Travels With Miranda

The more I live in my ‘new’ rig, the more I find that the library is missing some storage. It’s just too open and stuff gets piled up in it. I’ve been keeping my eye out for a low lying piece of furniture to put right by the front door. I thought of a credenza, dresser, or storage bench, but also liked the idea of two end tables to keep the storage configuration flexible.

Earlier this week, I spotted two free ‘oak’ end tables on Kijijiji and quickly offered the owner $10 if she’d keep them for me till today. She did and I drove east to Coaldale (10 minutes from the north end of Lethbridge or 20 minutes from home) to pick them up.

The reason she was giving them away is that one of them was the victim of a candle fire and the top is ruined.

I had second thoughts about bringing these home when I saw that they were being stored in a basement. They are made of particle board and definitely have the ‘old basement’ smell. But they have so many nice features that I decided to take a chance:

extra surface (I have some lovely contact paper to cover it!)

cavernous storage with a handy door caddy

I am going to leave them out in the sun for a few days (after having cleaned them).

If they still smell after, I’ll give them a couple of coats of verathane.

I have some ideas for how I’m going to make up for the burned top, but I think the easiest thing would be to make a padded cover for it. The top has a lip that could hold an elasticized cover. Part of the point of getting the storage unit is to get a place for the kitties to lounge in the sun, so I would have added a cushion regardless.

This is the ‘front room’, post-makeover, as seen from the entrance. The other half of it isn’t much to look at since it’s still empty.

So, I have a study, a dressing room, a toilet room, a kitchen, a loft, a cockpit, and a basement. What should I call the renovated portion of the front room? Dining room is too formal and anyway I don’t eat there. Living room isn’t accurate; I do most of my living in the study. Den isn’t quite right; to me a den is a cozy room with a door where you watch tv. Lounge doesn’t fit my personality. 99% of my books are stored there and I will be putting in a reading chair; is library too snobby? Nah! The library it is!

And there you have it folks. Miranda is now officially an RV that suits my lifestyle and priorities. She is as close to perfect as I could have ever dreamed. It’s funny how I used to believe that I needed a vast home with rooms to lose myself into and have found my most functional space to measure less than 130 square feet. Once you distill your life to the 20% that is essential and build around it you will find it to be much richer and that you can be satisfied with a lot less.

I won’t be getting much, if any, work done on the rig today. I have a 1PM lunch date with my neighbour, after which I’ll be helping her out with some to-be-determined tasks. I had planned to spend the rest of the day working on the leak issue, but I got a dinner invitation from a colleague. I had promised to make myself available this weekend to take her daughter for a driving lesson, so I’ll be doing that later this afternoon.

This morning I did go outside to look for a possible leak source. Penny seems to have been right on the money; the awning appears to be the culprit.

I poked around behind the wall in the bumpout and all there is the plastic thingamabob the awning pole is screwed into. There is no water damage any higher up the wall. So, it looks like I can just cut off the inch or so of rotten board, fix the leak from the outside, make sure the inside is nice and dry, and then cover the hole with trim.

While the area is wet, I don’t see any mould and the flooring is still sound. I dried the area overnight after spraying with an anti-mould product and a lot of the discolouration is gone.

Now, to fix the leak. I’m guessing I need to dig out all that black caulking and apply new? I know for sure the leak isn’t coming in from the bolts because they are higher up than the water damage.