Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

Post related to our family and close friends and projects around the house.

2015/08/30 (N) A Day of Rest (NOT)

We had closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioning before going to bed last night and had it set at 72 degrees F to make sure it ran long enough to pull some of the humidity out of the air. I awoke at 7:30 AM on this penultimate day of August hoping to be able to open up the house, which Linda prefers in almost any weather, but was greeted with fog and temperatures in the mid-60’s so I turned the A-C back to 70 to make it run for a while and move the air around.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest but not for us, at least not today. I gathered up the laundry and started a load in the washing machine and was just starting to prepare our morning coffee, Kenya AA (not decaf), when Linda emerged. She washed off some fresh blueberries and got our granola ready. We were both dressed to work but enjoyed our coffee in the living room from 8:30 until 9 AM.

Our first bus project task was to trim the passenger side front piece of underlayment that we cut last night. With that done I rolled the air-compressor out by the entrance door, uncoiled the air hose and connected it, unrolled the extension cord and plugged it in, oiled the air stapler, and connected it to the air hose. I loaded the staples and, with Linda standing on the pieces to hold them flat, stapled them down.

The next piece of underlayment, which would finish the hallway, was a very tricky piece with lots of angles. The problem in measuring a piece like this, in which sides may not be exactly parallel and angles not exactly 45 degrees, is finding a reference corner with two factory edges from which to measure everything. I take the time to make and check the measurements by making a small, approximately to scale, drawing.

The cutting of these pieces involved a 7-1/4″ circular saw and a saber saw. When using the circular saw we usually clamp a saw guide to the panel, allowing us to get a clean, straight cut that is almost as good as a table saw. For shorter cuts on edges that will not abut other panels I use the saber saw without a guide and just follow the pencil line as carefully as my skill and eyesight allow. I also have to use the saber saw for blind stop cuts, such as notches and tabs.

We took a break to have PB&J on whole grain bread and fresh apple slices for lunch. As we were finishing lunch I exchanged TXT messages with Chuck. He wanted to chat and called about 5 minutes later. It turns out that he has an air suspension seat base and thought I might want it. After getting a better understanding of what it is, and isn’t, I agreed that I wanted to see it. It would be very cool if I could use it to replace the driver seat pedestal in the bus as part of putting in the new Flexsteel seat but I will have to check with Josh to see if that is possible.

The bathroom underlayment was next. We considered various ways to install it and came to the conclusion that it would take three separate pieces for this small space. The reason was deep toe kick spaces on opposing walls, angles and notches, and a drain pipe and water supply pipe for the toilet that project out at least eight inches from a third wall just an inch above the floor. Those features made it impossible to get a single piece installed. We might have done it in two pieces but I did not like the way I would have had to cut them. These three pieces took quite a while to lay out, cut, trim, and staple down.

The bedroom was the next/last piece of the main floor jigsaw puzzle. It was after 6 PM by this point. We knew we would not get the bedroom done today but decided to try and get one more piece installed. Most of the bedroom floor is taken up by the storage box that serves as the base for the plywood bed platform. This box goes all the way to the driver side wall and has small Isles on the other three sides. If not for end cabinets by the head of the bed and deep toe kick spaces in the cabinetry to the rear of the coach the underlayment would be a simple “U” shape. The actuality it will take four pieces to complete this space.

The first piece was a simple shape, a rectangle with a large piece of one corner cut out. As I have for every other piece I took the initial measurements but noted them on a freehand sketch rather than a scale drawing. When I laid out the actual panel the numbers were not quite working out so I rechecked my measurements. They appeared to be correct, which meant some of the right angles must be off slightly. I modified the layout to make the panel a little longer than I thought it needed to be and made the cuts. Inside the coach we were not able to get the panel positioned because of interference from a 4″ round HVAC duct and a door and handle on a lower cabinet (the end table). I removed the HVAC register, which helped and then discovered a piece of vertical trim in the passenger side front corner. The bedroom has less natural and artificial lighting than the rest of the coach and I had not noticed it before now.

Tired and a bit frustrated by this latest turn of events we decided to wrap up our work for the day and have dinner. We accomplished a lot today but I had hoped (expected) to have all of the main floor underlayment done. We will finish the bedroom first thing tomorrow. That will leave only the entryway/cockpit to do and we will defer that work so I can start laying the new tile floor.

While Linda prepared dinner I checked my e-mail and then checked in to the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club information net at 8 PM. I was just completing my second turn when Linda called me to dinner. She made her own version of red beans and rice and served it with a glass of Cupcake Black Forest Decadent Red wine and a large piece of honeydew melon on the side. The main dish was excellent, the wine was OK (a little dry for me), and the melon was not as ripe as we would have liked it to be. Still, it was a nice meal.

We watched an episode (rerun) of Sherlock at 9 PM and then went to bed. Linda played Scrabble while I worked on this post before falling asleep.

2015/08/26 (W) Delux Delay

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We were a bit sore last night, and needed a good night’s sleep, so we both took some Advil PM right before going to bed. As a result we did not wake up until almost 8 AM this morning. The Advil, combined with the very cool temperatures, made for good sleeping.

Our son had called yesterday to see if Linda could watch Madeline today while he did some work on the rental property that he and Shawna own. It was Shawna’s house before they got married, and is a nice little place, but with Madeline on the way they wanted a slightly larger place. They also wanted to be on the other side of Stadium Boulevard in the attendance area for Burns Park Elementary School and walking distance to both the school and adjacent Burns Park without having to cross any major streets.

Ann Arbor is a major rental housing market because of the University of Michigan and the local government is very involved in this market. Rental properties must be inspected at least every 30 months and meet code requirements. The rental house was scheduled for inspection on Friday and needed some minor repairs, so Brendan set aside today to take care of things. What I find interesting about this inspection requirement is that most of the rental houses our son and daughter lived in while at U of M looked to me like they had not been inspected in over a decade.

Linda was due at Brendan and Shawna’s house around 10:30 AM so she left our house at 9:15. She took the three books of wallpaper samples with her and went directly to Delux Drapery and Shades in Ann Arbor to return them and placed the order for four bolts (double roll packs) of Sellers and Josephson Just Textures Lamar paper. Not long after she left Delux I got a call at home from the store. They were looking for Linda to let her know the wallpaper was back ordered until September 11. (I’m not the least bit superstitious but September 11. Really.) To cancel the order we would have to let them know today but I told them to let it ride. I then texted Linda to let her know and she agreed with my decision.

I had a feeling this might happen and it’s what we get for waiting so long to look for, select, and finally order a wall covering. But it is what it is and we were not going to settle for something that wasn’t “right” for our interior just because it was available more quickly. If the paper actually comes in on the 11th we will have the 12th and 13th to at least install it in a few critical areas before the new seating goes in. If it doesn’t arrive by then we will deal with it when it does. Either way the only big issue is that we wanted to paper the wall behind where the desk will go before the desk is installed. As things stand we will either uninstall/reinstall the desk or paper around it.

The pantry supported by plywood and 2x4s.

There were several small tasks that I could have worked today but the thing that needed to be done was the installation of the pull-out pantry, so that is what I did. The pantry was already in the coach, which was a good start. I got two of the small leftover pieces of 3/4″ oak veneered plywood and set them in front of the alcove base. I then set a 5′ length of 2×4 on the flat in the space where the pantry goes and extending out beyond the alcove by more than the depth of the pantry. I then set the pantry on the 2×4, pushed it snug to the side of the alcove, and slid it towards the back of the alcove until the front was approximately one inch behind the vertical front edge of the left side panel.

There were two main reasons for using the 2×4. First, the lowest slide attached to the pantry box extends below the box so the bottom of the box needed to sit on something that was thicker than the amount by which the slide hung down. Second, a 2×4 on the flat is 1.5″ thick and that turned out to be a good thickness for positioning the pantry vertically in the alcove.

The reveal between the front of the pantry and the front edge of the alcove side panel was wider at the top than the bottom so I placed two wood shims side-by-side under the back end of the 2×4 to raise it slightly and tilt the top of the front out. I fussed with this for quite a while and each time I adjusted the shims I had to pick the pantry up, set it aside, and put it back. I eventually got the reveal to be the same along the entire length (height) of the front.

Once I knew where I wanted the pantry to be when it was closed I had to figure out how to mount the slides to the side panel of the alcove. I pondered this for quite a while. If nothing else, I have learned that when it is not clear how to proceed the best course of action is to do nothing. I have also learned that if I ponder long enough I will eventually see a way forward. Sometimes that takes days or weeks of conscious and subconscious thinking, but luckily the solution came to me relatively quickly.

The pantry box is 27″ deep. The full extension slides are 26″ deep and they are mounted so they are flush with the front of the pantry box when they are fully closed. I wanted a 1″ reveal along the front, so I needed to place the back edge of the slides 27″ back from the front edge of the alcove side panel. With the pantry box out of the alcove I used a metal ruler to measure back at three points and make very fine scratch marks. I then used the metal ruler to draw a fine pencil line through the three scratch marks.

I returned the pantry to the alcove, pushed it tight to the alcove side panel, and then pulled it out about three inches. Measuring on the back side outside the alcove I made final adjustments to the shims to get a consistent reveal. I then pulled each of the nine slides back, carefully aligned the back edge of the slide to the reference line, drilled a hole with a self-centering VIX bit, and secured it with a #6-3/4″ SR (square recessed) screw. (I was not able to initially secure the bottom slide as the 2×4 was in the way.) I pulled the pantry out a little farther until the next mounting hole in the top slide was visible and then drilled that hole on all eight slides and secured it with a screw. I proceeded in this way until all but the bottom slide were attached to the alcove side panel through every available mounting hole; 88 screws in all (11 screws for each slide x 8 slides).

The pantry with the installation boards removed from underneath it.

To secure the bottom slide I needed to get the 2×4 out from under the pantry. I slid the pantry all the way in, slid the two pieces of 3/4″ plywood out from under the 2×4, and tried to slide the 2×4 out. Unfortunately I used a 2×4 that was too long to just slide out as part of the original pantry cabinet is directly across from the pull-out pantry. So I got my circular saw and cut about 4″ off the end of the 2×4. Close, but not quite, so I cut off another 2″ and was finally able to slide it out.

With the pantry all the way out I was able to drill and secure the mounting holes for the back half of the bottom slide. The holes for the front half were a bit tedious as I had to move the box to reveal each one. To avoid going back and forth between the drill and the screw driver bit I drilled all of the holes first and then put in the screws. I should also mention that I used the Shop Vac to vacuum up any debris that got in the slides as a result of the drilling. I also wiped the slides out (carefully, they have sharp edges) with a paper towel.

The pantry slides all the way in and out but is a little tight the closer it gets to being fully closed. I know that Jarel was very meticulous in attaching the slides to the pantry box so they were all parallel. My working hypothesis is that either I did not get them attached to the alcove exactly parallel (entirely likely) and/or there is more drag on them because of the one-sided installation (probably, but no way for me to quantify) than there would be if they were installed on both sides of a drawer.

All of the slides are on the same side, which is not how they are normally used. A pair of these slides is rated to support 100 pounds when used on both sides of a drawer, so four and a half pairs would, conservatively, support 400 to 450 pounds in a normal application. Even if they will only support 1/3 that much weight in a single-sided application that is still 133 to 150 pounds for our nine slides. I think the box weighs about 30 pounds so that leaves at least 100 pounds for stored items and I doubt that we could get 100 pounds of stuff in the pantry even if we loaded it with canned goods. Because the pantry is narrow and tall with lots of slides I suspect most of the load on the slides is vertical, which is what they are designed for, rather than sideways, which would tend to pull them apart, so I suspect that it can safely carry considerably more than 100 pounds of staples.

The piece of aluminum angle that will prevent the refrigerator from sliding sideways into the pantry. It is not installed yet as the plywood refrigerator base is not stained yet.

I had just finished installing the pantry and was cleaning up my tools and materials when Linda got home around 3 PM. I had skipped lunch and she had a PB&J sandwich while she was out so we agreed to have dinner at 5:30 PM. Linda picked up where she left off yesterday cleaning and waxing the drawer fronts and the woodwork in the bedroom. I decided that the oak veneered plywood base in the alcove needed to be painted or stained and then sealed so I went to Lowe’s and got a small can of Rustoleum American Walnut stain, a small can of Rustoleum satin finish polyurethane, and two foam brushes.

I brushed the stain on liberally, working in sections, let it sit for two minutes per the instructions, and then wiped it off with a lint-free cloth. The stain required mineral spirits for cleanup so I threw the brush and cloth away. The instructions said to wait one hour before applying a finish. It was 5 O’clock by then so I went to my office to check e-mail while Linda prepared dinner.

She made a nice salad and grilled a couple of vegan burgers and added some vegan cheese. Mustard, ketchup, pickles, onions, and lettuce on a nice bun made for a tasty sandwich. Two deer, a doe and her young fawn, came to our deer block while we were eating and a ruby-throated hummingbird stopped at our plants and feeders. For dessert we had half of a small, very sweet watermelon.

By the time we were done with dinner it was 6:30 PM so I went back out to the bus and applied the polyurethane. The directions said to apply it sparingly so that is what I tried to do. They also said that it could take 48 hours to be usably dry and seven days for a full cure. Drying time was dependent, however, on temperature and humidity, with higher temps and lower relative humidity promoting quicker drying.

I had run the Aqua-Hot earlier in the day and determined that there was still a little too much coolant in the system as the expansion reservoir overflowed into my catch bottle. I closed the three windows that were open, leaving them just slightly ajar, turned on the Aqua-Hot, turned on all three thermostats, and set them for about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. I will not be applying a second coat of polyurethane and cannot spare 48 hours for this one to dry.

I had thought that we might get the first sheet of underlayment installed this evening but decided we had done enough for one day. It will be the only full 4’x8′ sheet we install but it needs a notch cut out of it before it goes in. I thought it would require several cuts but then realized I had some floor leveling compound that I had not removed. I got my chisel and mini-sledgehammer and knocked off the big chunks. I then used the oscillating sander with 50 grit sandpaper to smooth everything out. It was 7:45 PM and I was done working on the bus for today.

