We return to our Cortez to remove the last of our underseal, but it is not without a second serious angle grinder injury and the near-loss of our sanity.

We had gone to hell and back in our underseal-removal job, but the result was silver gleaming around us as our Cortez’s bare metal body shined as a trophy of sorts for our relentless labor of love.

We found 52 screws to remove from our wood floor, but all wouldn’t twist even the smallest amount. This means calling in power tools to take off our floorboards.

The morning and afternoon passed as Andy and I remained hunched over our supposedly-easy job of removing our cork flooring. The result though? We uncovered a stunning wood floor.

After removing the insulation from our RV, we tackle taking out the plumbing, gas, and heating components. Now our Clark Cortez is down to its bare metal bones.

If we had any doubts up until now about gutting our RV and removing the insulation — Let’s just say the sopping wet insulation we removed and significant rust we found solidified the need for exactly what we did. See before and after pictures here …

Sure, there may have been times when Andy and I wanted to watch our 1965 Clark Cortez motorhome burn. This though? This was not one of those imagined times and yet our RV almost did go up in flames.

Water was pouring into our RV, which meant instead of moving forward on our mechanical overhaul, we now needed to investigate our many leaks.

After finding water leaks and water damage, our RV renovation moves into the beginning of an RV build as we remove as much as possible inside to start Phase One of our demolition.