Food Cart Project Part VI: The Trailer Arrives at Civilian Studios!

We've had a run of nice weather this week, so I used it as an opportunity to spend my afternoons before work removing surface rust from the trailer, as well as priming and painting. It's remarkable the difference a little primer makes. Here you can see the trailer about halfway through the priming process:

And here it is with a full coat of paint. By "full coat of paint," do I mean I managed to cover every square inch of the thing? Well, no. But I'd say I got it to somewhere around 95%. I'm happy with that.

This afternoon, I once again enlisted the help of my neighbor Nichol and her vintage Chevy pickup, and finally moved the trailer into its garage bay at Civilian Studios:

My lease at Civilian is active as of yesterday, which means that every minute of this project is now costing me money. So it's time to bust ass. Here's another shot of the former "Cow" in its bay:

Civilian is an interesting operation. It's in what used to be a wine distributor's warehouse, and the space has been built out into 40 or so individual studio spaces. It's owned and managed by the folks who live directly above me in my apartment building, a furniture maker and a jewelry maker. Here are a couple shots of the studios in the back section of the building:

That old Pepsi machine down there, btw... Yeah, there's kinda, like, beer in it. Y'know, this being Portland and all. $1.25 gets you a can of either PBR or Tecate. There's also a little patio area out back of that part of the building, which Nichol is in charge of. She's got some terraced gardening going on:

From the patio/garden, you can see the building that Broder Nord is in. It previously housed the Gotham Tavern. If you know anything about the spectacular collapse of the Gotham/Clarklewis/Ripe empire, you can probably imagine the drama that's taken place in that building. That grassy hill area on the left, btw, will eventually be terraced as well, and will need to be composted for three years for the sake of soil remediation before it can be planted.

There's also a hammock, as well as a basketball hoop, for games of Horse when folks need a break from their work. And the string of lights makes for a nice evening hangout.

I know now why the caged scooter sings...

So, the next step in this project is to order up some dimensional lumber, OSB and fiberglass reinforced plastic from the lumberyard, and start framing out the floor, walls and roof. Getting the trailer into the space today was a bit of a milestone, and I'm really looking forward to getting into what will undoubtedly be the most involved phase of this project thus far... Good stuff!