I went to my office and spent a couple of hours dealing with e-mails. Linda was still up when I turned in at 10 PM but drifted off to sleep as I finished up this post. She has to go to the bakery tomorrow which means she will be up very early.

2015/08/24 (M) Skimcoating

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For a change of pace we had granola with vegan yogurt for breakfast. I made seven cups of the Cafe Europe / Columbian decaf blend but Linda only had one mug as she was meeting Diane at Kensington Metropark at 9 AM to walk. After she left I gathered up the laundry, sorted it, and started the first load. I then turned my attention to the bus.

My first task was to cut one of the 8″x8″ sheets of #80 sandpaper in half, put it on the orbital pad sander, and go over all of the Universal Patch and Skimcoat (UPS) that I applied yesterday. The 80 grit worked well and I only needed the one half sheet. I swept the floor clean of loose debris and then assembled my tools and materials to patch a few gouges I missed yesterday and then skimcoat the entire portion of the floor that used to have ceramic tile on it. I mixed 24 ounces (by volume) with 12 ounces of water (by volume), half as much UPS as I did yesterday. I tried to work more quickly and got most of it applied. I cleaned up my tools and let them dry while the compound cured. That also gave me an opportunity to move laundry from the washer to the dryer and start another load in the washing machine.

I had a call from Chuck so I took a break to chat with him. He and Barbara spent the weekend racing at the old Air Force base in Oscoda, Michigan. Their bus and race car both ran well and he turned in some very good times. He had installed a new turbo boost gauge in the bus and based on my experience had selected a 0 to 15, PSI VDO unit. Apparently 15 PSI is not high enough for his engine. I have seen the boost on my gauge, which is a 0 to 30 PSI model, go as high as 17, but not often. For most of our trip to Arizona and back this past winter it did not go over 15 PSI.

The only issue they have with their coach at the moment is their old Amana residential refrigerator. The freezer is apparently not keeping things as cold as it should and the ice maker is not working. They use a lot of ice and generally have the freezer stocked, so those are problems. They bought a bag of ice for the weekend but it appeared to get warm enough to develop surface moisture and then refroze into large chunks, inconvenient at best. I think they have decided to replace it and want to do so before they leave for the winter and while they still have the shop and the forklift.

Chuck is also going to contact the glass installer and see if he would be willing to install bus windshields. Both of his lower windshields need to be replaced as do both of ours. We have five replacements at his shop, two for him and three for me. I also have new gaskets but he needs to get two sets. We discussed late September as the best time for me and he will see if the windshield guy will do all four of them on the same day.

I mixed the remaining USP, about 12 ounces (by volume) with 6 ounces of water (by volume) and finished the skimcoating of the bus floor. I used the last little bit of compound to patch some screw holes and small gouges in the living room floor where carpet had been installed. There may be a few more but instead of opening another bag of UPS I will probably return it and buy a quart of the premixed compound. I then cleaned up my tools again and left them in the sun to dry.

Linda got home about this time. It was just after noon, so we had a light lunch of vegan deli slices with lettuce, onion, and Daiya non-dairy cheese, on thin buns. A pluot provided a nice, sweet finish to lunch.

We measured for wallpaper the other day so I took the notes and created an Excel spreadsheet to figure out how many rolls of wallpaper to order. While I did that Linda worked on cleaning and reconditioning drawer fronts with Touch of Oranges and Touch of Beeswax. After examining the wallpaper in the bathroom (of the bus) I think we need to replace it too. We took a few minutes to get those measurements and I added them to the spreadsheet.

The wallpaper we have selected is the Lamar (#699-3377R) from the Just Textures collection of Sellars and Josephson. It is an off-white color with a small texture pattern designed for reverse hang, random match installation. It is only sold in 2-roll bolts 27″ wide and 4.5 yards long. We will need more than six rolls to replace all of the wallpaper so we will have to order eight rolls even though we may defer doing part of the hallway and the bathroom for a while. Fortunately it is not too expensive (as wallpapers go) and is scrubable, which was one of our requirements for use in the bus. Linda will return the sample books to Delux Drapery and Shade Company in Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning and place the order.

Linda reheated the leftover fajita veggies from last night and fixed some white rice to go with them. We had fresh strawberries and a little Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert. Coconut Bliss ice creams are not too coconuty, and are appropriately named. They are as good as I remember Hagan-Daas being.

I took a little time to add lines to my floor tile layout drawing showing the location of the underlayment sheets. It looks like I may need at least eight sheets. I have four sheets in the garage and will install those before buying more. I spent the rest of the evening working on the article for Bus Conversion Magazine about Larry and Carol Hall’s GM4106 bus conversion and finished it around 10 PM. I spent another 1.5 hours catching up on e-mail and checking in on the status of Technomadia’s bus renovation project at MasterTech in Elkhart, Indiana. The weather has turned cool and should be perfect for working on the bus tomorrow. We need to have long, productive days, so I had a snack and got to bed at midnight, played a few games, and went to sleep.

2015/08/23 The West Side

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Today was not an ordinary day for us in the sense of our usual routines of chores and projects. We were up at 7:45 AM, got dressed up more than usual, and had our usual granola breakfast but I did not make coffee. We left at 8:45 AM and drove to our daughter’s house near Dexter. We arrived at 9:30 and Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline pulled in right behind us. We visited for about 20 minutes which gave Madeline time to get into the flow of being at Aunt Meghan and Uncle Chris’s house. She was sitting on the couch with Meghan watching an animated video on Shawna’s iPad when we left.

We rode with Brendan and Shawna in their Subaru Outback. Our destination was the Waldorf Pub Ballroom in Hastings, Michigan. The reason for our trip was a Celebration of Life for Shawna’s father, Michael (Mick) James Lee, who passed away a little over a week ago from a non-cancerous but malignant brain tumor.

The quickest route to Hastings from Dexter is south to I-94 and then west to M-37, which runs northwest up to Hastings. We stopped at the Panera in Jackson where Linda and I both got coffee and I got an “everything” bagel to go. We arrived at the Waldorf at noon.

The gathering did not start until 2 PM but Shawna had agreed to come early to help with setup. That left us with some time so we went for a walk up and down the main street before returning to the ballroom. Shawna’s sister, Tracy, brother Rob, their mom, Carol, and Mick’s wife, Carol were there and we had a chance to visit briefly with them before everyone else started showing up. I did not try to do a head count but there were at least 100 people there, and possibly 150. Mick was a teamster and a lot of his social life involved his fellow truck drivers and was centered on their union local. I think a lot of them were there.

Tracy had assembled a slide show with 180 images and put together a mix of Mick and Carol’s favorite tunes. At 2 PM she read an honest, heartfelt, and warm remembrance of Mick. Mick’s lifelong friend gave a similar reflection, followed by Mary Kay, the sister of Mick’s wife Carol. A nice buffet was set out that included fresh fruit, vegetables, and small slices of toasted bread, so we had plenty to eat. There was a full bar available but hot coffee (regular and decaf) and cold lemonade met our needs.

Heavy rains moved in just after 2 PM but moved through before we left at 4:30. We went back down M-37 to I-94 and headed east. Shawna and Linda were following our progress using the GPS feature of their phones. There was an accident at the interchange with US-127 so Brendan exited at Airport Road and Linda navigated him through Jackson and back on to I-94 at Copper Road. Shawna noticed a rainbow ahead of us and then Linda spotted a second, fainter one, with a larger diameter than the first. We were able to see at least the main one, and usually both of them, all the way to the Dexter Road exit and part of the way to Dexter. It was quite a sight.

We got back to Meghan and Chris’s house around 6:30 PM. Madeline had a great day with her buddy Aunt Meghan but was keeping watch for our return and was excited to see her mom and dad and her Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce. We left at 6:50 and on the way home decided to go the Los Tres Amigos restaurant on Grand River Avenue just east of Latson Road, arriving at 7:30 PM. We had the vegetarian fajitas, and they were OK, but dining out allowed us to eat a little sooner without Linda having to cook.

After dinner we drove to the Shell station in Brighton and topped off the tank in Linda’s Honda Civic so she would not have to stop in the morning on her way to walk with Diane. At home we watched an episode of Sherlock on PBS and then an episode of Rick Steve’s Europe.

2015/08/22 (S) Clean and Level

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We arrived at the SLAARC breakfast just before 8 AM. We took the last two seats at the end of the long row of tables, but had to add another one as six more people came in after us. We had a lively chat that lasted until almost 9:30. After breakfast we stopped at the Tractor Supply Company store in New Hudson to get a couple more deer blocks and then headed for home.

We took a few minutes to put away tools and straighten up the garage enough that we could set up a work surface for Linda to use for cleaning the walnut drawer fronts for all of the bus drawers. We set up the two sawhorses we got at Lowe’s yesterday, set two 8-foot 2x4s in the provided grooves, and set a 4’x8′ piece of 2″ rigid foam insulation across them to use as the work surface. I found an old package of 4/0 steel wool and Linda found some old terry cloth towels.

Foam insulation work surface in garage with walnut drawer fronts laid out for cleaning with Touch of Oranges.

Linda removed the drawer fronts from seven of the drawer boxes and tagged them so they could be reunited later as each front is uniquely paired with its box. She then removed the handles from the drawer fronts and set them aside as they will be replaced with new ones once the cleaning is done. She started with the back sides of the drawer fronts. Following the directions she sprayed them liberally with Touch of Oranges wood cleaner, let them sit for 10 minutes, sprayed them again lightly, and rubbed them with the 4/0 steel wool. She then wiped them off with a terry cloth towel and applied Touch of Beeswax using 4/0 steel wool, always working with the grain, of course. The wax will have at least 24 hours to soak in before being wiped off. Once that is done she will flip them over and repeat the process on the front side.

While Linda was doing all of that I hauled the 15 gallon DeWalt portable air compressor out by the bus, plugged it in, and connected the air hose. I used the 4″ circular pneumatic sander on a few remaining high spots and decided I was done with it. I had found some old packs of 80 grit half sheets and tried using them on my orbital sander but the grit disappeared very quickly and the sheets snagged and tore on splinters in the plywood. I spent more time changing sheets than I did sanding with them so I abandoned this approach after the fifth sheet. I did, however, find a half dozen splintered areas and prepared those by making stop cuts with a utility knife and then peeling the splinter free with a putty knife, creating voids that will be filled with leveling compound.

I was tired of sanding and was clearly not going to get the floor back down to bare wood. I decided that the floor was as sanded and smooth as it was going to get and it was time to move to the next process; patching and leveling. Before I could do that, however, I needed to clean the coach. I vacuumed the floor three times and vacuumed all of the woodwork and wallpaper. As I worked from the bedroom forward Linda followed behind with a microfiber cloth wiping down all of the woodwork.

I assembled the tools I needed to apply the Universal Patch and Skimcoat; a 3″ putty knife, a 5″ putty knife, a combination smooth and toothed rectangular trowel, a mixing bucket, and a 2 foot long wooden stir stick and a mixing paddle designed to go in a drill. Each bag of UPS weighs 7 pounds and gets mixed with 1.75 quarts of water, which works out to 1 part water to 2 parts UPS.

The directions on the bag indicated that a full bag of UPS, properly mixed, would cover 20 to 25 square feet 1/8″ thick. That’s only a 5’x5′ area, but I only had a few gouges that were 1/8″ deep, so an entire bag was going to cover a lot more than 25 square feet when applied as a skim coat. Not having worked with this material before I had no idea how much working time I would have so I decided to mix half a bag. The recommended mixing method using a paddle in an electric drill turned out to be a bad idea so used the 2-foot long wooden stir stick to mix the compound.

TEC Universal Patch and Skimcoat applied to the floor in that hallway.

I started in the bathroom patching small depressions and then working out from the baseboards. By the time I got out into the hallway I had not even used half the compound and it was starting to set up. I hurried to use as much of it as I could, and tried adding a little extra water to extend its workability, but was only able to use about 60% of it before it was too stiff to spread and trowel off smoothly. I could have waited 1 hour and then mixed and applied more compound but I did not want to risk disturbing what I had already done and it has to set for 24 hours before I can sand it, which I will have to do.

Cleanup required warm soapy water for the tools. I then poured it into the 5 gallon compound bucket, topped it up with water, stirred it to dissolve the compound as much as possible, and let it sit.

For dinner Linda made Farro with mushrooms, onions garlic, glazed snow peas, and grated carrots. She needed some dry white wine for the Farro dish and opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio, so we had a glass with the meal. As rule if a wine is used in a dish it is also a good choice to drink with that meal.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and got some more 4/0 steel wool and some 80 grit sandpaper sheets. I stopped at O’Reilly’s for a battery disconnect switch for the lawn tractor but they did not have one. I tried the Howell Tractor Supply Company but they did not have one either. I drove to the Brighton Shell station, topped off the fuel in the Element, and went home. We turned in at 9 PM and watched a 007 movie before going to sleep.

2015/08/21 (F) Have Fridge Will Travel

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I was up at 7:40 AM and made a pot of Costa Rican half-caff coffee. Linda was up just before 8 AM and washed off some fresh blueberries to put on our breakfast granola. The Costa Rican is definitely not our favorite coffee and I brewed it with a little too much water which did not improve matters. But we bought a pound of beans and are not going to throw them out so the sooner we use them up the sooner we can get something that we like.

Harvey Carter (AC8NO), the current President of our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club, agreed to help us move the old bus refrigerator from Chuck’s shop in Novi to our house this morning using his cargo van. He pulled into the parking lot of the shop right behind us at 10 AM. Chuck and Barb had already left for Oscoda in their bus with their race car trailer in tow.

