He Begged Me Not To Do It!

Hi all, Dianne here.  When we decided to make the side trip to Indiana to get minor irritating things* in our motor home repaired at the Newmar factory, we started thinking about the inside remodeling we'd wanted to do for some time.  We had planned to make the trek north next summer for the interior re-do at Bradd and Hall in Elkhart.  Since we were headed to Newmar in Nappanee (just outside Elkhart), it made sense to go ahead with the interior re-do while there and save the expense of the trip next year.  The money would have to come out of savings anyway, so why not?

*Here are a few of the irritating things that were starting to drive us nuts, and that we couldn't wait a year to fix:

1.  Retractable step had acquired a mind of its own and would or would not work on a whim...

2.  One side of the pocket door between the bedroom and bathroom was permanently off the track, and the hardware broken and unrepairable (by us)...  (Meaning no privacy if one of us was already in bed)

3.  Electrical circuit in our bedroom also acquired a mind of its own and usually did not work, (and, yes, we tried new fuses), meaning our closets and bedroom were in the dark 90% of the time.

There are a few other minor things, plus routine maintenance, that needed attention.  

We still love our motor home.  We are not ever tempted to replace it with a newer model -- it is just the right size, has everything we want, and besides that, it's paid for!   

We travel with two dogs and a cat.  This means lots of pet hair to contend with.  We also prefer state parks and natural settings (translation:  dust and dirt) to manicured RV resorts.  This makes for a lot of vacuuming and time-consuming cleaning.  

The worst part of the cleaning routine is the fabric sofa:  

It is prime real estate for window viewing, so there is no way to keep the dogs and cat off of it.  The back cushions were getting smooshed from Bandido wanting to lay on them, so we left them in Texas.  It is permanently covered with a slipcover and dog throws that can be laundered.  It is a pain to vacuum, and takes as long to keep clean as the entire rest of the inside.  It will soon be gone, replaced with a computer desk and ultraleather recliner.  The carpet will also soon be gone, replaced with easy-to-clean hard flooring.

When we purchased the motor home (used) in 2006, the original recliner was the only furniture that showed wear.  We removed it and ever since have used a variety of furniture in its place.  Currently it is our small Lazy-Boy recliner

which we had saved from our home in Indiana.  It is comfortable and matches the decor, but it doesn't swivel and is cumbersome, and it also is nubby, dust-catching fabric.  It will be replaced with an ultraleather recliner to match the other one.

The title of this blog is not about the remodel -- Roger wanted it as much as I did.  The title refers to the wheels that started turning in my brain as I envisioned our new space and what I could do to make it even better.  Roger has been through this many times before, in every home that we've lived in over the past 41 years.  He knows that it will mean living in chaos, a preoccupied (sometimes tired and cranky) wife, and a lack of regular meals.  He also knows it's fruitless to try to dissuade me.

All the hardware and light fixtures in our coach were shiny brass finish (not real brass), which did nothing to enhance the pretty, solid-maple cabinetry.

Some of the light fixtures had started to tarnish and were looking pretty bad.  I didn't mind the style of them, just the finish, so I thought...why not spray paint them oil-rubbed bronze??

Tarnished Brass

Then I started thinking...if I do the light fixtures, I'll need to do the cabinet handles to match.  And if I do the cabinet handles, I'll need to do the hinges to match.  And if I do the hinges, I'll need to do all the screw heads to match.  You get the idea.  

What came next was two days of grueling work to

remove all the cabinet doors.  Roger is not smiling in the above photo -- believe me, that's a grimace.  I did most of the work myself, but had to enlist his help with some of the stubborn ones.  After blisters and much exhaustion, we realized we had the wrong tools for the job and made a trip to Lowe's in the middle of it for a ratchet screwdriver.  Have you ever been so tired you feel despair just by turning down the wrong aisle in a large store, knowing you'd have to walk all the way back?  That's how I felt.  I was starting to feel like maybe I was too old to start a major project like this was turning out to be.

Here are the links I used to prepare for the job:

Painting Metal Knobs

Repaint Cabinet Hinges

As hinges were removed each screw was deposited into either a "paint" or "no-paint" container, depending upon whether they would be visible.  Special screws for the hooks, towel holders, and doors were kept separate and labeled.

All the hinges, handles, miscellaneous fixtures and screws to be painted were next soaked overnight in a crock pot set on "warm," with Dawn dish detergent and vinegar added to the water.

The next morning it looked like this...

YUCK!!!

Next, each handle, hinge, fixture and screw had to be sanded, rinsed, and dried, then rubbed with tack cloth...

The hard part was over.  All that was left was to prime and paint.  

