Campbell River

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Comfort, Closure, and Cutting Corners

Comfort

Any sunny spot will do for a cat!

Closure

I was at my wit’s end trying to figure out how I was going to get my cabinets to latch shut. My overhead cabinets don’t have any catches, so they couldn’t serve as inspiration. I checked the dressing room and kitchen cabinets and, lo and behold, I found a discrepancy. One of the original closures broke and was replaced by something else. I knew this something else would have to work for my new cabinets, too. So, off I went to Home Depot with a picture and I actually found the same thing!

Super cheap, too, less than a buck fifty each!

I installed them in all my new cabinets except the over fridge one. The side of the cabinet isn’t thick enough for one of these, so I’ll have to add a spacer. *sighs*

Here’s how they look in that cabinet over the drawer.

(Yes, there is something in there now, pillows. They won’t be staying there long; I just want space to manoeuvre in the study.)

I will get around to putting the pulls on one day; I’m just nervous about making holes in my pretty doors. 🙂

Cutting Corners

I bought an 8′ long section of trim so that I could make some practice cuts and get an idea of how much it would cost to do the whole rig.

My dad used to love cutting trim, it was like a puzzle for him. The first time I attempted to cut the stuff I was on the phone for ages with him getting tips. We thought the same way and he could verbally explain things to me better than I could understand with a diagram. I wish dad could have been available for a consult today!

I decided to do the bit around the sink to the kitchen-side cabinet edge. First step, make sure the gap between the wall and the floor isn’t more than three quarters of an inch, the width of the trim:

Okay, slight problem. From the edge of the vertical trim to the flooring is three quarters of an inch, but from the wall to the flooring is a full inch.

A couple of minutes later:

yay for scraps!

I then tried to take measurements and got super daunted. I decided to start from the opposite end of the project, where I would have a flat edge.

A half hour and three feet of trim later I got this far:

Fourteen and seven eights inches of trim in, eighty billion to go. At this rate, trim is going to cost me several thousand dollars and take a couple of years to install. 😀

I’m only jesting. One of dad’s tricks was to cut four scraps of pieces with the four cuts I would need and to use that to line up the saw and trim. It’s an excellent tip that works. I just had a lot of wastage and lack of progress since I had to learn a new saw. I’ll continue with the trim next weekend.

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The ‘Front Room’ Needs a Better Name

This is the ‘front room’, post-makeover, as seen from the entrance. The other half of it isn’t much to look at since it’s still empty. 🙂

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So, I have a study, a dressing room, a toilet room, a kitchen, a loft, a cockpit, and a basement. What should I call the renovated portion of the front room? Dining room is too formal and anyway I don’t eat there. Living room isn’t accurate; I do most of my living in the study. Den isn’t quite right; to me a den is a cozy room with a door where you watch tv. Lounge doesn’t fit my personality. 99% of my books are stored there and I will be putting in a reading chair; is library too snobby? Nah! The library it is!

And there you have it folks. Miranda is now officially an RV that suits my lifestyle and priorities. She is as close to perfect as I could have ever dreamed. It’s funny how I used to believe that I needed a vast home with rooms to lose myself into and have found my most functional space to measure less than 130 square feet. Once you distill your life to the 20% that is essential and build around it you will find it to be much richer and that you can be satisfied with a lot less.

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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. 🙂