After opening the shop we had Harvey back his van up to the overhead door. We brought several lengths of 2x4s planning to use them under the back of the refrigerator but Harvey had two ramps made from 2x12s with a cross piece that spanned the rear bumper. That looked like a much better alternative to us. He also had a good hand truck and a ratchet strap.

We decided to truck the unit from the left side because the refrigerant and water lines protrude beyond the back of the case. We removed all of the trays from the doors and cabinet but left the shelves in place. We slid the hand truck under the left side of the cabinet and secured it with the ratchet strap. With Harvey on the hand truck we tilted it back and rolled it out to the ramps. We adjusted the ramps so the hand truck wheels would be centered on them. Harvey then pulled the hand truck up the ramp backwards as Linda and I pushed from the bottom, eventually lowering it all the way down as we slid it fully into the van. I then closed up the shop.

I rode with Harvey in the van and Linda followed us in the car for the trip back to our house where I had Harvey back his van up to the small garage door. Reversing our procedure from earlier we unloaded the fridge by rolling the hand truck down the pair of ramps and put it just inside the small garage bay near the door. We plugged it in and it started running so at least we did not break it.

We wanted to put the drawers and door bins back in but could not get the fresh food compartment door open more than a few inches. I was able to open it just enough to see inside and determine that at least two shelves had come loose and wedged into positions that prevented the door from opening. The solution was to remove the door. I undid the three screws that attach the top hinge to the cabinet and removed it, allowing Harvey to lift the door off of the bottom hinge. I reattached the two shelves to the mounting rails at the rear of the cabinet. Harvey then set the bottom door hinge pin back in the lower bracket and held the door while I reinstalled the top hinge. We will plug it in later next week and let it cool off as it has to be running and cold when DTE Energy comes on Friday to pick it up.

While Linda unloaded the drawers and bins from the car and put them back in the refrigerator I gave Harvey the ham radio tour. We looked at the antennas on the tower, the cable entry box, and the ham shack with the multiple monitor wall mounted track system we installed. I then gave him a tour of the bus interior. Linda was getting ready to go for a walk but I suggested we take Harvey to lunch and agreed to go. He lives in Green Oak Township southeast of Brighton so we went to the Panera on Grand River Avenue at I-96 as it was in the direction of his house and we all like their food.

After lunch we drove to the frame shop in Howell and picked up the last of four paintings we had framed. We were pleased with our choice of framing material and the owner, Rick, did a nice job assembling it. We headed back to Lowe’s and looked at thin paneling materials. Linda got a shield for the bird feeder that is supposed to keep the squirrels from getting to the seed block and I got a recessed outlet that I am considering using for the refrigerator in the bus. We stopped at the Walmart adjacent to the Lowe’s but did not find the peanut butter filled pretzels we were looking far. I needed a battery disconnect for the lawn tractor battery but we did not feel like doing anymore shopping today and returned home.

It was late enough in the afternoon that I did not feel like getting the air compressor out and working on the floor of the bus so I went to my office while Linda went for a walk. I was going to upload a few blog posts but decided to work on an article for Bus Conversion Magazine instead.

I took photographs of two buses at a pair of converted bus gatherings in Quartzite back in January of this year. Larry and Carol Hall had a very nice GM4106 at the FMCA Western G.M. Coach rally while Byron and Betty Pigg had a gorgeous Model 15 Eagle at the Eagle International converted bus rally. Larry and Byron are the presidents of their respective groups and the rallies took place at the same time in adjacent sections of the Quartzsite Marketplace dry camp area. This campground is near the epicenter of RV vendor activities and only a mile from where we were camped. Gary Hatt, the owner/publisher of BCM, brought his newly acquired Eagle conversion and had his mobile mechanic drive his MC-9 Moose Creek Motor Cabin, which was for sale. He invited me over so we could finally meet in person, I could meet a few folks, and photograph the buses. He knew, in particular, that Larry and Byron were interested in having their buses featured in the magazine and figured I could help make that happen.

I had started articles on both buses right after I photographed them and worked on them a bit back in February but I did not get them finished before we had to leave Quartzsite in early March. Once we pulled up stakes we were on the move and very busy and I did not get back to them before we got home. Of course, we got even busier once we got home so new articles for BCM were on the back burner with the gas turned off. But magazines have lead times with deadlines for each issue, and Gary very much wanted to feature both of these buses before 2016 arrived, so I dusted them off and decided to work on the article about the Hall’s GM4106.

Larry had sent me a brief narrative some months ago and I had started filling in the detailed specifications about the bus and conversion. I had already selected possible photos for the cover and centerfold as well as the article and post processed some, but not all, of them. I massaged Larry’s narrative, added an introduction of my own, extracted some additional specifications, and then focused my efforts on completing the post-processing of the photos.

I took a break for dinner and afterwards completed the photo processing. I then started inserting the thumbnail versions of the images into the Word document and writing captions. There isn’t really any magic to writing an article; it’s just a specific kind of work. You string words together into sentences, organized by paragraphs, that tell a short story about something interesting and you illustrate it with captioned photos that are hopefully relevant and technically adequate. It takes time and energy to do this well, however, and I ran out of both around 10 PM.

2015/08/20 (R) On The Level

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We awoke around 7 AM and noticed that it had rained overnight. We had Linda’s homemade granola with fresh blueberries for breakfast, followed by a pot of coffee brewed from the Cafe Europe / Columbian Decaf blend I got from Teeko’s on Tuesday. As we do most mornings we enjoyed our coffee while using our iPads to check in on the world (Linda) and write about our day yesterday (me).

While Linda went for a walk I checked e-mail and responded to several from Gary Hatt at Bus Conversion Magazine. I then unloaded all of the boards, slides, battery terminal covers, and the pneumatic disc sander and discs from the car. I set up our 15 gallon portable air compressor by the entrance door of the bus, got the long air hose out of its storage bay, and connected the air sander.

When Linda got back from her walk we unloaded the pull-out pantry from the car and stored it on top of some of the bookcases in the library. We had a light lunch after which Linda settled in to work at her desk and I busied myself with sanding the floor in the bus with the air sander.

Floor prep tools: 4” belt sander, hammer and chisel, 4” rotary pneumatic body sander.

I was eager (anxious) to get the initial sanding done so I could apply the floor leveling compound. Like drywall compound it will be a multi-day process. I needed to fill any deep gouges and voids, let the compound dry, and then lightly sand it with an orbital pad sander and finer grit sandpaper to make sure it is smooth. I then needed to fill the shallow grooves that exist between the ridges of thinset and mastic that I could not sand off completely. Once that dried I would again sand it off lightly and then apply a final, very thin, skim coat to the entire area, feathering it into the areas where tile was never installed. Finally I would go over the entire area gently with the pad sander one last time to make sure the surface is as smooth and flat as possible before installing the 1/4″ underlayment. The tile will be installed directly on the underlayment.

I considered using self-leveling instead of troweled-on floor leveling compounded but decided against it. Self-leveling is thin, like water, and flows. As such it seeks its on level and forms a smooth flat surface that is “level” as determined by gravity. Although it offers the possibility of a single step process with no sanding, it also offers the potential to go wrong and not be repairable. The bus subfloor would have to be dead level side-to-side and front-to-rear. There would also have to be a border to contain the liquid and there could not be any holes or cracks that it could leak through. In particular it seemed I’ll-suited for feathering into the adjacent areas of the subfloor that were never tiled. And so I decided to fill in and “level” the floor the slower and more labor intensive, but more controlled, way.

For dinner we had the other half of the gluten free pizza Linda made on Tuesday. We had peaches, strawberries, bananas, and an orange melon that were all ripe so she made a fruit salad. We finished the bottle of Cupcake Black Forest Decadent Red Wine.

We decided to turn in early and watch a little TV. Part 2 of The Mystery of Matter: The Search for the Elements was on PBS at 8 PM. We saw Part 3 last night and did not realize until 7:45 PM that Part 1 was on this evening at 7 PM, so we still have not seen it.

2015/08/19 (W) If It’s Wednesday This Must Be Indiana

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As we did last Wednesday we were up earlier than usual to drive to Indiana. We wanted to be at Bontrager’s Surplus when they opened at 9 AM to pick up some battery terminal covers for Butch, and possibly ourselves, so we pulled out of our driveway at 6:16 AM.

We took our usual route west on M-59 to I-96W to Lansing Road south. Rather than get on I-69S we stayed on Lansing Road all the way to Charlotte where we stopped at the Biggby’s Coffee to use the restroom and get coffee and bagels. From there we then took I-69S to Coldwater and headed west on US-12 since Bontrager’s Surplus is located on US-12 in White Pigeon, Michigan.

We arrived at Bontrager’s Surplus just after 9 AM. We looked around briefly but did not spot the battery terminal covers so we asked one of the employees where they might be and he took us directly to them. We bought 36 (18 red and 18 black), 10 of each for Butch and 8 of each for us. Bontrager’s is probably the best stocked of the surplus and salvage stores in this area and I could have spent hours here, but we had other places to be and a long day ahead of us.

Our shopping done we continued on to Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan where we found Josh Leach hard at work on some interior remodeling of a Fleetwood Revolution. He removed the Notion Linen sample from his Lambright Comfort Chairs book and we chatted for a while.

I reflected on fact that one of the nicest Class A motorhomes we ever saw was a Fleetwood Revolution. The interior was a (faux) cherry wood with satin finish nickel hardware. It had modern, clean cabinetry and light grey wall treatments and a light tile floor with nickel colored inserts, as best I can recall. We eventually toured the American Coach factory in Decatur, Indiana where the Revolution was made and after seeing some of the construction methods we were less enamored with it. Like all of the American Coach products it was out of our price range as a new unit but it was very much to our taste.

Before continuing our Journey Linda pulled up Jarel’s address in our GPS. I then texted Jarel to give him a revised, and more accurate ETA. We headed southwest out of Edwardsburg on M-62 which becomes IN-23 through Granger. We turned onto IN-331 which bypasses most of Mishawaka east of town and delivered us to US-20 where we headed west. We stopped at the Meijer’s, which has a filling station, fueled the car, and switched drivers. We exited US-20 just south of South Bend, Indiana and headed south on US-31. We exited US-31 at Rochester and took IN-25 south to Logansport. I texted Jarel an updated ETA enroute.

We arrived at Jarel Beatty Cabinetry at 11:45 AM and pulled around back. I texted Jarel to let him know we were there and he came out of the shop to meet us. We chatted for a while, loaded up the pantry, the slides, the three pieces for the built-in sofa that we forgot last week, a piece of walnut trim for the pantry face, and a leftover piece of 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood. Linda wrote a check for the balance we owed. The only thing left for Jarel to build is the HVAC/wiring chase cover but he cannot do that until I give him the length, which I cannot do him until the desk is installed in the bus.

We left the cabinet shop at 1 PM and stopped at the Martin’s supermarket in Logansport for lunch. This particular Martin’s did not have a salad bar but they did have pre-made salads. We each had one along with a bread roll. I called Butch to let them know we were on our way, and headed for Twelve Mile, Indiana.

I gave Butch the battery terminal covers. He and I figured their cost ($1.25 each) covered the cost of the 12 fiberglass pole mast sections ($2.00 each) we took last week and called it even.

I brought the small window frame stop block from our bus to see if Butch could make one. He had some aluminum bar stock that looked like it would work. We decided to make it longer than the original to accommodate three machine screws and cut it to size using a band saw. Butch then marked three points to drill holes using the old block as a template. Two holes were drilled through and one end hike was blind. The blind hole will fit over the shaft of the old screw that would not come out in case any of it is still protruding above the surface. The middle hole will line up with other existing hole and I will have to drill and tap a hole in the frame to match the third hole. But first I need to get some brown spray paint, put some sacrificial screws in the holes, and paint the piece.

While we were working on the stop block I noticed that Butch had a torque multiplier sitting out. He commented that it was available to a good home for a good price; hint, hint. These torque multipliers are used to break the lug nuts loose on bus and truck wheels and I have had one on my mental wish list since I first became aware of them five years ago. I had not pursued getting one as they tend to be expensive even used on Ebay. Butch wanted $75 for it so I wrote a check and put it in the car. It has three different lug nut sockets so I hope one of them first the ones on our bus. I also hoped they would fit the very large torque wrench I bought from Butch last fall but they are 1″ square drive sockets and the torque wrench has a 3/4″ square stud. I’m not sure I have a correct socket for the torque wrench so that’s another thing I still need to get.

Butch and Fonda bought a compact stacked clothes washer/dryer for their bus and asked if we would help them get it into their rig. Of course we said yes. We got it on a dolly and wheeled it out to the entrance door and then pondered the situation. We have some recent experience getting things out of and into a bus entrance door and this did not look promising. Butch handed me a tape measure and I determined that the maximum width that would fit through the step well was 23.5 inches due to the door hinges. The washer/dryer is 24″ wide and 28″ deep with a recessed back on the washer (lower unit). It is also tall, being a stacked unit, and we all agreed that the only way it was going in was on its back, through a window, using a forklift. It was Deja vu all over again; been there, done that, didn’t even get a T-shirt. That approach required more preparation than Butch cared to tackle today, and more time than we had to spare, so we moved the unit back under the overhang and left it covered with a blanket.

We all went back in the house and visited for a while longer. Butch had found his 4″ pneumatic body sander and loaned it to me along with three boxes of AA50 sanding discs. While not quite as aggressive as the #36 ceramic grit belts I have been using on the 4″ portable belt sander, this tool will allow me to get under the cabinet toe kicks where the belt sander won’t reach.

As much as we would have liked to stay and go out to dinner again, we did not want to be getting home at midnight. We wished them a safe journey, again, but this time it really is unlikely that we will see them again before they leave for Arizona. We left for home at 4:45 PM with Linda at the wheel. From SR-16W (CR-700N) we took CR-700 (Meridian) north to its northernmost point and headed west into Fulton on W750S where we picked up IN-25 and headed north. At Rochester we left IN-25 and took US-31N to US-20W. We exited US-20 at SR-19 and drove north through Elkhart, finally arriving at the Martin’s supermarket at CR-4 around 6:15 PM. This Martin’s has an excellent salad bar and a nice dining area with an upstairs, which is where we chose to sit and eat our dinner.

