Homemaking

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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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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!

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Securing RV Furniture

I’ve been doing some research to gather my options for how I’m going to secure my new furniture, especially the rocker I don’t have yet but am actively shopping for. I also have the stool to worry about, but I think that I’ll start by just laying it flat on the ground. I really want to avoid bolting my new rocker/recliner to the floor and like the idea of using eyebolts and bungee cords as found in the article How to Keep Loose RV Furniture From Flying When You Hit the Brakes.

This article also includes a video about removing the dinette, which confirms to me that I did the right thing by building up and around the dinette bench containing several systems. I don’t agree with the part in the video where the guy says to avoid furniture on wheels in an RV. I can’t imagine having a non-rolling computer chair! The trick is to simply turn the chair onto its side and lay it on the ground. Even when I’ve had to hit the brakes, the chair has never gone far.

I’ve been scoping out Craigslist for the rocker/recliner model that I want. While I’ve seen many in my price range, they were either gone by the time I emailed or covered in the wrong material (I want vinyl or leather vs. microfiber or suede). I’m looking for something like this:

I found one for the very tempting price of $20, but it was covered in microfiber and didn’t have the footstool while one that was $75 and had the right fabric and colour as well as the footstool was snapped up immediately. I’ve seen many more! Craigslist isn’t used that much in the Comox Valley so seeing such an abundance of them for under $100 (including the footstool) tells me that I should check the ads for Vancouver when I head back to the mainland. It’s not a huge priority, but I would love to once again have a comfy reading, cross-stitching, and knitting chair, especially in a separate room from the computer!

This is probably where I should point out that I am pretty much allergic to buying new furniture. I make the odd exception for cheap assemble-it-yourself stuff but when it comes to things like sofas, chairs, and nice cabinets, I prefer to get something used. I have a lot of reasons for this and money isn’t really the first consideration. I like things that are slightly broken in since I have cats. I also find that there is more variety in the used market than there is in the new since I’m not fighting trends. And, yes, the costs are usually a lot better.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

While cutting some pieces of plywood today, I failed to probably plan all my cuts, with the end result being that I now have many nice long scraps that are only a foot or so wide. They’ll be perfect for the ductwork tunnel, but I need two pieces 21 1/8″ high for the interior divisions of the dishwasher cabinet and only have one suitable piece of plywood left. Before I steal more of Croft’s ugly scraps ( 😀 ), I’m going to go raid the other store he mentioned has a scrap bin. I went by there tonight just to scope it out and see where it is and, sure enough, there is a huge bin marked ‘free wood’. It’s behind a locked fence, so I’m going to hope for clear weather tomorrow so I can check it out. I also went by Home Depot, but their dumpster was locked up and there were only pallets outside of it.

The only other thing I’ll work on tonight is getting rid of The Ugliest Light Fixture In the Universe. I have four of these in Miranda; two in the dining area and two in the study, using up valuable wall space. The ‘shades’ are made of a rubber-like material. They have never worked, which explains why one lit up when I pushed on its switch yesterday. It was like it was telling me “don’t throw me away!” Here’s a picture for posterity.

It’s a shame these lights run off the 12V system. If it was off the 120V grid, I would have been able to replace the fixture with a plug for the dishwasher. I’m instead going to have to run wiring from the nearest plug to this general vicinity.

This picture also shows just how much of the window the dishwasher will be blocking as it is as wide as the counter and at least as tall as the bracket by the stove. The only other option would be to have the dishwasher facing out towards the dining room, but even that would chew up some window space. There really is no ideal solution and I want a dishwasher, dangnabit, so I’m just going to have to live with this. 🙂