Travels With Miranda

This weather is going to make me cry. 🙁

I got out of bed at 9 this morning and promptly went to work. It was sunny and warm, albeit a bit damp. I set up my workshop outside, got all the tools, cut my first piece of plywood, and made a hole in the plywood for the furnace vent, then big, ugly black clouds rolled in and it started to spit. Thank you very, very much. Not.

So, this is how far I’ve gotten today:

I used the wardrobe door plywood to make that side panel and still have more than enough for the three interior divisions, bringing down the cost of the wardrobe doors. It’s amazing what you can get  out of a sheet of plywood!

After lunch, I’ll start working on cutting and assembling the interior partitions. I’m not a cabinet maker and I don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do a really ‘pro’ job on the joinery for this project, so I’m going to rely on glue and angle brackets and focus on making the exterior as polished as possible while accepting that the inside will be stuffed to the gills and not all that visible.

The divisions will give me a space accessible from the kitchen side through a door, one accessible from the lounge with a door also, a drawer, and another space above it with a door. The two large spaces are being designed with specific storage in mind, which will free up a couple of cabinets in the study and give me easier access to a kitchen tool I haven’t used since hitting the road and miss very, very much.

Off to lunch; it feels so well deserved today! 😀

It was much too cold today to work in the shop, even with a heater. I stayed in and got caught up on my contracts, washed the carpets in the cab, began disassembling the dinette bench, and took a few measurements. Since I was up so early, I’ll be going to bed at a ‘reasonable’ hour, enabling me to

take advantage of the clear weather and warmer temperatures we’re supposed to have tomorrow. I have a lunch date with my neighbour and I intend to have some work done before then!

I’m having a hard time deciding what’s the bigger priority; the ladder to the loft or the dishwasher counter. I’m already tired of climbing into bed via a stepladder, but it’s just an inconvenience. The dishwasher counter, on the other hand, would give me some storage space I sorely need and be the final piece in the puzzle of getting a functional kitchen in this RV.

Perhaps I should stop over analysing the situation and just get it done.

But not tonight; there’s a hoooooot bubble bath and a Milepost waiting for me. 🙂

I wanted to get up ‘early’ today to go to Home Depot before it started to… snow. So, I was delighted when I was awoken at 9:30 by a knock at the door. It surely had to be the mail carrier with my Milepost, and it was!

Off I went to Home Depot to return the sixth box of Allure. I also wanted to price lumber and supplies for my last few carpentry projects:

-dishwasher counter: need plywood for the interior divisions

-‘tunnel’ for the furnace duct: need plywood

-ladder for the loft: need 2’x4’s and something thinner for the rungs

-secret project: a small piece of paneling

-trim

I came home with:

You can probably see where I’m going with this. All these supplies cost me NOTHING. I pulled them out of a dumpster! Of course, I asked if I could do this and Home Depot was happy to have someone haul away their trash for them! There is absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with anything I brought home, not even a speck of dirt on it. I have a huge piece of high-quality paneling in perfect condition, two big pieces of sanded 1/2″ plywood in perfect condition, and a hill of short pieces of high-quality fancy hemlock trim, plus the pallets!

I need more pallets for some other projects, but this was all I could safely carry home today, and the best of what was available in that dumpster. The other pallets were a bit grungy. I’ll check back at Home Depot in a few days to see if there’s anything new available to me. I’d love to find more of that trim!

I’m chomping at the bit get going with the dishwasher counter, but there is no way I can cut up the big piece of plywood in this weather, so I will go start on something else, maybe the trim or the loft ladder.

But before I do that, I’m going to watch the snow fall and melt as it hits the ground. Snow. After weeks of near tee-shirt weather. This place is strange.