The screws were a special project all their own.  After sanding, rinsing and drying them, I poked holes in an old wine box and screwed each screw into the box, labeling the special screws and putting them in the middle away from the others...

This turned out to be time well spent, because it was effortless to spray paint the screw heads, handy to store and carry them for reinstallation, and the handle hole in the box made for a handy small wastebasket!  

Here are photos of the priming...

 

The hinges were extra work because I flipped them over and painted both sides to keep them from rusting.  Here's how they look now that they are all reinstalled:  

Now, I know the handles might chip eventually.  If they do, I'll just touch them up or shell out a few hundred dollars for new ones.  

Once the cabinets were put back together, I decided to start on the light fixtures.  Uh-oh....I forgot that these are specially wired to run off 12-Volt DC batteries and I had no idea how to work with that type connection to remove them.  What to do???   Well, here's my solution.  Not ideal, but it worked:

There were only a couple of little boo-boos, and my new best friend Mr. Goo-Gone cleaned it up.

 

I would not recommend doing it this way -- there was some residue on horizontal surfaces, but it cleaned right up.  Here's how they turned out:

Before

After

I wanted all this to be finished before the new furniture and flooring, so it would look nice right away.  

Realizing that our window day/night shades had ten years' worth of wear, I wanted to clean them ahead of time, too.  Here's the link I used:

            How to Clean Day/Night Shades

Not having a bathtub, I had to improvise.  I bought one of those large flat drain covers at the hardware store in Creede and put a few inches of water in the shower along with half cup of Oxy-Clean.  

The smaller shades fit there and after soaking for a half hour, I rinsed them and hung them to dry (between rainstorms in Colorado).  

The larger ones wouldn't fit in the shower.  Again, Roger will tell you that my motto is "Where there's a will, there's a way."   A check of the clearance shelf at Target and I picked up a cheap blow-up wading pool.  When we stopped in Kansas on our way east (where we are today), we had the perfect spot and weather to do the larger shades:  

After they soaked in the Oxy-Clean and were rinsed, I laid them out to dry...

When almost dry, I sprayed them with spray starch and closed the pleats, then let them sit tightly closed to keep the pleats nice and crisp.  This afternoon I rehung them all...

They cleaned up beautifully and look great!

Don't try this if your shades are not fabric.  Mine are fabric, and seem to be very durable.  

In order to get the shades down, it was necessary to remove the valences.  They were also covered in nubby, dust-catching fabrics.  Instead of putting them back up, I contacted Bradd and Hall and asked if they would re-cover them to match the fabric they are going to re-cover our dining room folding chairs in.  We'll drop the wooden valence forms off with the dining room chairs on September 27th.  

Charlie was such a big help!

To save money, I removed all the fabric, padding, and staples from the valence forms to get them ready to drop off in Elkhart.

 I will tell you that I would not want to pay somebody an hourly wage to do this -- each valence took hours to do!  It literally took all day to do each larger one.  There were times that I had unpure thoughts about the fine Amish craftsmanship that had constructed them initially.

One minor change we made to our bedroom valences which we decided not to have recovered:

Unnecessary Dust-Catching Swag

Sleeker Look

These swags were draped over both bedroom valences.  The smaller one was just a matter of prying up staples to remove.  The larger one necessitated  a little glue job to close the seam after it was removed.  Now they let in more light and will be much easier to keep vacuumed.

Whew!  These projects began on September 5 and today (the 19th) I'm finally finished.  When we arrive in Indiana we'll begin boxing up everything that would be in the way of the workers doing the renovation.  The big "reveal" will occur sometime around October 18.  Stay tuned!  

Mickelson Bike Trail + goodby Sacajawea!

Roger here....  A disappointing morning, followed by the fun arrival of a new electronic toy....


The plan for the day was to load up the bikes, drive 15 miles to Custer, SD and do a five-mile (ten mile total) stretch of the (110-mile plus) Mickelson Bike Trail.  The Mickelson Trail is part of the Rails to Trails program -- the conversion of old railroad lines into lengthy biking and hiking trails.  I picked this particular stretch because it was nearby, and would afford us a view of the Crazy Horse Sculpture.  


The day started well.  It was sunny with a forecasted high in the mid-sixties.  Rain was predicted later in the day, but not during the morning hours.  As we approached the town of Custer, the skies clouded up and the temperature dropped.  By the time we unloaded the bikes, purchased our $3 permits, and biked to the trailhead there was no sunshine and the temperature had dropped to 50 degrees.  Oh, and a cold wind started blowing.  


