Being Stared At

People were staring at me while I was out running errands the last few days. While Campbell Riverites were bundled up against the double digit temps and sunny skies, I was out and about in a tee-shirt, light sweater, and sandals. Nothing says “I’m not from here!” like wearing what locals consider to be seasonally inappropriate clothes. 😀

The nights have been cold, however. I went to the house for my shower at about 3:30 this morning before going to bed and there was frost on the car. It’s still not cold enough to warrant putting the electric heaters on full blast, much less firing up the furnace.

With all that sunshine in the last few days, I’m due to post an update about Norma’s gardens!

RV Bathroom Organization

I’m blessed with an RV bathroom that has a decent amount of storage. The cabinet over the vanity has plenty of space for bottles and small containers, and there is a decent amount of space under the sink, too. What’s missing are drawers to hold all the little pieces a woman tends to accumulate in her bathroom, from hair accoutrements to nail files. I’ve been using a plastic storage bin by the shower, but that space has slowly been encroached upon by clothing and I want to replace that ugly plastic thing with a proper dresser.

From almost day one, I knew exactly what I needed to perfect the storage in the bathroom, but finding the item was incredibly difficult. It needed to be see-through and preferably mesh rather than vinyl or plastic. I couldn’t find a see-through one, never mind mesh, and I started to just look for long slender boxes to fit into the over-sink cabinet.

While wandering aimlessly around Liquidation World today after looking at their furniture offerings, I found IT!!! And for just $10 to boot.

I’ll need to make some adjustments since it’s a bit too big for the space, but behold the ‘over door pocket organizer’!

I’ve obviously set it up so that the pockets face into the toilet room so as to not spoil the aesthetics of the dressing room.

It’s made to hang on hooks that go around the top and bottom of the door, but once I make the necessary nips and tucks I will screw the organizer to the door so that it lies more neatly and also to not have those hooks protruding on the other side.

If your RV has a solid wood door, this is an excellent storage option.

Having found the pocket organizer, I’ll be able to move all the bathroom stuff out of the storage tower and move clothes into it. Hopefully, I’ll find a dresser soon. A very helpful guy at Home Depot told me to poke around the website seeing as some things available in larger stores could possibly be shipped to Campbell River. And while at Home Depot, I figured out exactly what I’m going to do to reduce some of the condensation problems in both the study and the loft. Stay tuned for the next riveting chapter of Extreme Makeover: RV Edition! 🙂

Dressing Room Allure Sneak Peek

Once again, please pardon the dust and the mess! 😀

The best part of today so far was running out of floor, getting dressed to go to Home Depot, and going to the car to find a third box of Allure in the trunk! I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached. 🙂

I can’t finish the dressing room without pulling up the flooring in the kitchen, so that’s this afternoon’s project. I am to have all the flooring up by tonight and then just have the edges to chisel away

Work on the floors will continue in much smaller bursts during the next four days since my eight hour shifts at the convenience store are exhausting. Next ‘weekend’, it will be time to pull out the bucket chairs and other dinette seat in the lounge so I can get the floor down in there. After that, trim. After that, the focus will be on making sure my rig is still secure for travel.

Planning My Second Klondike Summer

I can’t believe that it’s already time to start planning my trip back north! I’ve ordered Terri and Mike Church’s book that I regretted not having last year as well as the 2010 Milepost.

Planning my route north this year is such a different experience since I am not about to set off into the unknown!

The ferry to Prince Rupert is probably not going to happen and there’s no way I’m taking the Sea to Sky highway again, so it’s pretty sure that I will be going to Prince George via Hope and highway 97 like I did last spring. From there, I’m really undecided as to whether I’ll take the Cassiar like I did in the fall, or the Alaska highway like I did last spring. I’m leaning towards doing the Alaska highway again and then doing the Cassiar in the fall. Have I fallen prey to routine?! 😀

While I’d love to stop off in favourite spots, like the Chasm, again, I’m hoping that the Church’s book will help me see this trip with new eyes.

For the little I did this winter, the season has flown by exceptionally fast. I didn’t see much on Vancouver Island, but other things that happened more than made up for that. I mean, I was in the right place at the right time to give my business the boost it really needed to take off. Financially, I won’t see the results of that until May, but that’s perfect since that’s the month I’ll be putting in the fewest working hours. It seems that I will simply need to return to Vancouver Island and the BC coast at some later date to do more ‘island hopping. As it is, I do plan to go to Victoria for a long weekend in late March or early April, so there is more tourism to come!

The Find (and Deal) of the Century

This afternoon, I got the floor up in the dressing room and began to make inroads in the kitchen. I need to make further inroads before I can consider putting down more flooring in the dressing room. I’ll work on that tonight and then get the dressing room floor in tomorrow. My work was interrupted more than once by my need to attend to splinters.

I stopped at about 3:30 to go and check out a used furniture store in Willowpoint to see if they might have the lingerie chest I need to finish up the dressing door. Finding the right item would be real motivation to work late into tonight getting the floor in so that I could then deal with my clothes. I need to do that to make progress in the kitchen. Picture what you will. 😀

The store didn’t have a suitable dresser, although one came close to the right dimensions. Unfortunately 5″ too much is way too much in an RV. 🙁 But it was worth it to go there when I found an item that was on my ‘unrealistic wish’ list.

Since I’m putting the dinette table at counter height, I planned to get a stool or two to sit at. I had a hankering for a certain style popular in the 1950’s that doubles as a step-stool and would be ideal for getting into my upper cabinets and maybe even the loft. I did some research and found out that those stools are rare and expensive now as they are a hot item. I decided I wasn’t going to expend any energy in looking for one.

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled on this at the store:

It just needs a good scrubbing with an SOS pad, a reupholstering (easy, the padded pieces are screwed in), and new non-slide material on the steps.

The lady let me have it for $20, taxes included.

This was after I picked up another small item for the study (more on that later once I figure out what I’m going to do with it) that was marked $9.95 and which she let me have for $9, taxes included.