Travels With Miranda

It’s no secret that I like a harmonious decor. While I love the cubbies I bought for the study,

the colour of the frame was all wrong. There is absolutely no grey in this room.

This is much better:

I used Krylon 2340 Fusion Spray Paint in the ‘espresso’ colour.

This paint adheres beautifully to plastic without having to sand or prime. I applied many fine layers and they all feathered beautifully. I knew from another blog that if you don’t shake the can a lot, you will get a grainy finish. I preferred that to a high gloss look, so I kept the shaking to a minimum and really like the slightly rough feel to the new finish. The end result is very rich and I am thrilled with it!

According to the directions, the coating will cure within a week and will then be chip resistant. It already feels dry to the touch after only a few hours of drying.

I may end up painting my ugly white and black garbage cans with this fantastic product!

I can’t believe I was hesitant about painting the new wall yellow. It now feels like a proper room in here!!!

I definitely need another two coats on everything.

Now, the solenoid project. As a refresher, the solenoid is what allows an RV house battery to be charged by the RV truck alternator when the RV engine is running. Mine has worked intermittently but recently failed completely.

L and his buddy B came over this afternoon and I knew immediately that my rig was in good hands because it was obvious that they knew what they were doing!

We started by testing if the solenoid would click when the key was turned to the on position. Nope. It was time to get a look at the dang thing.

Pulling the battery and getting to the solenoid required three sizes of socket wrenches. It also took two strong men to pull the battery out. Definitely not a job for me. I don’t even own socket wrenches!

Once they could get to the solenoid, they jiggled some wires, connected the battery via my heavy duty super long jumper cables, and had me turn the engine on. Click. But nothing was happening in the house.

They decided to pull the solenoid to clean the contacts. That done, we hooked it up to the battery and tested it. Click.

Next test was to check the voltage coming in from the house to make sure the problem was not at the battery bank end. 13.8V.

Next test was to check the resistance in the solenoid. Ooh… massive amounts of it. But the more we made the thing click, the less resistance there was and we finally got resistance down to almost 0. There was no way that thing was going back into my RV, not with how iffy it was and hard to get to.

So I was sent to town with the old one to find a new one. I went to O’Reilly’s auto parts and the guy at the counter knew exactly what I needed and they had one in stock. I almost fainted when he told me the cost was $50.14. The budget’s really tight this month but you got to do what you got to do. The cashier laughed when I handed him exact change. “Not fifty, fifTEEN.” As in it was a $15.40 part. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is my old solenoid:

The new one is identical except it’s shinier.

I got it home and made L test it before B installed it. Everything looks good on the engine side, but nothing’s happening on the house side. We think it’s because the alternator recognizes that the house batteries are full.

I am going to use a lot of power tonight once the solar cuts out (my rig needs vacuuming…) and then try the engine. If I don’t see any results, then all three of us are at a loss, and two of us are engineers! But we are optimistic!

I had to two regular Buds in the fridge and one Bud light, so we had a cold one once the hood was closed. Retired friends make for cheap labour!

Croft, I know you’re waiting with bated breath for news of this project, so I will report ASAP once I do the test tonight. We’ve still got about two hours of daylight left.

I awoke to bright blue skies, a gentle sea breeze, and no pressing projects ahead of me for a few days. It was time to start work on repainting the front room!!!

Unfortunately, I had a lot less Kilz left than I thought I did, barely enough for the new wall and one side of the pocket door. I am going to need more, which sucks since I’m going to end up with leftovers.

The primer dried almost immediately, so I was able to put the first coat of yellow on the new wall. I’ll do a second coat this afternoon, then let the two cure for a day or two. That will give me time to wash down the other walls with TSP and then I’ll do two more coats over the entire room.

My boos are not happy about being locked in the rear part of the rig, which has the best view, with only food, water, the litter box, and several soft lounging spots for comfort. Must be tough being a cat.

L came over a moment ago to ask me if I wanted to work on the solenoid this afternoon. YES! So this is going to be a day for projects.

Today, I decided to push ahead with the paint touch up project. The green in the office was the most pressing as there was a lot of damage to the walls from the installation of the new desk. I gently sanded the worst of the marks, then applied a couple of coats to the bad spots. There is still visible damage, but at least the colour is uniform.

Then, I pulled out the pink paint for the dressing room. Incidentally, that’s the pink that made me fall in love with pink. Until I fell upon that colour, I loathed pink. You’d never guess that now! I would love to repaint the dressing room in a shinier finish paint, but I’ll never be able to match the current colour exactly, so I prefer to do touch ups, most of which involved painting some of the new trim my mother installed. Most of the trim in the rig is brown, but if it’s on a coloured wall, then I paint it to match the wall.

Muuuuuuuch better.

The next colour I’m pulling out is the golden brown. That will be a rig-wide job that will warrant taking out a roller. And then priming the new wall. And then, the biggie, which is the yellow. I want to completely empty the front room, wash the walls really well, and do two coats over what’s already there and four coats over the new wall. I’m not touching the loft, however!

It’s only 1:30PM, so you’d think I could take the brown out today, but it’s just too dark in here to do a good job. The rain hasn’t come and I doubt it will, but the sky is very overcast. It’s windy out and quite cool. My after lunch beach walk was short!

The clouds were very dark this morning, but have lightened up.

I don’t think I’ll ever find anything more random washed up on a beach anywhere.

I forgot what quiet sounds like… this morning was the first in way, way, way too long (months? years?) that I was able to wake up under my own steam: no cars racing by, no leaf blowers by the rig, no truck reefers, no birds chirping, nothing. Just blessed peace and quiet.

It was really foggy this morning, but the sun has come out and the batteries are charging. Gina requested a video of the surf, but there isn’t really much of it here on this quiet bay. I have made note of the request, though.

The water is surprisingly warm and with sunny highs in the low 20s for the next few days, I may actually take out my bathing suit. I’m Canadian. I can swim in 50 degree water if I have to and this water is warmer than that!

I had hoped to just stay in today, but I really do need more computer charge than I have, so I may go for a drive and check out the environs.

Saturday, I’m looking forward to a meetup with blog reader Pam, who was kind enough to accept some packages for me. “Sure, I’ll gladly accept mail for you” is one of the best gifts you can give a full-timer on the move. Of course, general delivery is always an option, but with a house address, I can take advantage of Amazon Prime free two-day shipping.

I so wish I was American and that I didn’t have to feel on the move all the time, even when paused. In the back of my mind, I always have that little voice reminding me that there is a very long slog to make back to the border.

But I may end up going just a little further south with the rig this winter. Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, a safe border town, is just four hours away and I’m overdue to see a dentist. So I may get the rig a little closer to the border, drive there with the truck, and walk across for a day, like I did in Tijuana. At any rate, that wouldn’t be well until the end of February. I’d like to sit mostly still at home for a few weeks, rest, and let the coffers fill up again. So I don’t know how exciting the blog will be in the next few weeks, but I will share the projects I’m working on.

Reader poll, what should I do with my new wall?

- leave it as it is
- paint it yellow
- paint it golden brown
- stain it
- some other option

I was leaning towards stain, but there is a lot of wood filler and it’s not staining as nicely as it should. So paint seems like the best option. The more I look at the wall, the more I think the side panels should be yellow like the other walls in the room and the door should be golden brown like the other solid doors. Hmm, I think I have my answer! But I’m open to suggestions.