Day: March 30, 2010

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I Just Amazed Myself

Disorder is an interesting thing. It can disguise itself as chaos. That’s what I thought my home had become, what with the upheaval of the renos and moving things around.

As it turns out, once organized, always organized. In just an hour, I put my whole home back together. Things aren’t all in the same place, but I have my house back and it is a beauty. When I come in the door I cannot believe it is the same RV I bought! I will take a photo tomorrow when it is light out. The front room is so open, bright, and spacious.

But that’s not what amazed me.

That new dishwasher cabinet I built? With the three compartments and drawer? Well, the compartment over the drawer is still empty!

The study, while neat, is far from done and I still have reordering to do in there. Some of the boxes in its overhead cabinets may, and probably will, migrate to that cabinet in the front room. For now, though, I will just revel in the fact that I still have plenty of storage space to spare and that I am not drowning in STUFF.

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Bolder Picture Hanging

I’ve decided that it’s time to take my beloved artwork out of ‘storage’ and get it up on the walls! There are three pieces and one got put up today. The rest will soon follow. Part of the reason it didn’t go up before was that I didn’t want to damage the walls and the other is that I was afraid of it falling. I’m almost over that second fear. 🙂

Since my RV wall space is limited, I’ll be putting the pieces wherever there is room for them. For the piece I hung today my options were the toilet room or the other outside wall of the toilet room that’s in my study (my raven is on the dressing room side). It’s much too pretty a piece to be stuck in a tiny toilet room, so the study it was!

This gorgeous colour-rich painting is oil on canvas and was painted by my very talented sister! She says she originally intended to paint it for me and didn’t like it, so she put it aside. When I was visiting her home one day I saw it and asked if I could have it. She should have more faith in her talents! I had it framed as soon as I had the means to do so.

To hang it, I screwed two short screws into the wall from which to hang the painting from the wire behind it. In addition to this, I stuck three pieces of industrial strength velcro to the back — one along the bottom and two along the sides. It is my belief that when I am ready to paint this room I will be able to remove the painting by separating the velcro layers. Famous last words? 🙂

My sister also made another painting that she actually gave to me. It is of my favourite flowers, lilacs:

I believe this one is also oil, but on wood. It rests on a cute little easel. I have it up on the bookcase when I’m stopped and I just tuck it in with the books when I travel.

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Lofty Ambitions

This afternoon’s urgent project was to build a ladder to access the loft.

I have spent hours in the past weeks researching ladder construction — plans, materials, tips, styles.

My original plan was to make a steep staircase-type ladder that would be deep enough for the back of it to double as a bookcase. I still love that idea but I’m leery of adding more book storage space. Another thing is that such a ladder would have a very big footprint.

Moreover, I’d never built a ladder before and had no idea if I could even do it. I didn’t want to spend money on materials for an experiment.

So, I decided to take a lesson from my second favourite carpenter, Norm Abram, and build a mock up of the ladder using found materials, namely pallet pieces.

I gave the neighbours quite a show I’m sure a couple of nights ago when I took my last pallet apart. It was surprisingly difficult to separate the pieces even if they were only nailed in! I ended up with three five foot lengths of material I felt would be suitable for a ladder construction. Two pieces would be the sides and the third would be chopped up to make steps and step supports. Had the pallet pieces been just six inches longer, I would have been able to make an angled ladder instead of a straight up and down one.

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I started by gluing and screwing step supports to the sides of the ladder. I then glued and screwed the steps to their supports. Finally, I screwed the steps to the sides of the ladder. The result feels quite sturdy but if there are any ladder experts reading this, please tell me if I missed a crucial step!

Securing the ladder wasn’t easy. I used long angle brackets to secure the top to the underside of the loft. For the bottom, I screwed a piece of wood to the floor using two small angle brackets and then screwed the ladder into that piece of wood.

I’m not enamoured with the ladder because it being strictly vertical makes climbing up and down awkward. It is definitely better than the step ladder, however! I will try it for some time and see how it holds up. Once I am more confident in my ladder making skills I will make a prettier angled ladder, but I’m pretty sure I’ll forgo the bookcase idea. I like how slim and nearly invisible the test ladder is.

Not counting glue drying time, the ladder only took about an hour to assemble. The sides are 4′ high and the steps are 1′ wide spaced 1′ apart. I’m quite happy with it. 🙂

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Hail!

I had no sooner come into the RV with my latest project that it started to pour. Finding the rain a tad loud, I looked outside and was nearly knocked senseless:

It has been a very odd weather day, alternating between sunny and warm, overcast and cool, and rainy, often within the same hour. The hail took the cake, though!

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Addition of One Final Bit of RV Kitchen Cabinet Storage Space

While waiting for the glue to dry on my loft ladder, I assembled a shelf to add more storage space to the cavernous over sink cabinet in my kitchen. I wanted to be able to store my big mixing bowls under it and have room on top for the Pyrex and dinner plates. Can you imagine that I have not thus far had a proper place for my dinner plates? They are too wide for the other over sink cabinet and laying them flat in the cavernous cabinet meant they would get buried under ‘stuff.’ They usually wound up on their edges, leaning against a cabinet wall and would roll out the minute I opened the door!

same cabinet, double the amount of storage space

While in the design phase of this project, I realised that the shelf was going to need a lip to hold things in place. So, I was delighted to find a piece of particle board from the study bedframe that just so happened to have a lip already in place. I just had to cut the piece down to the right dimensions, add legs to it, and then take a few inches off its width because I couldn’t actually get it into to the cabinet!

Not bad for a half hour’s worth of work!

(If you guessed that tonight I will be rearranging my kitchen cabinets and organizing them, you are correct!)