This morning’s project was to reinforce the interior of the C in the over cab bunk floor to give me something into I could screw the flooring:

showing the difference between the edge of the floor and the top of the padding

had to remove the ladder supports; the only way to get up there safely now is to climb up via the captain’s chair!

before, with the padding; it’s about a 1/4″ taller than the floor would be

No More Nails

now the floor can be screwed into solid wood that won’t split, unlike the edge of thin plywood

This would have been a teeny job with a powered saw, but took seemingly forever with a handsaw. I’m reluctant to spend the money on a new jigsaw when I’m so near the end of my renos and may never have use for one again.

Next, I’m going up into the loft to clean up a bit, finish the insulation, and get proper dimensions. Time is running out this week to get that plywood bought!

We went below zero last night and are staying there until Tuesday. The forecast for the rest of the week is completely upwards with nights above zero starting on the 23rd. Let’s see if that lasts!

The Eternabond hasn’t arrived yet and it’s too cold to apply it anyway, so I’m pretty much on hold in the loft. It was super damp in there this morning with the windows covered in condensation, but five minutes with the dehumidifier solved that. I’ll have to keep leaving it on 24/7.

It snowed lightly today, so going out for plywood was out of the question (remember, I have a hatchback so I have to carry big things on the roof!). I continued work on the insulation. The styrofoam panels I have are too thick, so I have to halve them, a surprisingly tough job.

Instead of sleeping, I’ve been lying awake at night thinking about the next steps in this project. One thing that bugs me is that there aren’t many places into which I could secure the new flooring:

Everything in blue is thin paneling over insulation over thin paneling over insulation over fiberglass. That’s it! The red lines are where I have something structural into which to screw. I’ll come back to the green marks.

So, obviously, the flooring can’t be in too many pieces if I want any sort of structural integrity at all. The best thing would be to bring in one piece, but I really don’t think that would be manageable. I also won’t have anything to cut it with once I get here if I try to bring it home in one piece and concede that I need two. It’s going to have to come home in two pieces.

The green marks indicate where there is padding around the interior of the C. This padding is about a half inch taller than the floor, so I need to remove to be able to install the floor flat. I will replace the padding with some 1 1/2″ or so thick wood I found in the basement (a real Ali Baba’s cave, it seems). This will give me some additional place for screwing in the flooring so that both sections can get a bit of extra support along the interior side of the C. I’ll make sure to take pictures when I get to this point!

That leaves the sides. Intellectually I know that if the manufacturer didn’t feel the flooring needed any additional support on the sides, it mustn’t have needed it, but I’m still getting the willies since all the weight in the loft is right smack in the middle. I might get thicker plywood after all! 😀

I didn’t run the dehumidifier last night and when I went into the loft this morning there was condensation along the metal frame and some dampness at the seam. I’m definitely not closing anything off until I get more Eternabond on the exterior! I hope the tape arrives today. We’re heading into a longish sub-zero stretch, so I wouldn’t be able to apply it. We’re hovering at zero today, which is really too cold, but with a hair dryer I’d be fine.

Even with that bit of condensation I felt okay with going ahead with some reinforcing of that corner and then I started to put in insulation. I had quite a bit left of the blue styrofoam-type from a 2008 purchase and which I’ve been telling myself for two years I should throw out. It’ll be more than enough for this project! That’s a yay for my packrat tendencies!

I’ll probably go buy the paneling and plywood tomorrow. I checked out the Home Hardware here in Osoyoos and have decided not to buy from them. They are the pits! I have sung the praises of Home Hardware across the country, but this store is just terrible. For example, they sell scraps of plywood that are priced as per their amount compared to a full sheet. So, a square that’s an eighth of a full sheet would cost an eighth of a full sheet. They didn’t have any scraps of paneling, only 8’x4′ sheets that are much too huge. I asked if it would be possible to buy a quarter of it. They said no, but that they’d be happy to cut the sheet down to a quarter and keep the other three quarters to sell as scraps. In case that’s not clear, they would make me pay full price for a sheet and then sell the other three quarters for three quarters of the price of a full sheet. That sounds like stealing to me. It’s not the money that irks me, a sheet is just $10, but the money-grubbing principle. I’ll go check out the lumber store in Oliver and see how they are. Oh, and the guy at Home Hardware who wanted to do me a favour by cutting the paneling had no idea what a straight flat, 1″, reinforcement bracket is. He took me to an aisle and showed me corner braces, saying that’s all they had. I dug around and, of course, found a bunch of flat brackets, including straight, L, and T ones. Sheesh!

As an FYI, for anyone who thinks that a handsaw is a safe tool, guess again. *Owwwwwww* 😀