Travels With Miranda

The promised thaw arrived today, right on schedule. I headed down to Miranda after lunch with a bucket of hot soapy and vinegary water and spent about an hour scrubbing every inch of the front room, including the inside of the cabinets and the ceiling.

The only lingering project in the rig is the $(%*) trim. What’s there looks great and what’s not there is because of odd angles and uneven flooring. I decided to try a cheap solution and bought a container of brown caulking. I applied some under the vanity in the dressing room and along the shower as an experiment. I’ll see how it looks once it has cured. If I like it, I will do the rest of the trimless floor. I really wish I had thought of this idea sooner. Caulking is super cheap, easy to apply, and if I hate the results, it’s easily removable. I’ll go check out the results tomorrow and try to remember to bring the camera.

Jody told me not to be shy if I need anything since she and Gary are decluttering. So, when I got tired of tripping over my step ladder and found the perfect place to store it, I asked Jody if she might have some eye hooks or another option for hanging the ladder.

She came up with the perfect thing! They’re padded hooks so the ladder fits snugly in them and won’t rattle around when I drive.

I’m hanging the ladder in the library on the passenger side under the loft (and behind the arm chair). I removed the soft padding that was there and screwed the hooks into the new loft floor. I have some (lots) of touch ups of yellow to do, so I’ll add this wall to the list and make it look a bit prettier now that the padding is gone. But it’s not a huge priority since with the curtain you can’t even see the wall.

Yay, no more tripping over a ladder that annoys me to no end until the couple of times a year that I really need it an am grateful for it.

Last winter, I made a ladder to access the loft now that the dinette is gone. It was never meant to be a permanent solution.

As the months have marched on, getting in a permanent, angled, ladder was becoming a more and more pressing matter, but it’s not one I was procrastinating on. It went to the top of the list for inside projects for this summer, however.

So imagine my delight when Jody offered me a ladder from an old bunk bed to try out for size. It was perfect!!!

I left the old ladder for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is super solidly built and installed so securing the new ladder was just a matter of a couple of screws and putting some non-skid stuff under the feet.

The other reason is that should I ever decide to not sleep in the loft any more or, heaven forbid, get rid of the rig, the prototype ladder is much more sleek.

Finally, both ladders are hidden behind a curtain. I was going to paint the straight ladder but ended up not having nearly as much of the brown as I thought I had left.

The angle is going to make it much easier to get in and out of bed, and the step spacing is an improvement. Getting onto the first step of the straight ladder always involved a bit of a hike and the new ladder is just a couple of inches lower. And the worn brown painted finish is perfectly suited for my decor.

This is definitely a case of one person’s clutter being another person’s treasure!

I just went to bed and found one of my pillows had fallen between the top of the mattress and the wall. It was wedged in tightly, so I gave it a yank. It pulled loose and then there was a massive thud that shook the rig. I thought that the loft was collapsing!

Just as I was going to throw myself down I noticed the very full and very heavy jug of desicant crystals that had gotten caught with the pillow and dropped almost a foot! Thud indeed!

I’ll definitely feel better once I’ve resealed all my seams!

(posted from my iPod Touch)

This is a before and after post, but I’m not calling it that since I was more focused today on insulating the windows than getting the curtains finished. Otherwise, the space is DONE!

The loft was another area of the rig that completely justified doing renovations. At this point, I estimate that my interior renos, including furniture and appliances, will end up costing me about $1,800. I’m at about $1,500 right now, not counting the Eternabond and the dehumidifier. That’s not very expensive when you consider that a) my space is more functional and b) ripping things out enabled me to find leaks that might not otherwise have been detected until they turned into major structural problems.

The end result for the loft was to have it be less damp and to add a mildew-resistant paint to the walls. That was it. I wound up having to put in a new floor, too, but it was still a pretty easy reno, regardless of the delay, and Eternabond not withstanding, I didn’t bust the budget getting things fixed.

It’s still damp up there, but it’s a different sort of dampness because it’s just window condensation rather than stagnant water from a leak. I will have to do more on the windows if I spend another winter in a cold, damp climate, but I wouldn’t consider that I have a problem at this point.

So, the loft at purchase:

Make a note of the too short, hospital-green curtain pushed in at the right there.

The loft about a year ago, after I added the pallets:

The loft after I emptied it at the start of the renos:

Same corner of the loft after I started to pull away wet material:

And that corner again with new flooring and the wall dried out:

And now…

The new quilt was a complete indulgence. I badly wanted something that would tie in all my colour choices and started looking at about the same time I moved into the rig. It took two years to find the ‘perfect’ quilt, and it was just $20, and at the Walmart in Omak of all places! At that price, I decided to indulge.

The fleece over it is, of course, for the kitties!

The ugly and too short hospital green curtain has been replaced by three dark green insulated curtains, the gorgeous colour of which doesn’t photograph well.

The instructions on them say DO NOT IRON, so I apologize for creases. I’ll try to steam them in the shower one night. These curtains were an amazing find by Donna. There is no way I could have made insulated curtains for $11 a panel.

This is what I intend to do for the other two windows:

Just a cheap polyester shower curtain (ie. something that can get wet without mildewing!) that I cut, hemmed, and added snaps to. I’ll be redoing that one; it was a test. Polyester is VERY hard to work with!

Notice the shelf above the window?

All I did was:

1) flip a window valance around so the top became the bottom and secure it above the window;
2) cut a piece from the big window valance to fill in the front;
3) glue and nail the front piece to the valance.

I’ve always had a shelf for storing things at night, but had to remember to move the things when I hit the road. Now, I don’t have to worry. Easy mod that will really increase the livability of the space!

My only disappointment with the redo is that to fit the dehumidifer in a practical location, I had to relegate the suitcase to the foot of the bed, so I lost my headboard and now have an item that is purely ‘stored’ instead of being used actively. And, no, sleeping with my head at the other end of the bed is not an option because of the ladder placement. And, no, moving the ladder is not an option because of reading chair placement.

Here’s the dehumidifier:

How perfect a place for it is that? It’s space that I never used and I will never have to worry about the dehumidifer when I’m traveling. I have plenty of room to pull out the bucket of water, which I can empty out the window! I did consider the option of making a hole in the wall for attaching a drain hose, but I don’t see any reason to do that when I can empty the bucket so easily.

You may notice the less than crisp edge on the yellow in that last picture; it’s so that there will be a less obvious delineation between the paint jobs in the library and loft.

Both kitties are thrilled with the new space and happy to lie on their fleece blankets:

I’m really happy with this reno and cannot believe what a burst of colour can do to my mood.