I brought a thin windbreaker, just in case.  Dianne (being totally unprepared, in shorts and a thin t-shirt --  D.)  donned a bright blue rain poncho that was in the car, that seemed to inflate like a balloon when we started down the trail.  We figured that the exercise would keep us warm.  (Believe it or not, the thin poncho helped a lot by stopping the cold wind, at least when the wind was behind our backs.  It was a "Maid of the Mist" poncho from Niagara Falls.  I have no idea where it came from, because I've NEVER been there! -- D.)

The trail was smooth and very pretty, after we got out of town.  At the two-mile marker, we stopped to assess the situation.  My hands felt like ice.  Dianne was not happy about the gradual uphill ascent.  (Why are bike trails always uphill?  This was uphill all the way.)  We decided it was not worth being miserable on such a crummy day, so we turned around.  

We hardly pedaled on the two-mile return trip due to the gradual descent;  however, the wind was in our faces, and it was cold.  Here is a shot of Dianne upon our return.  She is standing between a painted buffalo and a bust of General Custer.  Notice the big smile -- very happy to be back.


Dianne dove into the warm car while I reloaded the bikes.  We decided to salvage the morning by having lunch in one of the many restaurants in downtown Custer.  We picked the Wild Sage Grill on the main street.  It was a good choice. The hot salmon wild rice chowder was delicious and warming.  I opted to try what I thought was a local dark beer named Buffalo Sweat.  Despite the name, it was actually pretty good.  I was disappointed when the waiter told me it was brewed in Kansas.  He told me that if I wanted a local beer, I would have to order a Pile 'O Dirt Porter, bottled in Spearfish.  After enjoying the Buffalo Sweat, I decided to wait for another time to drink a Pile 'O Dirt.


After lunch we dropped by the post office to pick up our general delivery mail.  It was full of goodies, including a french press coffee pot for boondocking (camping without electricity), a new battery for our computer, and a new and improved GPS for the motor home.  


We said a not-so-sad goodbye to Sacajawea, our old GPS, relegating her to possible use in the car.  Like all GPS units, Sacajawea frequently made poor routing decisions.  My nickname for her in those instances was Sac-a-sh__.  I am sure that the new GPS will also have instances of bad judgment, but there were other problems with Sacajawea.  Take a look:

1.  Hard not to notice the scotch tape! The tether connecting Sacajawea to the 12 volt outlet no longer stays in the port located on the bottom of the unit.  Without the tape, gravity causes the tether to drop out of the unit.  The tape (lovely isn't it?) works most of the time, but fails on bumpy roads at least once per trip.  This usually happens when I need to know what lane to be in, in heavy traffic.  Shoving the tether back in the port and rebooting all over again is the only solution, and of course, you should not do this while driving.


2.  The battery no longer holds a charge; therefore, it must always be tethered with the tape to the 12 volt battery.


3.  Take notice of the left-hand side of the unit and the bottom right-hand side of the pedestal.  If you look carefully, you can see two ends of a long piece of scotch tape.  It is no longer possible to tighten the mounting mechanism, so the unit swings back and forth on the pedestal.  It obviously does me no good if I can't see it.  The scotch tape holds it in place.


4.  We paid a bunch of money to have her reprogrammed last year so that she would know about new or reconstructed roads.  She goes nuts when she thinks we are driving off-road.  Unfortunately, the upgrade did not seem to make much of a difference, AND now I cannot mute her on the touch screen.  When we don't follow her directions, we are forced to endure an endless stream of, "Make a U-turn, when possible," with no reasonable means to tell her to shut up.  She does not listen to voice commands.  If she did, she'd probably tell me to piss off.


4.  The suction cup that holds the pedestal no longer works well.  Sometimes she just tips over like R2D2 did in Star Wars. 


5.  Sometimes, when programming her, she misreads the letters that I press.  For example, I press "S", she says "T".  Arghhhhh! 


6.  Finally, I am beginning to feel sorry for her.  It is time to put her to rest.  The old girl just doesn't need any more of my verbal abuse.  And, I also think that she is intentionally doing things to get back at me.


We have recently been reading about Rand McNally's new GPS system that is specifically programmed for RVs -- the TripMaker RVND 5510.  Dianne read so many good things about it on the RV.Net message board, that we found money in our budget to order one.

It has a lot of advantages over poor Sacajawea.  


1.  You can enter the size and weight information for your RV and it will automatically avoid routes that don't accommodate it -- underpasses too low, roads too narrow, turns too sharp.


2.  You can plug it into your computer to load road construction information that the unit will warn you about.


3.  The screen is larger and easier to see.


4.  You can request separate RV Points of Interest that include RV-friendly gas stations and restaurants.   


5.  It will warn you, in advance, of steep grades, sharp turns, and speed limit decreases.


6.  It will show you a picture of the exit sign, before you get there enabling you to know for sure what ramp to follow.


7.  The tether port is on the side, no more gravity disconnects.


8.  The battery holds a charge.


9.  The screen stays in place and does not tip over.


10.  We don't have to buy more scotch tape.

I spent the afternoon entering our RV information and preferences, and programmed our first trip -- very simple and intuitive.   I then mounted it on the window to the left of the steering wheel.   