Linda continued to drive after dinner. There is an entrance to the Indiana Toll Road (I-80/90) on SR-19 just south of CR-4 so we got on going east. The toll road is a few extra miles compared to US-12 through Michigan, but it is posted 70 MPH (max) with no stops, compared to 55 MPH with six towns that have reduced speed limits and stops.

We exited the toll road, paid our $2.90 toll, and headed north on I-69. A few miles later we were back in Michigan. We left the Interstate at M-60 (exit 25) to refuel at the Shell station, use the restrooms, and switch drivers. It was about 8 PM and still light, but it was cloudy to the west and the light was fading. I find night driving easier than Linda does and I had been able rest while she drove so I was good to go.

I followed our usual route, leaving I-69N and using the Lansing Road cutoff to get to I-96E. We passed mile marker 100 on the south side of Lansing, which meant we had 33 miles to the M-59 exit. From there it was 11 miles to Hacker Road and then the final 2.5 miles to our house.

We arrived home at 10 PM, five hours and 15 minutes after we left Twelve Mile and just over 16 hours from when we left home this morning. The trip odometer indicated 534.8 miles traveled today. We unloaded the camera, phones, wallets, etc. from the car but decided to wait until tomorrow to unload the cabinetry, tools, and parts. We headed off to bed and watched part 3 of a PBS program The Mystery of Matter: The Search for the Elements. Interesting stuff. We both find programs that inform and educate to be entertaining.

2015/08/18 (T) Walking Grind

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We were up at 8 AM and I made a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee while Linda got breakfast ready. She made a batch of granola yesterday so we had some with fresh blueberries and unsweetened soy milk. It’s our standard breakfast, but that’s because we like it so much. She had an e-mail from Robin at the bakery and had to deal with some issues related to the bakery’s new account, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor. As I do most mornings I sat in the living room working on my iPad, drinking my coffee, and paying attention to our two cats.

Being Tuesday Linda had a date with Diane to walk at 10 AM and left at 9:30 for Kensington Metropark. I continued working on my iPad for a while and enjoying my coffee. At 10:15 AM I called the Livingston County Sheriff and reported the mailbox incident from late Friday evening /early Saturday morning. Shelby took the call, was very nice, said she was not aware of any other mailbox reports, but would pass the info along to the Desk Sargent. I checked my e-mail and confirmed with Harvey for Friday at 10 AM to move the old bus refrigerator. I finally went out to work on the floor of the bus at 11 AM, by which time the outside air temperature was already in the 80’s.

I leave three of the awning style windows in the bus open a few inches so it doesn’t get too hot inside. I opened all three roof vents, turned on their ceiling fans, and set them to exhaust air rather than draw it in. I also left the entrance door open to allow more air to flow through the inside of the coach. I then sanded and vacuumed until about 1 PM. When I came back in the house I had two missed calls from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint so I called her back. I was on the phone with her when Linda got back from her walk.

Once I wrapped up the call with Michele we had a light lunch of hummus with pita chips and both black and red grapes. While we were eating we were entertained by a gray squirrel who had gotten onto the bird feeder and was hanging upside down by its hind legs. It would curl its body to bring its mouth up to the bottom of the feeder, emancipate some seed, and then uncurl to the more relaxed stretched out position and eat it. All of this was also being watched with both interest and considerable skepticism by three crows who were hanging around on the ground under the feeder. They grabbed seeds that the squirrel dropped but seemed very wary of it, which surprised us. I speculated that perhaps they had never seen a squirrel behave in this way and were, therefore, understandably and appropriately cautious; crows are very smart, after all.

After lunch we took the three wallpaper sample books to the bus to look at them with the woodwork. Before we could do that, however, we discovered a small bird trapped in the coach and had to deal with it. I say “trapped” because it was up on the dashboard and obviously confused by the windshields as it kept trying to fly out through them. It did not realize it could get out the same way it came in, through the open door.

The bird seemed small and I think it was an immature sparrow but I’m not sure. It was seeking safe shelter in the space between the dashboard cover and the lower driver side windshield. I used a broom to try to gently encourage it to fly towards the door but it was understandably suspicious of my good intentions. I put on a pair of canvas work gloves and it allowed me to gently pick it up. I tried to release it at the door opening and it flew into the door causing Linda to make a comment about why we use the phrase “bird-brained.” I caught it again, got outside the bus clear of the door, and tossed it gently away from the bus. It immediately took flight and flew off to the southwest, apparently none the worse for its ordeal. I can only image the story it told the other birds.

I got a piece of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl floor tile from the garage. Many of the wallpapers that we thought would look good with the floor tile turned out to be too yellow, and most of the ones with good color tone were too dark, but we found a few that we liked. Those tended to be lighter without a lot of pattern and a neutral, off-white color. We are, however, far from a final choice as we do not currently have a sample of the Lambright Notion Linen upholstery fabric or the MCD night shade material and the wallpaper has to work with all of these simultaneously.

We measured the areas that need to be repapered and in the process decided that we would leave the old wallpaper on the inner wall of the hallway, at least for now. (The paper in the bathroom, which is different from the rest of the coach, is generally in good condition and we are not currently planning on replacing it as part of this project.) The existing wallpaper in most of the coach is a string cloth with a beige base but distinct vertical threads that contain a noticeable amount of grey and a more subtle herringbone pattern. It looks good with the walnut woodwork and worked well with the old white carpet, black ceramic floor tile, and bone leather upholstery, so we think it will continue to look good with the new floor tile.

If Josh is at his shop tomorrow we will try to stop and pick up the Lambright Notion Linen sample as whatever wallpaper we choose has to work well with the furniture fabric. On Thursday we will revisit the papers in the three books we currently have with an eye towards something that has some grey in it.

It was another warm, humid day and I was done sanding so I closed up the roof vents, locked up the coach, and went inside. Linda prepared a pizza using the gluten-free crust recipe she got from Mara. Yum.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and bought two bags of TEC Skill Set Universal Floor Patch and Skim Coat, a mixing bucket, two bags of tile spacers, and three 4’x8′ sheets of 1/4″ SurePly underlayment. I meant to buy a folding metal sawhorse but left it somewhere in the store. I was going to buy premixed floor leveling compound but they only had 1-quart containers for $10 each and the directions said it would only cover 1.5 square feet. I have about 80 square feet of floor to patch and level, so that clearly was not a good solution.

The Universal Floor Patch is a powder that has to be mixed with water, but each bag will cover 20 – 25 square feet at 1/8″ thickness and costs $13; much better than the premixed stuff. I have a few areas to patch that are deeper than 1/8″ but the material can be applied up to 1/2″ thick per coat, and most of the area just needs a much thinner skimcoat. It can also be sanded within 24 hours which will allow me to make it very smooth and keep the work moving along. My goal is to have the floor leveled and sanded smooth by bedtime on Saturday so I can install the 1/4″ underlayment on Sunday and start laying tile on Monday or Tuesday next week.

I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas to get some more of the Cafe Europe half-caff blend. They had the regular blend but not the decaf blend so I had Roger use the Columbian decaf instead. He roasted the beans for me while I waited and Jeff showed up along with his wife as I was leaving. They were married last September and are expecting their first child late next month. Jeff was wearing his Pepsi delivery shirt, confirming what the woman at the Kahuna Coffee Shop told us last Friday.

We turned in early as we will be getting up very early tomorrow to drive to Indiana again. Linda watched an episode of NCIS after which I watched a PBS special on the origins and evolution of the Navy Seals.

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

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We awoke this morning to find wild turkeys in the yard behind our bedroom. The deer feed block and natural mineral rock initially attracted a doe and her faun but has been a much stronger attraction for the wild turkeys and crows. Both the turkeys and crows also like to clean up the bird seed that falls to the ground under the seed block that Linda hung from a branch on one of our White Pine trees. The turkeys eventually moved on and we sat down to a breakfast of fresh mixed berries, juice, and coffee, which we took to the living room while we used our iPads to read, write, or play a few games, as is our morning habit.

I had a text message exchange with Chuck regarding the moving of our old bus refrigerator out of his shop. He and Barbara are headed off to Oscoda on Friday with their race car so I e-mailed Harvey (AC8NO) from our SLAARC ham radio club to see if he could help us move the refrigerator on Friday.

We had quite a few downed branches, and a couple of downed trees, scattered about the property as a result of winter snows, spring/summer storms, poor drainage, and age. With Keith coming this morning to mow the grass I decided I should pick up as many of them as I could. When I started at 9:30 AM it was already warm and muggy. Keith showed up at 10 AM and got right to work but I managed to stay ahead of him and got everything of any size picked up except for one tree. It was at least 8″ in diameter at the base and at least 30′ long so I will have to de-limb it, cut up the trunk with a chain saw, and haul the pieces away using the lawn tractor and utility dump trailer. That, however, won’t happen anytime soon.

We skipped last week’s mowing because it had been dry and the grass had not grown noticeably, but we got rain during the past week and the grass responded accordingly. The yard looked good when Keith was done and the timing of his visit was fortuitous as there is rain in the forecast for the next few days with slightly cooler temperatures.

We had a light lunch and then Linda settled in to work at her desk while I worked in the bus. I spent a couple of hours using the belt sander to grind down the residual thinset and mastic on the floor. I wear a dust mask, hearing protector, and safety glasses when sanding, which is even less comfortable than normal when the temperature and humidity are elevated. But I needed to have the floor prep finished by the end of this week, and the new floor installed by the end of next week, or I risked not being ready for the installation of the new seating on September 14 and 15.

I suggested to Linda that we go to Ann Arbor to look at wallpaper, visit Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline and then pick up some things at the Whole Foods Market that we cannot get locally. Linda researched wallpaper stores and made arrangements with our son while I took a shower and got dressed for visiting.

We left around 3:30 PM and drove down US-23 to the Washtenaw Road exit. If we had put the address in the GPS sooner we would have taken M-14 west instead of staying on US-23 as the Delux Drapery and Shade Co. is on West Stadium Boulevard. Still, we got there in a reasonable amount of time. We told the sales associate that we were looking for something that would stand up to use in a motorhome, preferably something that could be wiped, washed, or scrubbed. We wanted something light and neutral (off white) without a pattern that had to be matched, but with some texture. She pulled out several sample books and we looked through them. We ended up signing out three books each of which had one or two papers that we liked and thought might work well with our woodwork, floor tiles, and upholstery.

We drove back across town to our son and daughter-in-law’s house. Our daughter’s car was also there but no one was around so Linda called Brendan. As we suspected they were at Burns Park so we walked over there and found them. Madeline was very excited to see her Grandma Linda and ran over to give her a hug. As we were heading towards the park exit that most directly leads back to their house we spotted Madeline’s friend Maya and her dad Jason. That unplanned encounter resulted in 20 minutes of child play and adult socializing before we finally resumed our homeward trek.

Back at the house we continued to visit until dinner time. Meghan left to go fix dinner for herself and Chris. Madeline had her dinner and then let her dad read a Curious George story. Brendan and Shawna had packing to do for their flight tomorrow so we took our leave. The three of them are flying to Denver to visit Shawna’s mom (Carol) and her husband (Cliff), who live nearby in Golden, Colorado. Madeline is well-traveled for a 30 month old child.

We stopped at the Whole Foods Market on Washtenaw Avenue, which is close to their house and conveniently located on our route out of town. The main item on our list was plain soy creamer. We used to be able to get this at both the Meijer’s and Kroger stores near our house but they are only carrying the vanilla flavored version which I do not like. We picked up a bag of sauerkraut to go with the vegan beer brats, six bottles of wine, because you get a 10% discount on six or more bottles (mix and match), two pieces of vegan cake, and some other stuff. It’s probably a good thing that we do not have a Whole Foods closer to our house.

By the time we got home it was 7:45 PM. Linda heated the sauerkraut and the vegan beer brats and served them open-faced on hot dog buns with mustard, of course. Black grapes provided a sweet contrast to the savory main dish. We sat for a while in the living room, playing iPad games and writing blog posts while we had some of the vegan cakes, before turning in. I continued to write while we watched a TV program and then went to sleep.

2015/08/16 (N) A Send Off For Katie

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We had a light breakfast and enjoyed our morning coffee. With company due at noon we were not inclined to do any overly physical work this morning. Linda made a quick run to the supermarket and then spent the late morning finishing food preparations. I worked in my office installing operating system updates, updating the BCM page on our website, and editing/uploading blog posts.

Our step-granddaughter, Katie Bortz, is leaving for college in a few days so Linda arranged to have her over for lunch along with our daughter, Meghan, and son-in-law, Chris (Katie’s dad). They arrived around noon and stayed until almost 5 PM, a longer visit than usual. For lunch we had chickpea salad, corn-on-the-cob, collard greens cole slaw, and potato salad. Meghan made two desserts at home and brought them: cheesecake and vegan oatmeal bars.

Grand-daughter Katie (L) waiting for a slice of cake baked by her step-mom (our daughter, Meghan, on right).

Katie got a head start on college while still in high school and took several AP classes. She also tested out of some basic classes so she will hit the ground running with at least some courses that are directly related to her interests (biology, specifically animals), and major (wildlife and fisheries). She will be moving into one of the dorms and paired up with another freshman girl during orientation. They have the room arrangement worked out, at least on paper, and I expect that everything will fall into place.

For dinner we had leftovers from yesterday’s meal after which I chatted with Chuck for a while on the phone about refrigerators in buses. I worked on blog posts after that and was going to participate in the SLAARC info net at 8 PM. Linda noticed that there was a program about the Real Scotland Yard on Lansing PBS at that time, followed by an episode (rerun) of Sherlock. Harvey (AC8NO) was the net control operator for the info net and as soon as he called for check-ins I did an “in and out.” Once he acknowledged that he had received my check-in I settled in to watch the programs. After that it was off to bed to play a few iPad games before going to sleep.

