Month: January 2011

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How Small Can You Go?

For my current lifestyle, Miranda is perfect; she’s a real apartment on wheels with a functional kitchen and bathroom, much more ‘home’ than ‘RV.’ But I do think about downsizing even more at some point when I might be ready to focus more on the travel part of RVing. I found one guy in the US, Tynan, who really demonstrates the advantage of having a smaller, more van-like, RV–you can stealth boondock in cities.

Tynan has a Winnebago Rialta. I’d consider it a B+ or an A-, classwise, that is. One of the coolest things about it is the bathroom. Check out his RV in its early days, with a demonstration of the bathroom:

I’m not a huge fan of convertible furniture, but I have to say that this bathroom would almost be an acceptable step down from my current digs and make it possible to squeeze myself into a smaller rig.

Like me, he realised that having a small RV means cheaper renovation costs, so he made some upgrades to the flooring, then to his kitchen, including putting in granite countertops!

His rig is quite luxurious and small enough that he can sneak into some parking garages. He’s been dry camping in San Francisco for a while, and that’s a city where overnighting in an RV is very difficult to do unless you have a tiny rig like his.

I’m not yet ready to subscribe to the extreme minimalist lifestyle the way Tynan is, but I can tell that that’s where I’m heading. I took some huge steps in that direction by getting into the RV, and I think that further downsizing will happen on its own thanks to the new habits I’ve picked up. But I don’t intend to give up Miranda any time soon!

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Priming the Loft

In my bed again
Just can’t wait to get in my bed again
The nights I love are snoring with my cats
And I can’t wait to get in my bed again

Oh, the weather today! SUNNY and DRY! I was able to crank open the windows while I was working and the primer practically dried on contact. I will definitely be able to do a coat of paint tonight! YAY!

Having a coat of paint on tonight means that I’ve gained a day in my schedule to get me back in my bed Tuesday night. That gives me time to do a much needed, and much postponed, Walmart supply run tomorrow. I’ll be going to Penticton instead of Omak because I need cat food, something I can’t bring back from the States.

While there, I’ll scope out flooring options since the logistics of painting the floor involve locking the kids in the back part of the rig… where there is absolutely no place for the litter box. I’m also going to get the window covering material for the loft. I figured out what I need, it’s just a matter of finding the right colour.

So, Monday night I can put on a second coat of paint if needed, Tuesday I can do the last of the carpentry to add storage and a bit of an ironing blitz to get the curtains made up, and then I can collapse happy and exhausted in a bed that wasn’t made for a very, very small child. 🙂

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Meanwhile, in the Loft…

The poor loft… missing its floor and most of a wall for so many weeks…

First thing today, I cut the piece of floor that was a bit too wide, and then I screwed everything down nice and tight. The greatest part about that was getting my ladder back! The floor still felt a bit weak over the gap, so I added a 90 degree brace and, after dashing out to the Home Hardware, a T brace, like so:

And, so, this is what the loft looked like, with a piece of wall paneling covering it (explaining the discolouration) at about four this afternoon:

The paneling is a 3′ x 7′ sheet that costs $10. I had the wood guy cut it in two so I’d have a piece 3’x5′, roughly the size of the wall I need to cover, and a smaller piece for another project.

If this was summer time, or at least a dry winter, I would have pulled out that window and installed the paneling properly under it, but it’s not warm and dry, so I decided to just glue new paneling over what’s there. I wanted to put it in as one piece.

First thing, was to get that angled bit on the left side. I took a bunch of measurements and wound up with this:

I used a very sharp knife and a straight edge to score the paneling and then snapped it neatly. The end result was a piece that was square at one end, pointy at the other, and sized to overlap the window, like so:

Math, especially geometry, is not my strong suit, so I am most impressed that I got the angles in perfectly!

Next, I had to figure out how to get an outline for the window. Oh, glue!

Which gave me a pattern on the back of the paneling:

That worked quite well, but I could have used a bit more guidance on the bottom since I ended up with a gap between the paneling and the window. I filled it in with scraps and plastered over it; it’ll look fine once painted.

I glued the paneling in place and moved on to filling in the wall bit at the front:

And end result:

Tomorrow: sanding the wall compound and priming!!!!! Oh, and also a visit to the floor store, if open, because my new floor deserves tiles, not mismatched paint 😀

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Not Square

Bah. The rig’s floor’s are plumb and square, why not the loft?! I need to ‘shave’ a wedge off one of the flooring pieces to get everything to fit in. Gah! Needless to say, I didn’t get the floor in today. I intend to spend the next couple of days focused on that project.

Before I screw anything down, I also need to add a bit of reinforcements along the sides and some bigger brackets  underneath; the pieces spanning the gap are a bit too springy for my liking. But there was one ray of sunshine in that corner of the rig today: it now smells like pine shavings instead of rotten, sodden wood. It’ll all happen in due time…

Two Measly Little Degrees
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Two Measly Little Degrees

That was the temp today, two, and that was also the number of degrees that was separating me from the minimum temp at which Eternabond can be applied.

I decided to go ahead with the corner that’s leaking, but not touch anything else.

First, I removed the original material that hadn’t bonded. It pulled right off and a river of water came pouring out! Not good! Once I got all the badly applied Eternabond off, I blasted it with the hair dryer for several minutes, then scrubbed with acetone.

This time, I decided to apply the Eternabond in small patches. One of the problems with my original application is that I was going over all the ribbing and didn’t get a good bond around it. My method this time was to peel half of the Eternabond backing, blast the rig with the hair dryer, blast the Eternabond until the putty backing was almost melted, apply the exposed piece, and rub it with a smooth stone while keeping the hair dryer on it. I then peeled off the other half of the backing and pulled the tape taut around the ribbing before again using the stone and hair dryer to get a good bond.

The results are ugly, but I’m confident that this time I got the leak.

What I’m not confident about is how my rig looks now: t-a-c-k-y. 🙁

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