I know it will also have its flaws, but the fact that it will only route us where our RV can go is a definite safety upgrade.  Can't wait to use it and find out what else it can do.


We did, of course, name it.  Since I programmed it to have a male voice, we are calling it WALDO -- as in the comic strip,  "Where's Waldo?"  In our case, we will be saying, "Where are we, Waldo?"
(Here's a link to the discussion about the GPS if you want more info:) -- D.


http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/25038544.cfm


The pet picture of the day shows Chaplin reluctantly sporting the bandana that Dianne tied around his neck.  Look at those sad eyes.

Eastward Ho! Texas, here we come!

Hi all, Dianne here.  We left Malibu, California Sunday morning for our long trek to Texas.  We planned our departure on Sunday morning because we knew we'd have to drive the motor home all the way through Los Angeles, from west to east, on I-10.  The city is so huge that it took us two and a half hours just to get to the eastern edge of town, with no traffic delays at all.  I've read where if traffic is bad it can take five hours just to cross the city!

We had smooth sailing and drove as far as Quartzsite, Arizona for our first stop.  We could have driven farther, but wanted to see for ourselves just what Quartzsite is all about.  For my non-rving friends, RVs full of snowbirds and fulltimers flock to Quartzsite every January and park in the desert (free for 14 days).  There are vendors, shows, and lots of gatherings.  It would be fun to do in a group where you could gather around a campfire every evening for happy hour.  People are just starting to arrive in Quartzsite, so it is still pretty empty and we had no problem finding a parking spot for our free overnight.

Roger took a picture of a saguaro cactus, since I'd never seen one before.  Unfortunately, this one had no arms.  We saw plenty of prettier ones as we drove east through Arizona's deserts.   

Traffic was very light all the way across I-10.  New Mexico has very welcoming rest areas.  Here's a very cool sculpture of a huge road runner at one rest area.  Immediately after taking this photo, a real roadrunner right in front of me hopped down off a rock and out of my sight.  My attention had been on the sculpture, so unfortunately no photo of the real thing. 


 Second night was spent in Deming, NM at a Wal-Mart.  We drove far too long that day, and got there just after dark, tired and cranky.  We should know better!  We needed groceries in a big way, though, so we wanted a Super Wal-Mart.

Third day we entered into Texas, at El Paso.  Not far beyond that, we crossed through a border patrol crossing.  I guess we didn't look very suspicious, because they waved us right on through.  

I've read where the drive across I-10 in West Texas is long and boring, and we were about to find out for ourselves.  I guess I'm easily impressed -- having grown up in flat cornfield-land -- but we thought West Texas was really pretty! 

 Here are several shots I took through the windshield as we drove along, including the photo at the very top of the blog.

We stopped the third night in Fort Stockton, Texas.  For you non-informed, you might think we were almost home at that point.  

Texas is so huge that at that point we still had a day and a half of driving to get to Mission!  


Another night of boondocking at a Wal-Mart in Alice, TX got us almost home, but even Alice is still a couple of hours away from Mission.  Another photo for you uninitiated:  

If you ever go to a Wal-Mart early in the morning and are surprised to see a flotilla of RV's in the parking lot, it's a very common thing.  Some areas are more RV-friendly than others, and Texas is very RV-friendly.  We pulled in and the friendly security guard drove up to welcome us, direct the parking arrangement, and assure us that they'd be patrolling all night long.  By the time I got around to taking this photo it was too dark, but there were 14 other RV's in the Alice Wal-Mart parking lot that night!  I went in, did some shopping, and even got my hair cut on the way out.  (Before you scoff at my $14 hair cut, she did a good job and I really needed one.)  


We woke up early Thursday, excited to finally see our new rv home in Mission, so we were on the road before dawn.  To our Indiana friends:  Guess what this photo is?  

They are constructing I-69!  Ironically, we lived only a mile from I-69 in our stix and brix house in Pendleton, Indiana, and when it's finished, I-69 will go all the way to our new home in the south tip of Texas!

 Check back soon for photos of our new digs!  Here's a teaser photo, taken of part of our new landscaping.  Best part is, we didn't have to lift a finger.  Must say I heartily approve of their choices!

Our whippet photo of the day shows Jasper one chilly morning riding along on my lap as we drove through the desert.  He doesn't know he's too bony and big to be a lap dog, and I'm not about to tell him!  Note to Robyn: Notice the warm, comfy slippers that I'm wearing!