2015/08/15 (S) Steve and Karen

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As we were backing out of the driveway to go to our weekly ham radio breakfast we noticed a large mailbox sitting on the ground next to ours. It was still attached to the upper half of its wood support structure. The number was 593, which is not an address that occurs on our street. We left it there and went to breakfast.

We had a mid-sized group of 15 people at our SLAARC breakfast this morning. On the drive into breakfast we lost power to our GPS every time I transmitted on the 2m ham band. The GPS and cellular booster worked fine all day yesterday with the new 12VDC extension splitter, but I did not use the mobile ham radio.

After breakfast we went directly to Chuck’s shop in Novi to see if we could retrieve the old refrigerator using our car. A measuring tape quickly revealed that the fridge would not fit without removing the seats. Even then it would be too long to close the rear gate and hatch on the Element. At breakfast Harvey (AC8NO) offered the use of his van and labor to help move the fridge and I will probably take him up on it.

On the drive home I chatted with John (NU8M) on the South Lyon 2m repeater and we were joined by Mike (W8XH). After John signed and dropped off Linda tried different combinations of power connections while I talked with Mike. Based on that test the splitter appears to be the problem but we could not determine if it was a voltage drop issue or some form of RFI.

I stopped on the way home to fill the gas tank in my car. When we got home I put the mailbox in the back of my car and we drove to the end of the street but it clearly did not come from one of our neighbor’s yards. When we got back to the house we also noticed that there was a footprint on the side of our mailbox. Closer inspection revealed that the post was slightly loose in the ground and the box was leaning (bent) slightly to one side. Clearly someone had tried to kick it over (and failed) and there was a very high probability that it was the same person(s) who probably broke the other mailbox and left it on the ground next to ours. We discussed whether we should report it to the Livingston County Sheriff Department but did not take the time right then to do so.

Linda needed to make a grocery store run and then prep the food for dinner and pick up the house. With company coming later I did not want to get all sweaty working in the bus and garage so I worked in my office editing and uploading blog posts. I quit around 3:30 and was writing blog posts when Steve and Karen Limkemann arrived at 4 PM.

We always have a nice visit with Steve and Karen and they are good sports about eating the vegan food that Linda prepares. Linda made a sweet and sour collard greens cole slaw and vegan potato salad ahead of time. She cooked corn-on-the-cob on the stovetop and heated vegan beer brats on the grill along with onions and green peppers. Steve and Karen brought a Malbec wine which we enjoyed before, during and after the meal. Dessert was fresh strawberries with cashew milk snickerdoodle ice cream. Really, what’s not to like?

Steve and Karen have rented a house trailer in a trailer park near Venice, Florida for the last few winters. I think they rented it for January, February, and March and split the time with another couple, but I may not have my facts completely straight. The owners of the trailer are from England and decided after this last winter that they want to start using it during the winter so Steve and Karen lost the use of it. They really liked the park and its location so they bought a trailer that was for sale and already set up. We visited them two winters ago, but we were several hours north of them. This coming winter we will be much closer to them while we are in Arcadia during January and February and plan to see them more often. Venice is a very upscale place and there is an excellent vegan restaurant within easy walking distance (a mile) from their trailer park.

We talked about trying to catch the tail end of the Perseids Meteor Shower but the peak was earlier in the week, they would not be visible at our location until midnight, and then only low in the northeast sky, which is not an ideal viewing direction from our yard. Steve and Karen had a 45 minute drive to get home and left around 10:30 PM. By that point it had been a long but very satisfying day for us and we were straight away to bed once they were safely on their way.

2015/08/14 (F) Back-to-the-Bricks (Again)

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I was up late last night and thought I would sleep in this morning but the alarm on Linda’s iPad had other ideas and woke me up at 7:15 AM. I got dressed and while Linda was getting ready I started downloading an update for Photoshop CC 2015 on my ASUS laptop. These Adobe downloads are very large and very slow so I left it to run.

We did not have breakfast or coffee at home. Linda made PB&J sandwiches and packed a bag of pretzel crackers, some fresh fruit, and some water in a cooler bag with some freezer packs. The forecast was for very warm, very humid conditions so we closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioning. We loaded the camera, raincoats, hats, folding camp chairs, an iPad, and some GLCC T-shirts and flags into the car and left around 8 AM for the GLCC/CCO Back-to-the-Bricks rally at the Fireman’s Park in Clio, Michigan.

We took Hacker Road to M-59 east to Old US-23 and stopped at the Kahuna Coffee shop. We had seen the sign for this place but had never been there. The owner was there and she was very nice. She has a smaller version of the JavaMaster hot air coffee bean roaster that Jeff has at Teeko’s. Her selection of green beans, however, was very different from Teeko’s with lots of flavored beans but none of the ones we usually buy. Knowing that she gets her beans from the same place as Jeff, however, means we could probably order the ones we like if Teeko’s disappears. She is friends with Jeff and is well aware of the probable impact of the Panera opening up across the intersection from Teeko’s. But I digress.

This morning we were interested in coffee and bagels to go. Kahuna had a better selection of bagels than Teeko’s but we got our usual choices; “everything” for Linda and cinnamon raisin for me, toasted with nothing on them. They had Swiss Chocolate Almond coffee brewed so we tasted a sample. It was very smooth, with no bitterness and just a hint of the named flavors, so we got two large ones to go.

We got back on M-59 eastbound and 100 yards later took the entrance ramp to northbound US-23. US-23 merges with I-75 at the southwest corner of Flint and we continued north on the combined road until we exited at M-57 and headed east through Clio to M-54 and turned south. A few miles later we turned into the Fireman’s Park on the east side of the highway. It was 9:15 AM as I parked the car.

When I talked to rally co-host Marty Caverly last week only 14 rigs had RSVP’d for the rally. There were over 20 rigs there when we arrived and five more showed up during the day. A guy also brought a Country Coach Prevost XL conversion down from Saginaw for the afternoon. He is trying to sell it and wanted to let the rally attendees check it out.

We made the rounds and said our “hello”s to everyone. As has happened at past rallies where we have dropped in for a day many of the ladies took off to check out local garage sales. Bill and Karen Gerrie were just pulling out but stopped to chat briefly. Frank and Sandy Griswold’s Featherlite H3-45 conversion has windows that slide open rather than swing out like our awning windows so I asked Frank and several other people about screens for these. Everyone had the same suggestion; that any local window and door business should be able to make them. I was trying to get useful information for someone who had e-mailed me as a result of an article in BCM.

The roundtable discussion started at 2 PM and most of the rally attendees were back by then. Pat Lintner, our GLCC national director, gave a pitch for the FMCAssist program, which is included as part of the annual FMCA membership and more than worth the annual cost of $40. I announced that we had GLCC T-shirts and a few flags with us if anyone wanted to buy them. I also announced that the Arcadia Rally website had disappeared but that Bill and Brenda Phelan are working to fix the problem and the rally is still on for December 26-31, 2015 with departure on January 1, 2016.

Ed Roelle had two topics for the roundtable: 1) “towing insurance” for our bus conversions, and; 2) causes and cures for hard water deposit buildup in the fresh water plumbing associated with an Aqua-Hot (Webasto diesel burner) heating and domestic hot water systems. Most of us use, or have used, Coach-Net for our “emergency roadside assistance” coverage. The plan includes towing but many of our members have switched to one of the three Good Sam ERS plans. The top (platinum) plan is ~$140/year.

A couple of years ago Coach-Net decided they would not cover bus conversions more than 40 years old and alienated quite a few folks in the converted coach community. They eventually reversed that position but the damage was done. Others who stayed with them have had issues getting service or being charged ridiculous sums of money for simple things. Coach-Net was officially endorsed by FMCA until recently, and is still endorsed by The Escapees RV Club, but FMCA has found a different provider for this important service.

We stuck around after the roundtable and continued chatting with folks in constantly shifting groupings. The dinner meal was planned for 6 PM, and by 5:30 preparations were well under way, so we started saying our “goodbyes.” We finally got our chairs back in the car at 5:50 PM and pulled out at 5:55. There were very ominous clouds moving towards the rally site from the north as we started for home and a severe weather watch had been posted.

To get home we reversed our route taking M-54 north to M-57 west through Clio to I-75/US-23 south. We stayed on southbound US-23 at the split with I-75 southwest of Flint and eventually exited onto M-59. Instead of going west towards home we headed east and pulled into the Hartland Meijer’s to pick up something for dinner and get fresh ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner with Steve and Karen.

The weather we saw approaching Clio from the north was just moving into Hartland as we left the Meijer’s, so it was a rapidly moving system. The storm clouds were very dramatic but we got back to the house and got the car unloaded before the rain came. The wind gusted strongly for a while but in the end we did not get as much precipitation as we needed or thought we would.

For dinner we had vegan burgers with all the fixin’s, oven-baked French fries, and fresh strawberries. It was 9 PM by the time we were done eating. We were both tired from our long, but very enjoyable, day so we went to bed earlier than usual.

2015/08/13 (R) Sanding Success

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Linda was scheduled to go into the bakery today but knew before we went to bed last night that the visit was postponed. That was just as well; we were very tired from our long day yesterday and slept in this morning.

Before I even had a chance to make coffee I spotted wild turkeys by the road in our easternmost driveway entrance. They walked past the east end of the house into our backyard. They hung around by the deer block for quite a while so we had a good long look at them and I took a few pictures. There was a big tom, a younger/smaller tom, and a half-dozen hens, one with a surprisingly small chick for this late in the season. The turkeys eventually moved on and we got back to our normal routine. While I made the coffee Linda made her own version of raisin, date, walnut oatmeal with some quick oats that she had in the pantry. It was very good.

We read for a bit but I needed to finish the blog posts for the last several days and Linda needed to return some items to the Howell Library and run a couple other errands. While working on the blog post for yesterday I realized that we had not loaded all of the pieces for the built-in sofa. I checked the pieces we had against the drawings, which we should have done yesterday, and confirmed that we were missing the two top pieces (E) for the support boxes (HVAC plenums) and the top piece (H) for the return air plenum. I texted Jarel and he replied quickly that he would try to take care of it in time for me to drive back down on Wednesday to pick up them up. It’s a 12-17 hour, 550 mile day, for me and costs about $60 in gasoline, so hopefully he will have the pantry done by then as well.

Linda got word from our son via TXT message that Shawna’s father, Mick, had passed away. He had an aggressive but non-cancerous brain tumor that did respond to two separate surgeries and was moved to hospice care about two weeks ago. Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline are cutting their vacation short by a day to head to the Grand Rapids area but are still leaving Tuesday to fly to Denver to visit Shawna’s mother, Carol, and her husband, Cliff. It appears that a memorial service may be in the works for the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd, in which case we will probably drive over.

My sister tried to call me today. Linda was on the house phone quite a bit today with bakery-related business so Patty tried my cell phone but did not leave a message. I was working in the bus at the time, did not have it with me, and Linda could not find it in time when it was ringing. Being deaf in one ear she cannot locate where sounds are coming from. She does a little better when she uses her BAHA, but rarely wears it around the house. I called my sister back and left a message and she eventually called me back and we got to talk.

Our father, who is 90, had been admitted to a hospital near where he lives. The staff said he appeared to have severe dementia, but he was fine (for his age) just a couple of weeks ago, so I suspected a stroke or some other sudden change. Patty sent me a text latter that the CAT scan of his brain revealed two recent lesions (last few weeks), the telltale sign of two strokes. She also said he was being transferred to Missouri Baptist Hospital, which is much closer to where she lives, for further care.

Those two pieces of news certainly put a damper on the day, and may cause an adjustment in my plans if I have to travel to St. Louis. In the meantime there is stuff that has to get done, so even though it was warm today and I wasn’t really in the humor, I kept working in the bus, off and on. I vacuumed up loose material, including inside the bases of cabinets, and then cleaned the wiring in the refrigerator alcove with Lysol. I decided to make a template for the refrigerator alcove plywood base filler panels so I could cut them the right size/shape on the first try. I then used one of the new ceramic sanding belts on the residual thin-set and mastic, and it worked! My sense of hope was renewed that I will be able to install the new floor correctly.

By 7 PM I was feeling drained so I wrapped up my work and took a shower. For dinner Linda made pan-grilled BBQ tofu with caramelized onions and served it open faced on a hamburger bun with a side of fresh steamed asparagus. It was delicious.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and The Home Depot in search of several items but only ended up buying another 36 grit sanding belt. I needed floor leveling compound but was not prepared to choose between their limited options. I also needed a self-centering drill bit but neither store had them. Lowe’s and THD really are focused on the tools and materials one needs to work on a house and its surrounding property. Things like self-centering drill bits, though useful for things like drilling holes for door hinges, are really cabinet-making tools. As big as these stores are they can’t, and don’t, sell everything.

I talked to Butch on the drive home. The self-centering drill bit that Jarel recommended for installing the pull-out pantry slides is a Vix and Butch suggested four places where I could buy it: Rockler, Custom Service Hardware, McFeeley’s, and Grizzly’s. Before ordering one I need to e-mail or text Jarel and ask him what size screw I need to mount the pull-out pantry extension slides.

Back home I thought of four other things I could have bought while I was out so I added them to my list. I then went to my office and worked on blog posts, updated the BCM Group page on RVillage, e-mailed Gary Hatt at BCM, responded to an e-mail from Howard (PlayaDog) re: screens for sliding bus windows, and started downloading Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 updates. Jack Conrad had responded to my earlier e-mail asking if he knew what was going on with the Arcadia rally and I sent him a reply. By the time I dealt with all that I was ready to recline and rest.

2015/08/11 (T) Sanding Prep

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Our day started with our usual morning routine. We were out of Linda’s homemade granola, so she made Quaker brand Raisins, Dates, and Walnuts instant oatmeal. This has long been my favorite oatmeal and I still like the taste and texture.

