This weather is going to make me cry. 🙁

I got out of bed at 9 this morning and promptly went to work. It was sunny and warm, albeit a bit damp. I set up my workshop outside, got all the tools, cut my first piece of plywood, and made a hole in the plywood for the furnace vent, then big, ugly black clouds rolled in and it started to spit. Thank you very, very much. Not.

So, this is how far I’ve gotten today:

This shows how the seat was longer than the base. I cut the seat down to make it the same size as the base.

I used some of Croft’s oak paneling to make a nice bottom for my cabinet.

This is the panel that will be visible from the front door. Note the hole for the furnace duct.

I used the wardrobe door plywood to make that side panel and still have more than enough for the three interior divisions, bringing down the cost of the wardrobe doors. It’s amazing what you can get  out of a sheet of plywood!

After lunch, I’ll start working on cutting and assembling the interior partitions. I’m not a cabinet maker and I don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do a really ‘pro’ job on the joinery for this project, so I’m going to rely on glue and angle brackets and focus on making the exterior as polished as possible while accepting that the inside will be stuffed to the gills and not all that visible.

The divisions will give me a space accessible from the kitchen side through a door, one accessible from the lounge with a door also, a drawer, and another space above it with a door. The two large spaces are being designed with specific storage in mind, which will free up a couple of cabinets in the study and give me easier access to a kitchen tool I haven’t used since hitting the road and miss very, very much.

Off to lunch; it feels so well deserved today! 😀

It was much too cold today to work in the shop, even with a heater. I stayed in and got caught up on my contracts, washed the carpets in the cab, began disassembling the dinette bench, and took a few measurements. Since I was up so early, I’ll be going to bed at a ‘reasonable’ hour, enabling me to take advantage of the clear weather and warmer temperatures we’re supposed to have tomorrow. I have a lunch date with my neighbour and I intend to have some work done before then!

I’m having a hard time deciding what’s the bigger priority; the ladder to the loft or the dishwasher counter. I’m already tired of climbing into bed via a stepladder, but it’s just an inconvenience. The dishwasher counter, on the other hand, would give me some storage space I sorely need and be the final piece in the puzzle of getting a functional kitchen in this RV.

Perhaps I should stop over analysing the situation and just get it done.

But not tonight; there’s a hoooooot bubble bath and a Milepost waiting for me. 🙂

I wanted to get up ‘early’ today to go to Home Depot before it started to… snow. So, I was delighted when I was awoken at 9:30 by a knock at the door. It surely had to be the mail carrier with my Milepost, and it was!

Off I went to Home Depot to return the sixth box of Allure. I also wanted to price lumber and supplies for my last few carpentry projects:

-dishwasher counter: need plywood for the interior divisions

-‘tunnel’ for the furnace duct: need plywood

-ladder for the loft: need 2’x4’s and something thinner for the rungs

-secret project: a small piece of paneling

-trim

I came home with:

sanded plywood (two pieces), perfect for the inside of a cabinet and creating a tunnel for a furnace duct

fancy hemlock trim in short pieces, perfect for a home with short walls (enough for the dressing room and the kitchen, at least)

a large piece of paneling, perfect for my secret project (and probably WAY more than I need)

pallets are made with solid wood held together with a few nails, perfect for making a ladder

You can probably see where I’m going with this. All these supplies cost me NOTHING. I pulled them out of a dumpster! Of course, I asked if I could do this and Home Depot was happy to have someone haul away their trash for them! There is absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with anything I brought home, not even a speck of dirt on it. I have a huge piece of high-quality paneling in perfect condition, two big pieces of sanded 1/2″ plywood in perfect condition, and a hill of short pieces of high-quality fancy hemlock trim, plus the pallets!

I need more pallets for some other projects, but this was all I could safely carry home today, and the best of what was available in that dumpster. The other pallets were a bit grungy. I’ll check back at Home Depot in a few days to see if there’s anything new available to me. I’d love to find more of that trim!

I’m chomping at the bit get going with the dishwasher counter, but there is no way I can cut up the big piece of plywood in this weather, so I will go start on something else, maybe the trim or the loft ladder.

But before I do that, I’m going to watch the snow fall and melt as it hits the ground. Snow. After weeks of near tee-shirt weather. This place is strange.

GAH!

It’s been pouring all day and there is no relief in sight!

As if my leak worry wasn’t enough, I need to be able to work outside this weekend! The counter project will require me to cut a huge sheet of plywood (the remnant from the wardrobe doors) and there is simply not enough place in the workshop to do so. I need to do like the carpenter did and secure the sheet to my sawhorses with clamps, then use a circular saw to do the cuts. Hopefully, I’ll get a few hours respite to do that; the rest of the work can be done inside.

I’m getting pretty excited at the thought of getting that counter in once and for all and I’ve made two decisions in regards to it. The first is that the dishwasher is going onto the counter. I don’t want to cut into the plumbing and then have to worry about leaks for the next ten years. The second decision is that I’ll be taking the dinette bench apart after all. I’ll leave the seatbelt frame in place, however, and build my cabinet around it, repurposing as many bench pieces as I can. The current footprint of the bench is a bit too wide to look good with the counter and I’ll need to shave off about two inches.

So, those are my goals for the rest of this week; deal with the leak and get the counter in. I’m debating whether or not I should share my ‘to do by April 1st’ list to show just how crazily ambitious I am. 😀

I just need to fiddle with some scraps in the corner where the dinette was and do the entrance stairwell.

Most of what’s visible will be covered by the ‘tunnel’, so I’ll just use scraps to fill in the gap.

I wasn’t as happy with my job on this part of the rig. I was working backwards, having to tuck boards in under boards rather than fitting them over top so some of my joints are visible. It looks okay; truly seamless floors look unnatural, but it isn’t ‘perfect.’

It wasn’t a moment too soon for me to be done; the last strip in the dressing room would was also the last strip in the fifth box! I have enough scraps left to finish, so I’ll be returning the sixth box of Allure. This means that not counting the toilet room, the loft, the basement compartments, and the cab, my home is 5 x 24 square feet. That’s… 120 square feet! WOW! I was sure that I had least 200 square feet! And I used to think that 750 square feet was the absolute bare minimum I could be comfortable in.

I’m not sure I have enough scraps to do the entrance so I think that I will instead go get a nice rubber mat and do the entire thing in rubber. A truly impervious material really would be ideal; I had water damage right through the oak and into the subfloor in that area. I bought some sealant and will be applying several coats to the subfloor before I put anything over it.

The next job, trim, is going to be a big one because of all the little pieces that need to be cut and my own inexperience, not to mention the cost. I also finally understand why there were so many different sizes and types of trim in here. I really do wish I could have just reused the original trim, but it wouldn’t have held up over the rest of Miranda’s life. Wood is definitely the way to go here.

I’m calling it a day!