Canada

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Some Assembly Required

There are not enough expletives in all the languages of the world to describe how I feel about the change in the weather forecast for the next four days. It was supposed to be sunny with occasional cloud cover. Instead, it was overcast this morning and it is now going to rain for the next three days. And if that wasn’t enough, after four days of glorious sun and heat, it’s cooled down considerably. I’ll have to bring a heater into the workshop if I want to spend any time there.

First priority this morning, then, was to get the final cuts done for the dishwasher cabinet. I used a combination of the wardrobe and free plywood.

I was originally going to assemble the unit outside, but it will be much too cumbersome to carry. Now that it’s going to rain, I also don’t want to get it wet. Finally, an in situ installation will enable me to catch little mistakes much more easily. It’s going to be awkward to do the work in the rig, but it’s the best option.

I seriously under estimated how many angle brackets I’m going to need and I don’t have the patience to take apart my valances to get the handful I have left in the rig, so soon as I have lunch I’ll head over to Home Depot to buy a bucketload of brackets. I’m also going to size up plywood seeing as I have decided to let them cut my door panels for me since I won’t be able to use the tablesaw this weekend. I also wouldn’t be able to bring home a sheet without going through some tarping exercises to keep the rain off it.

(Seriously, I have no idea how anyone could live in this climate full-time. Between my six months in Campbell River and my four months in the GVR I have had a lifetime’s fill of damp, grey winters and am starting to miss a crisp, dry, sunny, twenty below, RV not built for that weather notwithstanding.)

Griping aside, here is what the dishwasher cabinet looks like right now. Some assembly, and trim, required:

CIMG0001

The horizontal piece of plywood is actually a shelf over the drawer.

The horizontal piece of plywood is actually a shelf over the drawer.

I am really nervous about the whole assembly thing because it’s going to block off a corner of the window. I will have to take the whole cabinet apart, including the housing for the dishwasher, should I ever have to deal with a leak there, so I need to get into the habit of checking that area for condensation on a regular basis. I might be worried for nothing, but time will tell.

Off to Home Depot I go…

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Priorities and Work

It’s March 19th already (bonne fête, mom!); I have been here five months now and there is just over a month to go. I suspect the next few weeks will be industrious!

No, I have not made any progress on the renos this work week, which ends at 10:15PM tonight (Friday). I have a very good excuse for that.

My contract requires me to do 10 hours per week to a maximum of 20. Up until this week, there was never enough work to get the minimum 10 hours. This week, there has been. I have been getting up ‘early’ to do up to an hour and a half of contract work, going into the gas station for my eight and a quarter hour shift, and then coming home to do anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours more work at the contract, depending on task availability.

Most days I’ve only been able to do less than than that, today I did more. Their week runs Monday through Sunday, so I have until then to do my ten hours for this week. I am frustrated that there were few tasks available earlier this week when it was too rainy and cold to work on my renos but that the current trend allows me to expect that I will need to put in some serious hours in the next few days, when it will be nice enough to do renos. Gah!

Contract not withstanding, the dishwasher counter is going to be done this weekend. In fact, I intend for every single front room project to be done by Tuesday night. The weather is supposed to cooperate and I am going to make full use of it.

Tonight, I am absolutely beat both physically and intellectually. I have ‘help’ for half of my Thursday and Friday shifts and I always ask the gal to work the cash and do indoor jobs while I go do the outside jobs, which makes both of us happy. Outdoor jobs don’t suck as much as one would expect because you’re outdoors! Unless the weather is really horrible, I’m much happier hauling the garbage, hosing down the carwash, washing the gas pumps (you read that correctly), and sweeping up trash. With it being light out much later now, I can spend a solid two hours doing outside chores.

There was a spring in my step today since I made the decision to switch to my hiking boots. Yesterday was the proverbial straw for me sore feet-wise, where they went from being sore to actually hurting. Working in my boots today was heaven; the only reason I haven’t done so before is their appearance, scuffed beyond redemption and splattered with Nugget City stain. The boots are not yet a year old, but fording rivers, traipsing through snow, fighting muddy bogs, and trekking through sand (not to mention doing hard labour in them) has given them a worn appearance in a very short amount of time. I don’t begrudge them their well-worn appearance as they will be my most trusty and comfortable footwear for many, many years. And they are going to help me get through my next twenty-four or so shifts!

Well, a hot bath is singing its siren song, promising to soothe my aching muscles. I cannot ignore it. 🙂

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Movie Night

I’m taking tonight off to watch one of my favourite movies, The Money Pit, just because I need a reminder that I am not really living in renovating hell.

I used to joke that this movie was based on my experiences with my house and that they needed two actors to play me because no one would would believe that all the zany things could happen to just one person.

My favourite scene (“Honey, we have STAIRS!”) isn’t available on Youtube, but my second favourite one is:

The rest of the movie is even funnier.

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Adding Some Trim to the Dishwasher Cabinet

I had to stop early this afternoon because it got very cold very quickly in the workshop, but the progress for today makes me optimistic that I can make the dishwasher cabinet look nice.

This is the kitchen side of the counter. What a mess!

This is the kitchen side of the counter. What a mess!

A bit of paneling hides the side of the mess and a topper of trim takes care of the rest. Imagine when it's all painted the same colour!

A bit of paneling hides the side of the mess and a topper of trim takes care of the rest. Imagine when it’s all painted the same colour!

I had planned on putting a bit of a ‘lip’ on the bottom of the cabinet to further discourage things from sliding out, so the trim is both pretty and functional.

The dining room side is going to be a bit trickier in that I need to keep the bottom panel open for access, but I think I’ll do something similar, only with magnets instead of nails.

Now, what would I do for eight solid hours of weather I could actually work in….

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Dishwasher Counter Progress… For REAL!

It was too wet, yet again, to work outside today, but, at least, it was warm enough to do so in the workshop. Mr. Neelix wasn’t going to let me get any work done unless I got him cat food RIGHT AWAY (even though his bowl was still full) so off I went to check out the spoils at Windsor Plywood and Home Depot. Unfortunately, I came home empty-handed. So, I decided to use what I had on hand, even if it was planned for another project.

Since I couldn’t work outside, using the table saw to cut my panels was out of the question. It’s just too tight inside the workshop to do so. I have three scars on my wrists to remind me of what power tools can do to you when you are working in ideal circumstances and warn against trying to ‘make do’. I therefore pulled out my trusty friend:

We have done A LOT of work together! Sure, cuts with a jigsaw aren’t as razor straight as you can get with a table saw, but I wasn’t risking any limbs, so it was worth it.

Two more panels cut, I did a mockup on the base to make sure the dimensions were okay:

Which brings me to an epiphany I had in the middle of the night. It’s no wonder I’m exhausted all the time, my brain never shuts off! The thought was related to the space behind the drawer:

I was just going to write it off as wasted space, but realised in the middle of the night that I could make that space accessible from the side of the kitchen and use it for storing oversized cutting boards and the like. Nice solution, but I’m not sure it was worth waking up for at 4 in the morning!

And this is where I paused for lunch:

I’m out of angle brackets, so I need to take apart some valances. That done, I will install the final two panels; a shelf that will go over the drawer and the one that will be against the wall.

Before I bring the unit into the rig and install it, I will need to pretty up the base with some trim.

Once the unit is installed, leveled, and pretty, I’ll work on doors.

It sure feels good to have something done today!