After breakfast we removed the containers of water from the bus fridge, rolled it out of the alcove, and unplugged it. We then moved it farther up into the coach, behind the front passenger seat, so I could work in the alcove and on the floor. We then got the Shop Vac up into the coach.

Linda left around 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark. They decided they want to get together and walk once a week and the Metropark, which is about half way between their houses, has as an extensive trail system.

While Linda was away I went to the FedEx Office store in Brighton and got a copy of the 11″ x 17″ sheet with the drawings of the seat and back cushions for the built-in sofa. I stopped at the Shell station and filled the tank as we would be leaving very early in the morning for Indiana.

Back at the house I vacuumed up as much loose debris as I could inside the coach. After checking my pantry drawings I decided I could stack at least two pieces of 3/4″ plywood, one atop the other, to get the base of the refrigerator high enough to allow the back to go over the bundle of wires that run along the junction of the floor and back wall without interfering with the pull-out pantry. This will allow the refrigerator to go into the alcove far enough that we can open the kitchen cabinet drawers under the counter to the left of the sink.

Linda got back around 12:30 PM. After lunch we were going to mask off the inside of the coach with painter’s plastic and tape. Our goal was to upkeep the dust that resulted from sanding the thinset and mastic out of cabinets and off of counters and woodwork. We planned to run the Shop Vac while sanding but knew, a priori, that it won’t suck up all of the dust.

After considering what would be involved in masking off the inside of the coach we decided instead to wrap the refrigerator in plastic to protect it and then tried using the belt sander on the residual thin-set from the old ceramic tiles. The old aluminum oxide belts failed fairly quickly, which was discouraging, but the sanding did generate a lot of airborne dust, which was encouraging as it indicated the sanding was actually removing material. Our Craftsman belt sander has a built-in dust collection bag and Linda was running the vacuum so both of those things helped.

Late afternoon we went to Lowe’s and bought a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 3/4″ (nominal) maple veneered plywood and a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 1/4″ SurePly underlayment plywood. We also got two #36 (very coarse) 4″ x 24″ ceramic particle sanding belts and a box of 200 3/4″ self-drilling screws.

Back home we unloaded everything and I then called Josh to confirm that he could still meet us at the Martin’s supermarket in Elkhart in the morning. I also called Butch to remind him that we were still coming down. The rest of the evening is lost to me, as I did not record our activities soon enough, but they probably involved e-mails, computer updates, and iPads.

2015/08/10 (M) Keep on Buss’in

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We have a doe and her spotted faun that have been coming in the early morning to the deer block we set in our back yard the other day. They were there again this morning and the block is close enough to the house that we got a good look at them through the bedroom doorwall. They must be comfortable with the setting as the faun wandered off towards the western part of our property and the doe let it go while she continued to lick the block. Eventually, however, the faun was out of sight and the doe headed off in that direction to find it.

We had cinnamon raisin toast and soy yogurt for breakfast, with orange-grapefruit juice to wash down the vitamins. I used up the last of the Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caff coffee beans for our pot of morning coffee. Keith usually mows our grass on Mondays and he came to the front door around 9:30 AM to ask if we wanted it cut this week. That’s the first time he has done that this summer but it was an appropriate and timely question. We have had very little rain the last couple of weeks so the grass had not gown much since last Monday and was a little brown in places. We agreed to skip this week, which I think was what Keith was hoping I would say. There was a high probability of rain starting around noon and I suspect he had another yard he wanted to cut before it started.

We have been very busy the last few days and I have not had time to do more than outline my blog posts. Linda needed to work on an analysis for the bakery so I spent much of the day filling in the details of my recent posts. Our days are very full and if I wait too long I cannot capture them accurately.

Linda looked up the information on the DTE Energy “Energy Efficiency” appliance recycling program. I called the 866 number and was assisted by Reginald. The earliest available pickup date was Friday, August 28 so I took that. It took quite a while to arrange the pickup but Reginald appeared to get all the pertinent information and give me a confirmation code and a phone number to reach the truck on pickup day.

Once the refrigerator pickup was arranged I texted Chuck to let him know the details. That prompted a return phone call and a conversation about refrigerators. Having seen how our swap went on Saturday he and Barb are also thinking very seriously about replacing the refrigerator in their bus. The rationale is the same as ours; the fridge is old, so it is noisier and less efficient than newer ones, and having it break on the road would be more than inconvenient.

Replacing a refrigerator in an RV, especially a residential unit in a bus conversion, is not like replacing one in a home. Access is a major problem and there is not a lot of space to maneuver it or get more than two pairs of hands on it. If they replace theirs here (in Michigan) their bus will be inside their garage/shop, the forklift will be available to do the heavy lifting, and trusted friends and family will be available to help. And, most importantly, they won’t be living in it and dependent on the fridge for preserving their food.

Before the day got away from me I pulled up the PDF of the manual for the wireless keypad for the large garage door. When I installed the new opener for the small garage door and reprogrammed the wireless remotes for our cars I inadvertently rendered the keypad inoperable. Reprogramming it was simple enough once I had the procedure. It’s the small, simple tasks like this one that become big burdens if not taken care of in a timely manner.

The predicted rain started around noon and was steady until 3 PM. It was just the kind of rain we needed; gentle enough to give it a chance to soak in but hard enough to provide a useful quantity of moisture to the ground. Six to 10 hours of this would have been even better but we were glad for what we got.

I had thought that we might mask off the inside of the coach today with painter’s plastic but with the rain and humidity, and plenty of other things to do, I decided to defer that until tomorrow. During the afternoon Jarel texted me a couple of pictures and a brief status update on our custom woodworking projects. Not surprisingly he is already well along on the construction of the pull-out pantry and has spray lacquered the pieces for the built-in sofa.

One of the photos showed one of the 1/8″ thick aluminum plates that will form the side rails for each shelf in the pantry. He applied a brushed finish to the plate and countersunk the screw holes so the heads would not protrude beyond the surface. Jarel did metal work at one time before he became a cabinet maker so he knows how to do this kind of stuff. He is also meticulous and takes great pride in his work. Given a choice I would always prefer to hire a craftsman who cares as much, or more, about the quality of their work as I do.

When I know I am going to have a long full day, such as this coming Wednesday, I will try to “write ahead” on my blog, basically outlining the plan for the day but obviously not filling in the details of things that have not yet happened. Along the same lines, I often use future blog posts as a planning tool. As things occur to me that I need to do I will note them in the draft of a future post. If the thing actually gets done on that date I flesh out the details, and if not, I move it to a new date.

I think I did several loads of laundry today and spent some time editing and uploading blog posts during the evening, but as I am finishing this post later in the week I have lost the details and will just end here.

2015/08/09 (N) Sounds of Silence

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Sunday usually means a trip to the Howell Farmers Market if the weather is nice. The weather was OK but Linda did some major grocery shopping last night and did not need anything from the market so we did not go. We were both tired from yesterday’s refrigerator swap, physically and emotionally, and wanted to take it easy today. I brewed a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee and we enjoyed that while reading in the living room. We eventually ate breakfast and then got ready for the rest of our day. For me that meant doing three loads of laundry.

I put the first load of laundry in the washer and then drove to The Home Depot to get two more drawer pulls. We also wanted to look at wall paper but they do not stock any. Lowe’s had a very limited selection of wallpapers, but we thought a couple of them might work if we could not find anything else. One, in particular, was scrubable and another was paintable. We also found one that we liked in a book of Allen-Roth samples. This was not something we needed to decide on the spot but it is something we need to get settled sooner rather than later.

When we got home we pulled the new refrigerator out of its alcove and plugged it in. I set the freezer and fresh food compartment controls to the “normal” mark. Linda filled containers with water and placed them in both compartments. I found the remote thermometer for the unit that is still mounted on the wall next to the alcove and set it in the fresh food compartment. The two thermometers are off by a couple of degrees in opposite directions, but close enough for what I needed to do as it will allow me to monitor the temperature without opening the door. The new refrigerator was much quieter than the old one, which was one of the improvements we were looking for in a new unit.

New fridge in alcove. Kitchen drawers removed. Floor being prepped.

When we got home we had a phone message from Jim, N8KUE, regarding motorhomes. Jim plans to retire from the Ford Research Labs in March. He and Pam are seriously considering getting a motorhome and are starting to research the market. We’ve said for a while that we would be glad to meet for coffee and talk motorhomes, bus conversions, and the RV lifestyle. I called Jim back, suggested that we meet them at the Biggby’s Coffee in South Lyon at 4:30 PM, and they agreed.

Linda tried to pull up the Arcadia Bus Rally website to get the registration form but the domain name appeared to be for sale. I e-mailed Brenda Phelan to find out what is going on. She and her husband, Bill, operate the rally. I then worked on the drawings for the built-in sofa cushions.

We had an early dinner at 3:30 PM and left for South Lyon at 4 PM and got to Biggby’s Coffee just after 4:30 PM. Jim, Pam, and their son Adam, were already there. We talked until after 6:30 PM and then drove the short distance to the Witch’s Hat Depot in the South Lyon Historic Village where our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) holds its monthly business meeting and program. One of the members, John (NU8M), a materials science engineer who works for Bosch, gave a very interesting presentation on the various processes that affect electronics as they age and can ultimately cause them to fail. It was a pleasant evening, weather-wise, and some of us lingered in conversation for a while after the meeting before heading home.

We arrived home hungry and had some hummus with sourdough pretzel nibblers and pita chips and a small piece of watermelon. I checked the bus refrigerator and the fresh food compartment was down to 34.4 degrees F indicated. The remote thermometer is off by about 2 degrees F but I don’t recall in which direction. I turned the thermostat to a warmer setting and will check it again tomorrow. We turned in for the night and Linda read while I wrote for a while before turning off the lights.

2015/08/08 Fridge Swap Gallery Post

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On this date we finally removed the old refrigerator from the bus and put the new one in. The exchange took place at Chuck Spera’s bus garage and he operated his forklift. John Rauch and his son John provided the much needed muscle and we had help from Randy, who owns the business in the suite next to Chuck’s shop. Here are 19 photos that show some of what was involved.

: Chuck looks out through the partially open window on the passenger side.

: Bruce (outside) discusses the window with Chuck (inside). The window is not fully open yet.

: Bruce cuts a pair of 2x4s long enough to hold the window open far enough for the bottom edge to be higher than the bottom of the overhead cabinets.

: The window braced in its fully open position.

: Chuck gets the forklift ready. He used two long forks with a long narrow pallet over them.

: The forklift in position to receive the old refrigerator. Linda put a blanket over the sill to protect it and the body.

: John and John have already picked up the old refrigerator and put it on the pallet. Here they are sliding it out and fully on the pallet.

: The old refrigerator is on the pallet with helpers on either side on ladders.

: Chuck backs the forklift away with the old refrigerator on it.

: Making sure the old refrigerator does not fall off to one side as it comes down.

: The old refrigerator is down. The two John’s got it off and carried it out of the way.

: The old refrigerator standing up with the doors back on and the shelves and drawers back inside. (This was done after Linda cleaned the interior.)

: John and John getting the new refrigerator onto the forklift pallet.

: Up she goes!

: Chuck brings the forklift in while Bruce (far side) and Randy make sure it does not fall off the side.

: Bruce and Randy help guide the new refrigerator into the bus as John and John pull it in.

: The two John’s get the new refrigerator into the coach and stand it upright.

: The new refrigerator in its alcove with the doors on, hinged on the left and opening on the right.

: Glamour shot of Chuck and Barbara’s 1993 H3-40 Liberty conversion (L) next to our 1992 H3-40 Royale Coach conversion (R).

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

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We overslept and did not get up until 7:15 AM. The weather has been very pleasant all this past week but we awoke to light rain. We left for our SLAARC breakfast at 7:25 AM and took a different route than usual to see how it would be for the bus. I headed north on Hacker to M-59, east to US-23, and south to I-96 east. The ramp from US-23 south to I-96 east is a left exit, left entrance, with a very short merge lane in the middle of a major construction project. I decided that was not our best option for the bus.

We arrived at breakfast at 8 AM to find a dozen people already there but at least 10 more showed up after us. We enjoyed the conversation, as we usually do, but did not linger and were on our way back home by 9:15 AM. As soon as we arrived we changed into our work clothes and got busy with the final preparations to move the bus to Chuck’s bus garage in Novi.

I pulled the bus out at 10:30 AM and Linda followed in the Element, which had all of the pieces we had removed from the old refrigerator along with tools, blankets, and some 2x4s. The bus roof was brushed by a few small, low branches getting from our house to N. Hacker Road, reminding me that I need to covertly trim trees and bushes along our street. I say covertly because they are not on our property. The last time I took the bus out we went south on Hacker to Grand River Avenue. This would have been our preferred route today except that the trees are not trimmed up in a few places and one of them, just before Bendix Drive, clunked the stuff on our roof pretty hard last time. I did not care to repeat that so I went north as we had this morning in the car.

At M-59 I headed west to Latson Road, a trip of some four to five miles in the wrong direction. The reason is that Latson Road going south has a relatively new, and easy to navigate, intersection with I-96. From there we had an easy run to the Beck Road exit, a short jog south to Grand River Avenue, an easy left turn, and the final mile to Chuck’s shop where we arrived at 11 AM.

Chuck had already pulled his bus out of the building and parked it out of the way but there were several trucks and a dumpster trailer blocking access to his door. They belonged to a motley crew that the owner of the building in front of Chuck’s shop had hired to clean up some of the mess left behind by the sunroom company that just moved out of the building. He had me pull up to the right and position myself to back up and then negotiated with the workers to move their vehicles. I pulled up the tag axles and waited. The workers were not happy about it but they did it.

To get our bus into Chuck’s shop nose first he had me back parallel to the building and then bring it around to the passenger side into a space adjacent to the front building until I was perpendicular to his door. I was then able to pull straight in but I did not pull in all the way. Chuck had me stop with the fixed window frame opposite his forklift which he had already positioned for use. The on again, off again light rain was not a factor as the window frame we needed to open was well inside his shop.

