Campbell River

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Needing a Day Off

I’m exhausted today. I can’t remember the last day that I didn’t push myself physically, either at the convenience store or working on the renos. I’m behind in the required hours for my contract, so I decided that today was going to be a multiple cups of coffee, sitting in front of the computer in my jammies, cat(s) on my lap, heavy production day.

Of course, the internet had other plans. It always does. Internet is sentient, I am now 100% sure of that. There is no other reason why it works fine when I have better things to do and doesn’t work when I need it. I’m sure inquiring minds want to know how I’m posting this; I’m in the living room of the house; at least wi-fi is working there again today (earlier it wasn’t).

The only work I did on the rig today was finish pulling up the wood flooring in the kitchen and start to chip away at the edges. I need to finish working on the edges and then figure out what I’m going to do in the entrance stairwell. The sides and bottom are metal covered by wood, so I can just pull up the wood and install the Allure over top the metal, but the back is an access panel. I might simply install the vinyl over the boards. Then, I need to take that dinette bench apart. I keep procrastinating on doing so because it’s my way up into the loft. Soon as I do away with it I’ll have to start focusing on making a new way to climb up. I might as well put this off as long as I can and just focus on getting the wood flooring out of the way.

My heart just wasn’t into it today, so I quit early and went to get pizza and beer for dinner. There’s a liquor store located two doors down from the pizza place in the Willowpoint stripmall, which is highly convenient. 🙂 I was asked for ID for the first time in my life! According to the cashier and the manager I don’t look a day over 18. I am going to be thirty-one next month. I don’t know if I should be flattered or horrified! I also seem to be aging backwards; when I was backpacking around Scotland at nineteen and going to pubs with people ten to twenty years older than me, they always got pinned as being younger than me. Very, very, very odd!

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Bucket Chairs are GONE!

Today was one of those calendar marking days.

Normally, when I say a project will only need another 20 minutes, it usually means another couple of hours, if I’m lucky. Today, I was bang on!

I conceded defeat with the angle grinder, concluding that I was missing a wrench to change the disc. Off to Home Hardware I went, hoping that someone could help me. My last resort was to schlep all the way to Home Depot to buy a new grinder.

Home Hardwares are, in my opinion, the stores with the most helpful staff. From Wakefield QC to Whitehorse YT to Campbell River BC and in some small town in Alberta the name of which I forget, I’ve never come out of a Home Hardware feeling like my business doesn’t matter.

I came into the store today and was promptly greeted by an associate who couldn’t help me. She scurried off to find someone who could. He confirmed that I was missing a wrench and got one, then showed me how to change the disc. He did not want to sell me a new disc because I had one and he did not want to sell me a wrench because Croft might have one. I insisted on buying both. For one thing, I don’t think it’s right to go ask for help at a store and not buy something. For another, Croft most definitely does not have that wrench and is going to need one! Plus, what if I wound up needing to switch discs again?

Once back home, I got down on my hands and knees again and away I went. Twenty minutes later the chairs were out, vacuumed, and stacked in the garden shed awaiting their new owners. Tabitha and Neelix seem so bereft without their lounging spots!

Please, no comment on the mess or the mountain of metal shavings still on the floor. 🙂

Had I not had people waiting for those chairs, I would have probably procrastinated on this project. I’m so glad it worked out the way it did! Now, I just have to finish dismantling the other dinette bench and rip up the rest of the flooring.

Before I dismantle the bench, however, I need to figure out how I’m going to get in and out of the loft, even if only temporarily. I have three three ideas for that.

As for what I have in mind to replace one of the bucket chairs, I’m flashing back to my student days as the solution then might be the solution now. I just have to find the right one…

Off to clean up the lounge. What a mess metal shavings make!

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Bucket Chair Progress

One bucket chair is now sitting outside. I’d call that progress.

I have two and a half bolts left to get through and I need to change the disc on the grinder. With no instructions for how to do so and no information on the tool as to what type it is so I can look up a manual online, I’m hoping it’s not as nice a day in Mexico today as it is in Campbell River and that Croft is online! 😀

Grinding through the two bolts I needed to grind through to get to where I am right now was scary! There was no way to control the incredible amount of sparkage going on. I just got everything out of the way and had wet cloths and a bucket of water handy. It didn’t matter if the floor got dinged since it was coming out anyway.

