Those of you that know me, know that wood and I have over the years have come to a truce. I don’t mess with it, and it doesn’t mess with me. Having said that, the floor in the cargo area of the wagon is made of wood, or should I say was made of wood, most of it had rotted away over the years.

My good friend and neighbor, Jerry has developed a liking for the material and offered to cut and finish the panels for me, such a deal! Before we could start making woodchips fly, we had to make templates up for the floor panels and for enclosing the 3rd seat foot wells to make a storage compartment for tools, cameras and computers etc.

Luckily, the stainless steel trim pieces all survived the years quite well and with some polishing looked mostly new. Between what wood remained, the stainless and the vinyl floor covering we were able to produce a set of templates that Jerry transferred to a 4×8 sheet of 1/2″ plywood.

While Jerry was busy making woodchips I recovered the hinges from the old floor boards and polished them along with the clips that hold the spare tire cover in place. Ya gotta love stainless, after a good cleaning with soap and water with a Scotchbrite pad and sometime on the buffing wheel with a bit of white rouge, they began to look like new again! The folding/sliding hinge pieces were galvanized steel which had a fair amount of rust which I removed in the sandblast cabinet. A bit of primer and some flat black and the looked like new.

Jerry brought the floor pieces over prior to coating them with urethane so the we could test fit them to make sure that everything fit, which it did. After the pieces were coated, I had to drill some holes to mount the hinges, which were secured with tee nuts from the backside. The tee nuts needed to be recessed so that they were level with the floor. I secured the divider for the foot well storage compartment with seven L brackets which combined with all the bracing that Jerry had put on the panel made for a very strong piece. I will insulate the compartment and have Louie carpet it when he does the rest of the floor.

Since I am not sure how thick the carpeting will be, I didn’t attach the stainless to the wood panels, I just taped them in place so that Louie will be able to see how it all fits together.

All in all, Jerry made a most painful task much easier, although I have to say I did manage to pick up a splinter in my thumb, I guess it was the wood’s idea of a small payback for breaking our working relationship… 😉

Another Major Task Complete! Thanks Jerry!