Window Awnings - Part I

The window awning project was waylaid a couple weeks ago by a leaky drip system in the yard. Since then, I've made a bit of progress. Thanks to Borderbrae on the Casita forum and her experience with a similar project, I ordered PVC awning rail, awning rail insert, and Sunbrella fabric from PerfectFit in Seattle. I started by laying out where the awning rail would be mounted above the windows.

I decided to mount the PVC rail with 3M Very High Bond double faced tape. It's available in various widths and colors. In this case, we're using 3/4" clear tape.

Most of the area above the side windows is straight, except for the last three inches. No sense putting tape on that last three inches.

The awning rail goes in place using the blue tape for an alignment guide. The VHB tape is much like contact cement - you need to make sure it's lined up correctly before pressing it in place.

I considered several options for dealing with the area where the round corner of the trailer departs from the straight line of the awning rail. I could have fabricated a wooden wedge attached with VHB tape. I could have poured a permanent fiberglas wedge, but decided to use 3M 5200 which is a very slow curing product. The largest wedge took over a month to cure - clearly not a product you'd want to use for this "off label" application while traveling.

The back window was more challenging. The rivets were positioned low enough that I needed to trim the awning rail to fit around them in several places.

Of course the left side and the right side of the back window were molded differently but we approached the solution for supporting the end of the awning rail in the same way.

Since my friend, wife, and seamstress (that's one person, not three) was on her annual Christmas Card making junket last week, we haven't started fabricating the actual awning. You'll have to wait for that. Meanwhile, we're going to go out an enjoy a canoe & kayak camping weekend.