Prepping to Put Up the Ceiling

Next week I’m putting up LuLu’s ceiling but first, I had to get her prepped and ready to go!

My goal for prep was to paint the space around the windows so that everything was painted before the ceiling was up. There isn’t any issue with painting after the ceiling is up, but since I’m not positive what I want to do with the space, I figured I’d get a nice base down in the meantime.

Originally, back in 1973, LuLu had a fully vinyl interior. The top half of the inside of the cab was covered with a light vinyl (you can still see what’s left around the hatch) and the bottom half had black vinyl-covered panels. Sometime over the next 50 years, the vinyl disappeared leaving behind nothing but the original adhesive.

Today’s goal: get rid of the yucky yellow-orange adhesive residue and paint the upper interior.

Removing Old Adhesive

I started this back in the summer of last year when I was in Sterling and it came out really good. This time, I used a combination of aerosol paint stripper, a scraper, and a sandpaper. I wanted to see if the paint stripper would make the process easier. It decreased the amount of elbow grease required, but it did require waiting. And I’m not patient when it comes to things like that.

Once the minimum 30 minutes of wait time was up, I wiped it off (wear gloves and eye protection!) and the adhesive came off like a charm. I took the scraper to it to get any residual adhesive left over, and the paint had become so soft the scraper took it down to bare metal. Oops!

This wasn’t really a problem, but it did mean I had to pay extra attention to sanding that section to fully remove all the paint. I used this once more on some really thick sections of adhesive near the hatch, but I decided to skip the paint remover on the next section. I just used a good old fashioned scraper. It worked well, but it was difficult in some sections that had things like riveting. The scraper took off the top layer of adhesive that had a rough feel to it (and took any remaining fibers with it), which was really all I needed. After this was all said and done, it turns out removing old adhesive wasn’t as hard as I was worried it would be.

Painting

It takes a village, and thankfully my mom was willing to help with some sanding. She’s much better at hyper-focusing than I am! She got all the remaining rough spots down to a nice smooth surface.

Once the surfaces were nice and smooth, I took to taping up all my windows and rubber. There’s nothing worse than spray paint on a window. Then, just a few light layers of white spray paint and voila! Everything is all set to go to put up the ceiling next weekend.

I’m so excited for this next part! It’s been a long time coming and its finally happening. With the help of a close friend, I’m going to accomplish another big step! Make sure to keep an eye out! You won’t want to miss it.