Linda and I unloaded all of the stuff from the car and brought it inside the shop. We realized that we forgot to bring the camera so Linda tried to capture the progress of the work with her cell phone camera. I have put those images in a separate gallery post for this date.

Randy, the owner of the Printology business in the suite adjacent to Chuck’s, came over to see what we were up to and stuck around to help. With me working from an 8 foot step ladder outside the bus, while Chuck and Linda worked inside, we opened the window frame about 24 inches and propped it with a piece of 2×4. I then carefully lifted the window higher while Linda sighted along the bottom of the upper cabinet. When I had the frame high enough to be clear of the cabinet Chuck measured the length of 2×4 we would need to prop it open.

It looked like 52 inches would do the trick. I had a 56″ piece of 2×4 so I cut it down to 52″ with my 7-1/4″ Rockwell circular saw. I used the first piece to mark a second piece on an 8 foot 2×4 and cut that. Linda took both pieces inside the bus where she handled one and Chuck handled the other. As I lifted the bottom edge of the window from outside the bus the window hinge (at the top) made some unpleasant (and a bit unnerving) sounds but I got it high enough that they could put the two braces in place and the frame did not come unhinged. We had just finished this task when John Rauch and his son, John, arrived at noon to help move the refrigerators.

The old refrigerator was lying face down in the bus. The two Johns lifted it as a test and determined that they would not have any difficulty moving it. Linda fetched one of the blankets and dropped it over the sill of the open window to protect it and the side of the coach. Chuck had placed the long forks on his forklift about two feet apart and slid a narrow pallet over them. He raised the forks and brought the forklift forward towards the bus. We got him to position the top of the pallet even with the top of the sill and about 3″ away from the side of the coach.

John and John are very strong and were able to lift the old refrigerator case and pass it through the window onto the pallet. With a person on ladders on either side of the pallet we slid the refrigerator all the way out. Chuck then tilted the forks slightly, slowly backed away, and lowered it down. John and John got the old refrigerator off the pallet, carried it out of the way, and stood it upright on its base. They then lifted the new refrigerator onto its back, picked it up, and placed it on the pallet. They went back inside the bus while Chuck brought the forklift up to the coach and raised the forks until the pallet was at window sill level. John and John slid it into the bus, stood it up, and rolled it into the alcove. I then secured it in place with a piece of 1×3 wood screwed to the floor across the front to keep it from rolling out while driving. There is approximately three inches of space above the fridge but it cannot tilt out very far before the upper back edge catches the ceiling of the alcove.

John, John, and Chuck raised the window frame slightly to remove the 2x4s and close the frame when the top hinge started coming apart. Linda yelled for me and I scrambled over to get another pair of hands on the frame. With me and Chuck holding the outside (free) edge and the two Johns holding the hinge edge I was able to see where the hinge was out and direct folks as to what to do. It took several tries and a few minutes (that seemed like hours) but we got the hinge re-engaged and then closed the window frame. We took a few minutes to rest and chat and Chuck showed John (the father) his race car. The heavy lifting was all done so John, John, and Randy took off, but before they did Linda gave John (the son) a gift for their new baby girl, Lucy Violet.

Linda and I put all the shelves and bins in the new refrigerator and then reattached the two doors. That was a bit of extra work as it came with the hinges on the right side but we needed the door to open on the right side. With the doors on we took a moment to consider our choice of size and color (black) and felt we had made the right decision. We started to reassemble the old refrigerator but we were all hungry and decided to go to lunch first. I started the bus and pulled it all the way into the shop so we could close up. Chuck then drove us down the street to Panera for lunch. We took our time and had a nice meal and a nice chat.

Back at the shop we decided to switch the buses around so Chuck would be free to leave. He wanted a picture of the two buses together so I backed ours out of his shop, swung around to the passenger side, got parallel to his bus, and then backed up so the nose of our bus was about 10 feet behind the nose of his. He and Linda then both took photos with their cell phones. When the photo shoot was done I pulled forward to the left and then backed in parallel to the building about four feet from the curb. That gave Chuck plenty of room to pull up next to me on my passenger side and then back around next to the front building and get lined up to pull straight into his bay just as I had done earlier.

Back in the shop Linda wiped out the inside of the old refrigerator and then we reattached the two doors. As she cleaned each rack, shelf, and bin I placed it back into the refrigerator. When it was fully reassembled we plugged it in. It came on, ran for about 60 seconds and then shut off. It obviously was not cold yet, and might have been cause for alarm if I had not dealt with this “problem” before.

I knew from prior experience that the defrost timer had probably disconnected the compressor and connected the evaporator defroster. Chuck pulled out three of his lawn chairs and we sat around waiting for the refrigerator to restart. The only thing missing was three cold beers. We knew the unit still had power as the lights were working. There was an outside chance that the overload protector (fuse?) might have blown, but I did not consider that to be likely. Our patience was rewarded about 25 minutes later when the compressor came back on. While we were waiting we gathered up our tools and various materials and loaded everything back into the Honda Element.

Chuck had a message from his wife, Barbara, with her ETA so we decided to settle back into the lawn chairs and kibbutz until Barb arrived. She showed up a little while later and Chuck got out a fourth chair and we sat in the shop listening to the sound of the functioning refrigerator and debriefing the events of the day. As a result of the window frame hinge coming loose I am now of the opinion that I did not need to remove the two stop blocks. I suspect they are there to “stop” the hinge from coming apart and I should not have removed them. Chuck is also thinking about replacing the refrigerator in their bus and is going to check with Prevost regarding these blocks. As much as anything I was annoyed with myself for the amount of time I wasted removing these blocks but what is done is done and I now need to reinstall the one block that came off undamaged and get a replacement for the other one, even though I can only attach it with one machine screw. Butch thinks he can make one for me, otherwise I will have to get one from Prevost.

Our local electrical utility, DTE Energy, will pick up used appliances. In the case of a refrigerator it has to be plugged in and running, which I presume means it is functioning and cooling the interior. If so, they will take it away and send us a check for $50. From our end that’s a good deal as we don’t have to pay someone to haul it away. Because of the R-12 Freon there are very few places that will deal with it. My guess is that DTE has a sub-contractor who will recover, clean, and recycle the R-12, which is no longer being made and has become very expensive. They may also recycle the copper tubing and electrical wire, and possibly the metal case and other materials. Even with the labor to do this work the unit must be worth more than $50 to them.

We all needed to get some dinner so we wrapped up our visit and started up our bus. I pulled out onto westbound Grand River Avenue followed by Linda in the car. At Beck Road we turned north and then got on I-96 westbound. The bus was at 3/8ths of a tank of fuel so I decided to stay on I-96 and go to the Mobil truck stop at M-52, a run of about 30 miles that would allow the engine and transmission to come up to normal operating temperature. Linda exited at Latson Road and stopped at Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

The Mobil truck stop is run down with a very poor, pot-holed apron and parking area, but there are usually several tractor-trailers fueling here when we pull in as it is one of only two places that a semi can refuel between Detroit and Lansing. There weren’t any trucks getting fuel when I pulled in but it was 7:30 PM on a Saturday evening and there were a half dozen tractor-trailers settled in the parking area for the night. I poured two bottles of Stanadyne diesel fuel additive into the fuel tank followed by two ounces of Racor Biocide. I then added 125 gallons of diesel fuel to the tank, which took about 11 minutes. By the time I paid for the fuel and was ready to pull out it was 8 PM.

I called Linda to let her know I was on my way and then reset the trip odometer. I drove east on I-96 for 10 miles to the M-59 / Burkhardt Road exit and got on M-59, which only goes east from there. Eleven miles later I made the turn south onto N. Hacker Road and completed the drive to our house. Linda heard me idling in the street, where I stopped to lift the tag axles before making the tight right turn into our pull-through driveway, and came out to help get me parked. Once I was positioned correctly I put the tag axle back down, let the engine low idle for a minute to let the turbo spin down and let the heads cool off and the temperature to equalize, switched the Level Low system out of drive mode, and shut off the engine. I shut off the air supply to the engine accessories, shut off the chassis batteries, connected the shore power cord, locked everything up, and went in for the evening.

It had been a long day and we were glad to have it behind us. I had been anticipating the refrigerator exchange, with some dread, for well over a month. The concern was that we would not be able to move the units out/in through the window frame, requiring us to remove and replace the lower passenger-side windshield, or that something would go wrong, like the hinge, and turn out to be an expensive and difficult problem to fix. With each passing day it was also becoming a bottleneck in our remodeling project, at least psychologically if not physically. But it was finally done and ended well. We will plug in the new refrigerator tomorrow to make sure it works. We tested it in Chuck’s shop when it was delivered so we expect it to work now. There is a lot of work to do but now we can get on with it and I expect it to go well.

In spite of being tired we stayed up and watched the PBS broadcast of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert they did live in New York City’s Central Park 10 years after they split up as a duo. Their music remains among my most favorite from my youth and it has lost nothing with the passing of many years.

2015/08/07 (F) Arrangements

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We had our usual, but never boring, homemade granola with fresh blueberries for breakfast. I brewed a pot of the Costa Rican half-caff coffee we bought yesterday without tasting it first. We found it to be somewhat bitter, which is not our taste in coffee, so we probably will not buy more after this batch is gone.

We spent a good part of the morning researching cabinet pulls on the Cabinet Service Hardware (CSH) website. We found a pull on the CSH website that appeared to be identical to the one from The Home Depot, which is a Rockefeller Antique Brass from Liberty Hardware. The one from CSH was a Belwith Keeler HH.P135-AB for $2.47 each. The one from The Home Depot was $2.48 plus tax but no S&H. Since we have the one from THD in hand and like how it looks we will probably buy them locally.

Many of the drawers in the bus have the pulls attached to the walnut face and then the face attached to the front of the drawer box. Thus, the only way to remove the pulls is to first unscrew the box from the face. I took the face off of one drawer and installed the new pull. It fit perfectly, confirming that the mounting hole spacing is 3″ center-to-center. The one from THD comes with 1″ and 1.5″ #8-32 machine screws but it looks like we will need something shorter than 1″ for the framed drawers and shorter than 1.5″ for the solid drawers. The cabinet doors have 3/4″ thick frames so the 1″ machine screws may work for those. Thus we should be able to use some of the machine screws that come with the pulls from THD but will have to buy some as well. The pulls from CSH do not come with screws so we would have to buy those anyway.

Linda left around noon to meet Diane in Livonia to see a movie (Ricki and the Flash) starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Rick Springfield. I went on an errand run while she was away. At The Home Depot in Howell I found 10 packs of the drawer pull we like so the price came out to under $2 per pull compared to $2.48 when purchased individually. We need 58 to replace all the ones in the coach plus at least four for the new desk drawers so I bought six 10-packs. We have not decided if we will replace the single screw round pulls on the two TV cabinet doors with the double screw pulls. If we do we will need a couple more pulls. If not, we will need two round pulls in the same style and finish, which THD also carries. I bought small packs of #8-32×3/4″ and #8-32×1-1/4″ lengths so I can figure out what lengths work best in each location.

Jarel called while at was THD. The plans for the built-in sofa had arrived in today’s mail and he had a few questions. We talked through the issues and came to the conclusion that it would be better for us to come down on Wednesday instead of Tuesday to pick up the desk. That will give him time to cut the sofa pieces and do some minor assembly and finishing. The plywood seat and side pieces need to be stained to resemble the walnut hardwood and a 3/4″x3/4″ piece of walnut hardwood needs to be attached to the front edge. He also needs to cut the piece of walnut veneered plywood for the front and then spray everything with the same lacquer he has used on all of the walnut desk pieces.

As I was finishing up at THD I also got a call from Chuck letting me know that everything was on track for the refrigerator swap tomorrow. My next stop was at the Howell Lowe’s for a 4′ x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood but I did not like their selection any better than THD. I ended up buying two quarter sheets (24″ x 48″) of birch plywood. This plywood has a lot of thin layers, so it is very flat and dimensionally stable, with defect free surfaces that are sanded smooth and very clean edges. These sheets will go on the bottom of the refrigerator alcove in the bus to elevate the new refrigerator above the new vinyl tile floor.

Back home I texted Josh at Coach Supply Direct, called Terry at A-1 Upholstery, and called Butch regarding the change in our visit date for next week. Linda got home shortly thereafter and helped me reattach the edge trim to the two doors of the old refrigerator and load them into the back of my car. We covered everything with blankets and then loaded all of the drawers, shelves, racks, and bins. Once the old fridge is out of the bus we will clean it, reassemble it, plug it in, and make sure it is cooling. We will then call DTE Energy to arrange pick up through their recycling program.

Loading pieces of the old refrigerator into the back of the Element to take to Chuck’s shop.

Linda bought an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza while she was out and cooked it for dinner. It is our favorite store bought pizza, and much better (for us) than what we can usually get at restaurants and pizzerias (with the exception of Satchel’s in Gainesville, Florida), but not as good as the pizza we had while Mara was here. That pizza was memorable.

After dinner I got a shower and then worked on the design/drawings for the seat and back cushions for the built-in sofa for the bus. I started editing blog posts for July but did feel like uploading them. We went to bed earlier than usual as we had to up at 7 AM tomorrow to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast.

2015/08/06 (R) Three Quarters Framed

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As usual, we started the day with breakfast and then enjoyed our coffee while reading and writing. Best Pest Control showed up mid-morning to apply the second treatment for hornets, wasps, etc. so we closed up all of the windows and doorwalls while they sprayed.

We located a Wayne-Dalton facility in Livonia so I called them. As I suspected they were the factory distribution center and would not sell to us directly. They did, however, give me the name of one of their customers, a business in Milford named The Door Doctor that had a retail store front. I called them and they had a 12 foot length of the required D-channel bottom weather seal for our small (8′) garage door. It turned out that they were not actually in downtown Milford but were more conveniently located near the Milford Road exit of I-96. When the pest control guys were done and gone I drove over and bought the seal.

