Travels With Miranda

My mother and I blasted through our to-do list today, leaving only a few minor things to finish up. This was the first time that we were able to get through the list without adding anything to it!

Even though my floors have been in since the winter of 2010, the trim has been troublesome. I blasted through the easy parts and made a failed experiment on the hard parts, then pretty much gave up.

Being a woodworker, my mother knows offhand what trim is available on the market. So she looked at the bits we had left to do and made a list of materials needed to get around the problematic parts. The biggest problem I had beyond the funky angles was that the edge of the floor wasn’t flush with the wall, so there would be a gap behind the trim. I had thought to get trim in and fill the gap with putty or caulking, but my mother had a better idea, of course.

Now, I am going to share some pictures, but, please, no comments on the state of my floors! I had the energy to either blog or scrub floors this evening and I thought blogging would be more interesting. 😀

This is what the front of my fridge has looked like for two and a half years:

This is what the front of my fridge looks like with two layers of trim and a bit of putty:

My mother didn’t like the threshold I put in the toilet room (neither did I!) and she had a piece of proper threshold the right size, so she used a band saw to cut it to fit the awkward space:

She did an amazing job along the vanity and shower in the dressing room:

We also finished up the door to the cab, adding some trim to make it look more finished:

Now, I just have to paint all of that new woodwork. The trim will be painted golden brown and I am undecided about the new wall. Logically, it should be yellow, but that may end up being too much of a good thing. My mother suggested wallpaper and I am considering it. That would add a little bit of texture to the room.

Besides all of this, we also put in new bookcase dowels and fitted the male end of the 120V wiring that will connect the inverter to the shore power cable. It was raining, so we’ll leave the female end plus the final bit of work on the new front door exterior window frame for a nice day.

I have to say that Miranda is looking really good these days. I almost feel like I have a new home!

Eagle-eyed reader Vicki noticed some plywood behind the arm chair in the living room.

Colour me crazy, but while I love living in an RV, I don’t love having a steering wheel in my living room. I also don’t love that my Tabitha decided to relieve herself on a seat in the cab. I cleaned that up, but once a cat has marked its territory, only blocking the access can guarantee there won’t be a repeat performance. Add to this that I’d like more insulation between the cab and the living area of the rig and that I like to have privacy from the windshield that is controllable from inside rather than relying on the windshield cover. Finally, even an RVer loves having a dark hole to stash a bin of stuff when impromptu visitors are incoming!

In the last four years, I experimented with curtains and paneling to block the cab from the rig, but still keep it accessible. I concluded that a proper wall would be the only way to achieve the desired division.

So my mother had me buy a sheet of plywood that we had cut by BMR (a québécois chain of home stores) into three panels. The two of the panels on the ends would be fixed and the middle one would be a door, like so:

The door was originally going to be on hinges, but having it be a removable panel gives it a slimmer profile.

This project was bigger than it seemed at first glance because of the limited amount of room we had to manoeuvre behind the seats. The driver’s side panel was particularly tricky. We had to remove the ladder and bookcase and then reattach them. My prototype ladder was sawed in half and thrown out. I know the area looks much better now, but I’m a little sad to lose all that hard work. 🙂

It is darker in the rig with the cab blocked off, but I have the option of leaving the door open during the day. The benefits of the wall definitely outweigh the negatives!

I had hoped to close off the back of the ladder and turn it into a vacuum closet, but the space is just a little too narrow. I think that is for the best as the open space looks nice and airy. And besides, the new shelving allowed me to repurpose the over fridge cabinet into storage space for the shop vac!

WHEW. My mother and I are done with the last bit of the hard core renos we planned for the summer. Now, we have all the little details to finish up as well as the inverter and battery monitor projects. So I really don’t have much to show off just now, but some is better than none!

First off, my new desk top. OMG. I didn’t even know I needed this until my mother informed me that I did:

Hopefully, third time will be the charm for the desk. 😀

What we did is cover the existing desk with two layers of 1/2″ MDF glued together (no 1″ sheets available). We then covered the new work surface with cloth-backed vinyl. The colour is delicious. It’s sold as ‘plum’ but looks like chocolate in artificial light and wine in natural light. It contrasts perfectly with the green and the red tones can be found in the flowers of my curtains. The lady at the fabric store told me three times that I had made an excellent choice of colour and she was right!

I am worried about kitty claws, so I’ll be covering empty swaths of the desk with a mat or blanket.

There is now a gap between the top of the little bookcase and the new desk and I have a wooden ‘in box’ that fits perfectly there. I’ll show it off once it has a handle and latch. There is also a gap at the other end of the new desk top, at the end of the mattress:

My mother thought that my extension cord management idea was good, so she improved the idea, building a new bed frame with gaps for holding cords. We covered it with plastic trellis to give the mattress a flat surface to lie on. The trellis is rigid enough to be a good surface, is light, and will wear well. It was expensive, but the best product for the job.

At the end of the mattress, you can see a wide plastic drawer. I picked it up at the Ottawa Solutions store (I’ve never been to a Container Store, but I suspect it’s the same idea). The drawer spans the whole width and depth of the hole and is going to be used for archival storage (ie. old report cards, greeting cards, correspondence, and the like). I used to have all of that in a basket in an overhead cabinet, but this is a much better use of space. Over top of the drawer is just enough space for storing my laptop for travel.

Also at Solutions, I picked up what I needed to stop swearing each time I open the door to my wonderfully spacious medicine cabinet:

I like to open the door when I pass and just smile at how pretty and organized the cabinet is now. 🙂

The cabinet is well designed in that it has a lip on the bottom of each shelf, but everything would tumble out when I opened the door. I wanted containers that would fill the space and be retained by the lip.

So I brought the measurements for the shelves with me to Ottawa and went through the store until I found the cheapest items that could fit in the space. The silver containers were deeply discounted office supplies. There were three of the big ones left and without any real thought, I grabbed four of the narrower ones. Got home and discovered I still had a gap, perfectly filled by my brown basket. I couldn’t have designed this space more perfectly! Every space is sorted by use and everything is so apparent. No more opening up a tube of toothpaste when I already have one started.

To whet your appetites a little, my wonderful new dresser is now functional and just awaiting finishing details. The wall in the living room is up, but the door needs some catches and both need paint. There’s a new water pump access panel in the entrance stairwell, but it too needs paint. The filing cabinet still needs securing, but we think we have the solution. The office and dressing room both need paint touch ups. I also need tons of trim along the floor, but that will come with the electrical work.

My home was fine the way it was, but it is now ‘much better’ (said in my mother’s hilariously exaggerated French Canadian accent!).