Once I get the disc changed, I’m looking at another twenty minutes, tops, to finish this project. It’s going by a lot better than I would have expected.

Word of warning when grinding: if you don’t have a face shield expect to get a mouthful of (thankfully cool) shavings. 🙂

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Moving Stuff Around

It’s funny how one organizing solution can snowball into a massive reorganization project.

No, I’m not talking about the new dresser. I’m talking about the pocket organizer!

As I suspected, I have way more pockets than I have stuff to put into the pockets. So, I decided to move the cleaning supplies from under the sink to the pocket organizer to make the laundry supplies more accessible by putting them under the sink. They were previously in the cabinet under the wardrobe. This frees up the cabinet under the wardrobe for shoes, which are currently piled on my lounge floor, after being pulled out of their very unuseful spot in a basement storage bin.

(Are you yet as exhausted as I am?! 😀 )

While I’m moving all this stuff around, I’m also gathering clothes from the far reaches of the rig and either putting it into the new drawers, in a pile for laundry, or in a pile for donation. Ms. Tabitha felt a need to help, of course:

I’m at one of those points where I’m trying to decide who I am now. For all but, oh, two or three years, of my life I didn’t really care about clothes or how I looked. Then, I started to get disposable income and that all changed. The house I rented before moving into Miranda was huge, I had money to spend, I had girlfriends to go shopping with, and my favourite store was on the ground floor of my office building. I had a whole closet devoted to skirts, one to tops, two coat closets, a shoe closet, and several dressers for accessories. And, yes, I wore everything! It was so easy to see what I had and when I started to run out of room, I’d donate the least favourite pieces.

Now, I have a wardrobe that’s half the size of the smallest closet I had in that house, plus the cloth dresser, the drawer under the wardrobe, and the cupboard under the drawer. I started RVing by rotating my clothing seasonally, but that just didn’t work out. I’d find myself in places where the weather turned rapidly and without easy access to the right clothes.

I decided that the only stuff that was going under the rig was the truly cold weather exterior gear and everything else had to fit inside. The wardrobe at present is divided into thirds and I’m using every trick I can to maximize space, like putting more than one thing on a hanger.

So, who am I now? The slob who doesn’t care what she looks like or the clotheshorse? I’m, unfortunately, a clotheshorse who cares what she looks like who is dressed like slob. It’s just so much easier to pull out a pair of sneakers, jeans, and top than it is to find tights and nice shoes. I’m therefore working very hard at getting as much of the ‘slob’ clothes and footwear out of here and making the ‘nice’ stuff more accessible.  It’s still hard to distill my wardrobe down to just a few outfits because of the variety of things that I do. If I ever manage to work 100% for myself, then it will be much easier to really reduce how many clothes I need.

Well, back to work!

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Dressing Room Resolution

While I pondered the bucket chair problem, I decided to make a run into Courtney, a decent-sized community size between Campbell River and Nanaimo. Courtney has something that I miss a lot when I don’t have access to it: Walmart. For someone who used to be 100% anti-Walmart, I am now incredibly reliant on them. Where else can you go for a good quality selection of household goods at such fair prices? Canadian Tire and Sears, and sometimes Zellers, have the same stuff, but for about 30% more. There’s no date yet for the opening of the Campbell River Super Walmart and I got sick of waiting since I found on the walmart.ca website the solution to my dressing room problem.

I have mentioned that I wanted to put a lingerie chest next to the shower but was having a problem finding one the right size. As I searched, I tried to figure out how the heck I was going to secure something that massive and heavy. I thought of just sticking with my super ugly plastic tower, but that’s not securable, either, and it always crashes down at some point during my travels.

The solution isn’t as nice as a wooden dresser, but it looks a heck of a lot better than does plastic. It’s lightweight, durable, and flexible, and I have at least five ideas of how I can secure it for travel:

I bought two of these ‘ClosetMax 3 drawer storage units‘ and stacked them one on top of the other (so, no casters). The frame is metal and the drawers glide much better than I would have expected. They fit perfectly width and depthwise into the corner by the shower and there’s a couple of feet between the top of the second one and the ceiling.

Now comes the best part; getting my wardrobe organized once and for all. I’ve said that a few times, but I think that this might finally be the big IT. Except for my wardrobe needing new doors… There are not enough hours in a day. 😀