What the Bone Song and Vintage Trailer Restoration Have in Common

a few of the vintage trailers in the yard

Upon arrival on the first day of my internship, I got a quick tour of the yard and warehouse. There were dozens of vintage trailers in various stages of restoration. From 14 ft all the way of the 42+ ft. (I must apologize for the subpar photos in this post taken with my iphone)

I was put to work immediately on a glorious 42ft trailer which was to become the new office. The task of the day was to remove some damaged wood panels. I was handed a cordless screw driver and some plastic putty knives to pry off the trim. I decided to do what I always do when faced with something I've never done before, dive in and figure it out along the way.

exterior of 42ft trailer I worked on today

You know that Bone Song they teach in elementary school to help you memorize your skeleton? The one that goes something like, the hip bone connected to the back bone, and the back bone connected to the neck bone and so on....

Well, removing wood panels reminded me of that. Because you start out thinking, "OK, this is gonna be straight forward", but then you quickly realize that everything is connected. In order you to remove one panel, you have to remove the seams, that are connected to the trims, and to the baseboard. Then there are screws and a million finishing nails. And just when you think, "Aha, this is the last nail", you find two more. Oh, and you can't just rip the panels off in frustration because they are needed intact to make templates.

As you can see by the wet ground, it was also cold and rainy. Altogether I removed seven panels.

Of course it crossed my mind that maybe I had bitten off too much. Why did I choose to drive 90 minutes to an unfamiliar town to do manual labor? Couldn't I have learned this by watching HGTV? All I know is that I was dead tired by time I pulled into my driveway. Thank goodness I had the fore sight to make a pot of chili the night before in anticipation that I would be too beat to cook dinner. Plus it was my night in our cooking club. More on this later.