Steps to Take When Restoring a Vintage Airstream Part 3

Now that we have tackled the grunge work and most of the tedious work, we can now move on to the beauty work. You will be working on the interior of your vintage Airstream, replacing and repairing areas of the interior. This is where your vintage Airstream is going to really start to come alive.

We are going to start this section with the walls. Depending on the year your Airstream was produced and the way previous owners have left it, there are some things you will have to do and something that will not pertain to you. I am just going to walk you through different scenarios and things that in each scenario you can do to your walls.

Let's say that your Airstream was produced in 1952 to around the mid 1960s. In this case your walls are going to be covered in a textured paint surface known as Zolatone. Zolatone is just a two-step durable auto body type of paint. Good news is that even though Airstream stopped using Zolatone, it is still made today. So this will make redoing your walls a lot easier.

You can repair your Zolatone finish by going to the Zolatone website and following their instruction on how to use Zolatone. Their website www.zolatoneaim.com offers you advice and techniques for achieving the look you are wanting.

If the only problem with your zolatone finish is just dirt and grime you can clean this up using a citrus based cleaner such as Orange Super Strength Multi Purpose Cleaner and Degreaser. This will also work to remove nasty cigarette smoke off the walls and other surfaces.

Now let's say that some stupid idiot had painted over the zolatone with regular wall paint. Don't panic just yet, you can still fix this little problem. If the pain was latex all you should have to do is use a lacquer thinner and pull it off in chunks. If the paint was oil based you should be able to remove it with a paint stripper. After you have what ever paint was used removed, just repaint the walls using zolatone.