonal house renovation wouldn't be a good sideline for an independent person who retired early, but not if it crowded everything else out, and that is exactly what it tends to do.
You know what? It was kind of fun. The color shade of "Navajo Sand" caught my eye. But say, which earth-tone color should a traveler be loyal to? Think of the reddish tones tones of Utah sandstone, the pallid calcareous tones of West Texas and New Mexico, and all the colors in the geology of our travels. Which one was best?
Who thinks up all these names that are used in the color charts? What was their college major? You'd think they would run out of words. I'm not sure the words are even that accurate.
Now then, what color is best for the floor of my new cargo trailer? Forget 'pretty'! Some sort of buff color, resembling dirt and sand, is best.
You know, it was actually fun to paint the plywood floor. The truth is that I always liked to paint when I had a fixer-upper house. It was the thankless drudgery of surface preparation that got tiresome. There are several techniques that make the difference between loving home improvement and hating it.
I sometimes wonder if seasonal house renovation wouldn't be a good sideline for an independent person who retired early, but not if it crowded everything else out, and that is exactly what it tends to do.
Comments
Gayle
How about some durable, easy to clean, linoleum-type of flooring product. If you plan on doing this for another ten years or so, that will be much more cost effective and practical than a paint job!
Chris
Who cares about wear and appearance? Trifles. What really counts is the condensation between the vinyl and the wood trailer floor. How could there be condensation if the the vinyl is glued down to the wood?
And furthermore, my paint cost all of $24.
But how many trailers use glue? That costs money. (I've never tried to resurface or remove a vinyl floor that had been glued down. Maybe it's not as dreadful as it sounds.) I'll bet most just slap down a rectangle of vinyl and staple it around the perimeter. Condensation DOES happen. Bad.
You are comparing apples and oranges. An RV trailer floor is part of the structural box. The box is bolted to the frame rails.
Not so with a cargo trailer floor; it is NON-STRUCTURAL. It's easy to replace -- it's just a couple sheets of exterior grade plywood. You could cut a hole in it if you wanted and go ice-fishing through it.
The scourge of RV blogs is minutiae and "practical" blow-by-blow descriptions that are painful to read. We'll see if I can avoid that.
You're right about the unequal comparison. In our rig the 3/8" plywood flooring is glued and screwed down with R-25 insulation in the floor. Our flooring tiles are glued down as well (they are surprisingly easy to remove with a heat gun).
We'll be working on our cargo trailer in a month or so. I'll be emailing you to find out what kind of paint you used!