Author: Rae

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Behold Clean Dishes!!!

In a shocking turn of events, my dishwasher seller was correct and the Home Depot guy was completely ignorant!

Yup, the missing part for the dishwasher is common and readily available. The part cost me 8.90$ with the tax. Add the 70$ for the dishwasher and the 15$ for gas, and subtract 25$ for the plywood and my dishwasher cost me 69$. What a bargain!

Plywood you say?

I rolled into Home Depot this morning and saw a big sign saying ‘FREE WOOD.’ It looked like a bunch of pallets that would make good kindling, but I took a closer look. Lying on top was a 4’x4′ sheet of  1/2″ plywood with a smooth top in impeccable condition. This high quality stuff is worth at least 25$. Needless to say, I’ll find a use for it! So, I’m glad that the clerk was wrong the other night since it made me go back to Home Depot where I was able to snag this great bonus!

My dishes are being washed as I post. *joy*

Post edited an hour later to add:

The dishwasher’s performance exceeds my expectations! In order to test it, I purposely left out a few dishes without rinsing them (gross, I know, but the things I do in the name of science!). Even though the stuff in the bowls was pretty crusty (remember, science!) by the time I ran them through the Danby they came out clean!!! Glasses and cutlery sparkle. I am very impressed!!! The next challenge will be to find a permanent home for the unit. My idea of building it into the new countertop could theoretically work provided I can find some longer hoses, so that will be the next project. 🙂

My only quibble with the unit is that the manual sucks. The previous owner threw his out since he found it to be useless, but did provide an online link where I could download it. Nowhere in the manual does it say how to operate the unit, such as when to turn on the tap water (before you do anything else) or what the various settings do. Thankfully, the dishwasher is pretty much idiot proof to run. My only question is whether I should be sending hot or cold water to it. I’ve been sending cold and the dishwasher has been heating it up, but I’m not sure if that water is in fact hot enough. Something to research.

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Basket Bonanza

Miranda’s overhead cabinets provide a lot of storage space, but containerizing within them is key to keeping things functional. Finding the right containers has been a challenge. I like for things to match as much as possible as well as be aesthetically pleasing, so I didn’t want to buy some cheap plastic containers that would eventually end up cracking. No, what I really wanted were some pretty seagrass baskets.

While wandering around Canadian Tire the other night looking at furniture, I found three-packs of nesting rectangular seagrass baskets reduced from the high twenties to just 8.99$ per set!!! I scooped up four and am now kicking myself for not getting eight.

The upper cabinets in the study have two cavernous corners. The larger baskets are exactly the right size for the space! One basket holds cards, letters, and other sentimental paper and the other basket has water colour paper and other art supplies.

The upper cabinets in the study have two cavernous corners. The larger baskets are exactly the right size for the space! One basket holds cards, letters, and other sentimental paper and the other basket has water colour paper and other art supplies.

Two more of the large baskets stacked one on top of the other. One holds notebooks, the other blank paper. These are easily accessible when I open a cabinet door, and I need to pull them out to get to the baskets in the corner.

Two more of the large baskets stacked one on top of the other. One holds notebooks, the other blank paper. These are easily accessible when I open a cabinet door, and I need to pull them out to get to the baskets in the corner.

As an aside, this was another brilliant storage idea I had this week. I put linens, pajamas, exercise clothes, and work clothes in separate cloth bags that I can squish into two cabinets instead of having the whole mess spill into three cabinets. It's not an ideal storage solution, but it makes the best use of the space I have and I'm finding it to be easy to live with.

As an aside, this was another brilliant storage idea I had this week. I put linens, pajamas, exercise clothes, and work clothes in separate cloth bags that I can squish into two cabinets instead of having the whole mess spill into three cabinets. It’s not an ideal storage solution, but it makes the best use of the space I have and I’m finding it to be easy to live with.

Medium size baskets fit side-by-side in one cabinet and hold books.

Medium size baskets fit side-by-side in one cabinet and hold books.

Getting these upper cabinets into shape has become my priority for the weekend as I am still debating the rustic flooring option. Since I will be doing away with some storage space when I get rid of the dinette benches and the bed base in the study, I need to make room to move the items in those locations. I don’t think this will be too onerous.

One dinette bench holds only a few small kitchen appliances like the blender, and there is plenty of room for all that in the new over fridge cabinet. The other dinette bench holds journals and photographs I inherited from my dad. I will be able to fit the journals into the study overhead cabinets by the time I’m through with them. The pictures will be sorted into my photo album or, if they are too large, will find a place of honour on what little wall space I have. Finally, the bed base holds some winter gear I can transfer to a tote in the basement and some linens I am thinking of using as a lining for new curtains. So, really, there isn’t that much I need to make space for, but the space needs to be there.

I have begun the dinettectomy, but, being the tease that I am, pictures will wait until I aim further along in the process. 😀

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Home Depot-made Decisions

I went to Home Depot tonight to get the thingamabob that I’m missing to connect my dishwasher to the faucet. I don’t even want to admit where I put the dishwasher. 🙂 As I suspected, the missing part is not ‘common’, as the seller told me it was. But the price I paid was worth the finagling that will be necessary to hook up the appliance. The Home Depot plumbing helper told me to come back with the part I’m trying to hook up to the faucet seeing as the pics weren’t enough (he was impressed that I brought pictures!). The dishwasher has two hoses that screw into this part I’ll be bringing in, so the thingamabob might end up replacing the part altogether. Home Depot Guy and I are looking forward to MacGyvering a solution together. 🙂

Next, I went to flooring to ogle the Allure once more and gasped when I saw a new-old option. Turns out that Traffic Master got a bad batch of my third choice for the new floors. The colour’s apparently off, but it looks great to me. They really want to get through that batch and are selling the boxes for 36$ each. Regular price 56$. And I might need 10 boxes to do the rig end to end, for a total potential savings of 200$ by going with the flooring I like rather than the one I love! I checked with Home Depot and the price will stay until the entire batch is liquidated, and there could be millions of boxes of the stuff across North America. So, even if I were to buy only two or three boxes at a time, budget permitting, the price is guaranteed for a long time, and if the Home Depot here runs out they can get me some from another store.

Seeing as I have four days off ahead of me, I am crunching the numbers to see if I can afford the three boxes it’ll take for me to do the front room. Once the new floor’s in, I’ll be able to get my counter extension in and do a few other cheap projects. My only concern is that the flooring I’m considering is not going to look good with the current cabinetry, so I’m wondering if I’ll be able to live with the mismatch until I end up painting. Most likely yes. 🙂

Getting the front room ready for new flooring is going to be a project unto itself. It involves taking the dinette apart completely, including sawing through a steel seatbelt frame, as well as sawing through the bolts holding the two bucket chairs in place. And, of course, I’ll need to pull up the hardwood flooring in the kitchen. So, this will be a much bigger project than it was the first time around, but I look forward to having unified, easy-to-maintain flooring from one end of the RV to the other, as well as no thresholds to bang my toes on.

So, there you have it. The renos I’m embarking on aim to turn a blah RV into a cute little cottage on wheels. Let’s see how I do. 😀

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Pay Day Surprise

My first pay day at the gas station is tomorrow, so I was given my pay stub today seeing as I’m going to be off the next four days. I knew that the cheque would be more generous than I had calculated because I no longer need to have extra money taken off to pay to Revenue Quebec (whee!), but the amount seemed really off. So, I looked at the hourly rate and discovered, to my great pleasure, that I’m being paid a dollar more an hour than I had been told at hiring!

A dollar more an hour might not sound like much, but it’s significant. At a 24 hour part-time schedule (which is what I’ve been having so far) paid at minimum wage I could not meet my fixed expenses. At nine dollars an hour I can. If I get up to 40 hours a week, then I’ll be able to live. It won’t be enough for the other things I need to be saving up for, spring travel and renos, but it would be enough to live comfortably for the winter and to travel. So, a dollar more an hour is extremely significant and I’m grateful. There was also a nice note on the pay stub from the owner.

Today is the start of a 4-day weekend that will end with a brutal 6AM start time next week. I had made a note to myself to come home with Doritos seeing as Croft and Norma left me tons of salsa, cheese, and refried beans, so celebratory nachos were in order. Well, ‘The Chip Guy’ came in today and pulled the out dated (still edible, but too old to sell) product, which we are allowed to take home. I scored four huge bags of Cool Ranch Doritos, more than enough to get me through all that salsa, cheese, and refried beans over the next few months. As Croft would say, life is good!

My happy mood was not spoiled by the fact that the auditor came in today. He’s the guy who goes around nitpicking everything and who gave me grief for a leaf on the floor. *rolls eyes*

Next week, I have two solo eight hour closing shifts to do!

It’s amazing what a difference nine days make.

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This and That

1) I stumbled out of bed at 9:30 this morning in answer to a knock on my door. It was the mail carrier with a registered letter for me. My foggy brain was able to make out the words “Wow, first time I ever got mail at home!”

Thankfully, I’d been previously introduced to the mail carrier and she knew a bit of my story.

2) Today’s shift was great! I worked once again with the colleague who trained me the first day and things are good between us now. We work super well together, finding it easy to equitably divvy up the sucky jobs, of which there are many. Tonight, she introduced me to the slushy machine. I’d been curious about the colourful swirls of ice named after big brand sodas, like Mountain Dew and Sprite, and was surprised to learn that we get those free, too! I don’t normally drink sodas, but I’m a sucker for slushies, so I decided to try an orange one. Let’s just say I’m going to have to put a note on my mug reminding me that those things are pure sugar! 🙂 But what a treat! Business was a bit slow tonight and we gabbed a lot, which made us late for closing up. Oops. 🙂

3) I have a childhood friend with whom I’ve reconnected through Facebook whose mother also friended me. This mother has a childhood friend of her own who happens to live in Campbell River. The friend and I will be meeting for coffee this week. Do I know anyone who doesn’t know someone who lives in Campbell River? 😀

*moves away from the light tone*

4) I found out yesterday that an aunt, my only one on my dad’s side (his sister) passed away suddenly on Sunday. Going back east for the funeral on Friday isn’t an option, unfortunately. My thoughts go out to my cousins and their families as well as my uncle.