Back home Linda made quesadillas for lunch and set out some yummy black grapes. We then made an errand run to Howell. Our first stop was at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea where we ordered a pound each of fresh roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff and Costa Rican half-caff beans. The Yirgacheffe is one of our favorites. The Costa Rican is something new for us.

Our next stop was The Home Depot for a half sheet (4′ x 4′) of 3/4″ plywood. They only had one type in a 4′ x 4′ size and I did not like it so we did not buy it. They had nicer plywood in full sheets (4′ x 8′) but I did not need that much and did not want to fuss with something that size. We did, however, find a drawer/cabinet pull that we liked and bought one to try out with our bus cabinets. It’s a Rockefeller style from Liberty in an antique brass finish for a 3″ center-to-center hole spacing. They also had a matching single screw knob in case we need it.

Our next stop was the Howell Art and Frame shop in downtown Howell to pick up three of our four pieces of artwork. The owner, Rick, had ordered the fourth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it. The three that were finished looked very nice and I would like to think that the artist, Ann Metzger, would have been pleased with our choices. Ann was married to my mother’s cousin and took up painting as rehabilitation therapy for breast cancer surgery in her early 40’s. She turned out to be quite good and was active in the St. Louis artist’s guild for many years. We have collected many of her works over the last 44 years.

We stopped at Lowe’s to look at their drawer pulls but they did not have anything similar to the one we got at The Home Depot. We stopped back at Teeko’s to pick up our coffee order and then headed home.

Back home we moved the paintings to the library and turned our attention to installing the seal on the 8 foot wide garage door. With the door all the way up we were able to slide the old seal out towards the larger door. I thought we could install the new one with the door in the same position without removing the track from the bottom of the door. That was, indeed, the case but it did not go in easily. I trimmed the ends and ran the door up and down a few times and made minor adjustments on each end until it worked properly. We still need to redo the side and top seals for both doors.

I tried programming the garage door remote control in my car the day we installed the new opener on the small garage door but wasn’t able to. At the suggestion of the woman at The Door Doctor, I Googled the model numbers of our various remotes and found the manuals. I had forgotten that the four 3-button remotes we bought a couple of years ago had to be configured before they could be paired with the openers. Once I knew how to do that I was able to program mine and Linda’s to work with both doors. Each of our children also have one and I will have to re-program those the next time they are here.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh at Coach Supply Direct about picking up the extra fabric we ordered, perhaps next Tuesday. I also e-mailed and texted with Jarel about picking up the desk pieces next Tuesday and possibly the pieces for the built-in sofa. He did not, however, receive the mailing tube with the drawings and cut sheet today, so we will see if that works out. I suggested he defer work on the pull-out pantry in favor of the sofa pieces as that will allow me to keep working while he is on vacation at the end of this month. He still owes us a price estimate for the pantry but at this point it almost doesn’t matter as he will be the one building it regardless of the number.

I talked to Terry at A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart regarding the sofa cushions. She and her mom, Lou, run the business. I last talked to Terry in early June and she remembered the conversation. I described once again what we were looking for and she gave me a rough estimate of the cost. She said we could stop by Tuesday morning to drop off the fabric and discuss the job and thought they could have it finished by the end of August. That would be great timing for us. We are starting to feel like this whole project will come together nicely once we get the refrigerators swapped and can finely get back to work on the floor of the bus.

I installed the new Morgan M-302N I.C.E. style lightning arrestor and connected the radio and antenna cables. I had a short QSO with Mike (W8XH) via the South Lyon 2m repeater and had no issues on transmit or receive. I started working on a gallery post of 45 photos from the ARRL Field Day event at the end of June but only got half of it done before dinner.

Linda made a delicious zoodles dish for dinner. Zoodles are zucchini noodles that she cuts with her SpiraLife slicer and uses in place of grain or rice pasta. The dish had the usual garlic, onion, olive oil base but also had shallots, mushrooms, kale, and sun-dried tomatoes. We had fresh watermelon later for dessert.

After dinner I finished the gallery post while monitoring the Novi and South Lyon repeaters. I then had a long QSO with Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR) that gave me a chance to test the M-302N lightning arrestor on both VHF and UHF at three different power levels. We continued to have the minor problem with quick, apparently random, audio dropouts on our Yaesu FTM-400 dual band radios. The apparent randomness has made it difficult to puzzle out what might be causing this and we all agreed that we need to set aside time to plan and execute a systematic test and record the results for analysis.

Butch called to chat about house (bus) battery cabling and other things. I mentioned that we would be coming down on Tuesday and would try to arrange our timing so we can stop and visit over dinner. We then watched The Princess Bride on DVD. It’s our all-time favorite movie and I long ago lost count of how many times we have seen it.

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

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Linda was up at 6 AM and left for the bakery around 6:20 AM, I think. I was more asleep than awake and did not get up until later. I wanted to do a load of laundry but needed powdered detergent which I did not have. I also needed to make a run to Lowe’s so I left to take care of my errands without making coffee or having breakfast.

I picked up a couple of 2x4s at Lowe’s that I will use to cut a pair of support arms for propping open the fixed window in the bus while we exchange the refrigerators. I was going to buy a 4’x4′ (half sheet) of plywood to cut for the base of the refrigerator alcove but did not care for the selection. I also did want to wrestle with the size and weight by myself. I will have to go back to The Home Depot with Linda to get what I need. I got my laundry supplies across the street at Meijer’s and headed home.

After unloading the 2x4s I thought I would program the remote control in my car for the new garage door opener. The procedure is very simple but much to my dismay the remote would not connect with the opener. The remote is a 3-button model made by Chamberlin, and both garage door openers are identical Chamberlin models. We have four of these 3-button remotes, one for me, one for Linda, and one for each of our children. We got the 3-button model because we have two overhead doors on our garage and plan (hope) to have a barn someday with an overhead door. All four of the 3-button remotes programmed to the large garage door without a problem and the new door opener came with a single button remote that works just fine, as did the large garage door opener. I won’t know if the problem is the opener or my remote until I can try programming Linda’s remote. If her remote will program then I know it’s my remote, but if it won’t program I still won’t know where the problem lies.

I had originally planned to mask off the interior of the bus today so I could start sanding the floor tomorrow but decided to put it off. Not only would the painter’s plastic be difficult to manage by myself, I realized that it did not make a lot of sense to tape it up in advance of doing the refrigerator swap. I was on the phone with Chuck arranging to bring our bus to his shop this weekend to take care of the refrigerators when our USPS carrier, Michelle, came to the door bearing gifts. Well, OK, they were packages, but I did not expect them until tomorrow so that made them more like gifts in my mind. One was from Amateur Electronics Supply (AES) and the other was from Morgan Manufacturing, so it was all ham radio stuff.

I went to my ham shack/office and mounted the control head for the Yaesu FTM-400 on the stand that just arrived from AES. I e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to arrange a time to test the lightning arrestor before installing it in our cable entry box. I then e-mailed Jarel to start trying to arrange a day next week to drive to his shop in Logansport, Indiana to pick up the custom walnut desk. Finally, I e-mailed Josh at Coach Supply Direct to make sure he was going to be around. I was checking out the TVFool.com website, which Steve recommended, when the art frame shop in Howell called to let us know that three of our four paintings were ready to pick up. They would have all been done but he ordered the forth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it. Linda then called to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery. So much communication, so little time.

When Linda got home we discussed going out to dinner and researched a new place that had opened in Howell. As usually happens, however, there is almost no place that serves anything we choose to eat and we ended up staying home. Linda had a couple of Boca burgers in the freezer and we had those with corn-on-the-cob and fresh fruit (peaches, nectarines, and strawberries). We eat better food, and in smaller quantities, when we dine at home.

After dinner I caught Steve (N8AR) on the radio and we agreed that I would bring the lightning arrestor over to his QTH at 8 PM. I had an e-mail related to the draft of the July issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and checked to make sure a correction had been made correctly.

At Steve’s house my lightning arrestor tested better than the previous one, and should work OK in my system, but it was very clear that there is something wrong with the design and/or manufacturing of these VHF/UHF I.C.E. units. We also came to the conclusion that the quality control testing the manufacturer was doing (if any) was inadequate to reveal the problem. I expect, however, that this one will work when I install it so if it is typical of their units most hams would not have a reason to suspect that it was flawed. Someone would have a problem with it, however, as it is clearly not usable for all frequencies from 40 MHz to 1 GHz as stated on the label. My unit has a 0.31 dB loss at 445 MHz (it should be 0.01) but has an 11.59 dB loss around 635 MHz, which is a huge factor of 16 times loos of signal, and the loss from 500 MHz to 1 GHz is unacceptably large making it useless in that range of frequencies.

Steve captured all of the data and e-mailed it to me. He then tested one of his Polyphaser lightning arrestors and sent me that data file. He also sent me the link to the VNWA software from SDR-Kits.com that I needed to work with the data file. We spent a few minutes talking about the problem we are having at home with our ham radio transmissions interfering with our OTA TV signals. He sent me a link to the free student version of the ELSIE (“L”,”C”) filter design software.

I left about 9:45 PM and called my friend, John Rauch, to see if Saturday noon would work for him in terms of our refrigerator swap. He said it would and that he would check with his son (also John) to see if he could/would also help. I will let Chuck know tomorrow that it looks like Saturday is a “go.”

Linda was asleep by the time I got home so I worked in my office until after midnight. I captured the data attached to the e-mails from Steve and then downloaded and installed both the VNWA and the ELSIE software. I then uploaded my personal blog posts for June 28, 29, and 30. I logged in to the FMCA Freethinkers website, the FMCA GLCC website, and the SLAARC website and installed updates for the themes and numerous plug-ins. With that I came back upstairs and worked on this post in the living room so as not to disturb Linda and finally went to bed around 1 AM.

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

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The weather finally turned cooler yesterday and the overnight lows dropped into the upper 50’s; perfect sleeping weather. We had the house open all day and left windows open overnight.

After breakfast and coffee we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning. I wanted to clean out all the remaining items from the drawers and cabinets before we start sanding the residual thinset and mastic. Our first task was to get the refrigerator out of the way. We laid it down on its face with cardboard under it and slid it forward and over to the passenger side behind the co-pilot seat.

We surveyed all of the storage areas and decided it would be easiest to remove all of the drawers from their slides with the stuff still in them. The drawer boxes release from the two side-mounted slides at the front via a plastic clip. The back edge of the part of the slide attached to the box then slides out from under a small tang, allowing the drawer to be lifted out. An added benefit to removing the drawers is that it will be easier both to clean them and clean the face frames on the built-in cabinetry.

Linda decided to go through all of the stuff as it came into the house, sorting it initially according to whether we should keep it or and throw it away. Of the things she thought we should keep the next step was to clean them if needed, or queue them up for cleaning. That included almost everything related to the kitchen. She reorganized the stuff that was already in the small bedroom, putting cardboard boxes in the recycle pile while I took some ham radio related stuff down to my office.

Linda emptying the inside of the bus.

By noon we had the kitchen and part of the bathroom cleaned out. I decided to take a break from bus work and install the new bottom weather seals on the garage doors. I unscrewed the mounting track from the bottom of the 16 foot wide door and removed it. It had years of accumulated dirt in it so I cleaned it out. With Linda’s help we got the new seal installed, using soapy water as a lubricant, and reattached the track to the bottom of the door.

Our luck did not hold up with the 8 foot wide door. Both doors are Wayne Dalton products but the 8 footer is not as thick. The bottom track for the weather seal is only about an inch wide and the replacement seal, which is designed for a “T” channel would not fit. Closer inspection suggested that the proper seal would have a cylindrical edge rather than a “T.” We checked online and found a supplier through Amazon but held off ordering until we had a chance to check for local sources.

We had lunch, after which I went to The Home Depot to see if they had any garage door seals that were different from the one’s at Lowe’s. They did not. There is a branch of our bank adjacent to The Home Depot so I stopped there and then headed to Lowe’s where I returned the weather seal for the 8′ door. I then bought a 400 foot long roll of 9 foot wide 0.31 mil painter’s plastic and four roles of 2″ painter’s tape. We will use this to mask off the cabinetry before we start sanding the floor or taking on other parts of the interior remodeling project that might affect the woodwork or furniture.

Back home I continued emptying out the house portion of the bus. (The basement bays are a whole other story.) In order to remove one of the last three drawers in the bedroom we needed to remove the bed platform. It is 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood sized to support a queen size mattress, definitely a two-person job. It is hinged about 18″ from the head end, so we folded that piece over and secured it on both edges with tape, shortening the total length by that much. It was still heavy and very awkward to handle, especially getting it through the cockpit and down the entrance stairs, but we managed to get it out. I used a hand truck to move it to the garage for safe storage. Linda commented that perhaps we should cut it down and switch to a full size mattress. I think that is an idea worth considering as it would give use more aisle space.

The storage base for the bed with the plywood platform removed.

The plywood platform is 80″ L by 58″ W so even after removing the 18” piece at the head end is 62” x 58”. That means it was not cut from a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood and would be almost impossible to replicate. Our mattress is approximately 78″ L by 60″ W whereas the foundation box (storage compartment) is 72″ L by 43″ W. Our full size mattress in the middle bedroom is 72″ L by 52″ W. Cutting the plywood platform down to full size (or building a new one) would gain us 8″ of isle space at the foot of the bed and 3″ on each side. That may not sound like much, and would be irrelevant in most bedrooms, but it would be a significant difference in the aft cabin of our land yacht. If we do this I would keep/store the existing plywood and build a replacement.

With the bed platform out of the bus I was able to remove the last three drawers across the back. The one farthest to the driver side, in particular, could not be removed with the platform in place. Another reason for building a new bed platform is that I can hinge it closer to the head end and use longer gas springs. This would allow it to open far enough to provide easier access to things stored under the bed and be able to install and remove the three drawers whenever needed.

Linda heated up some frozen breaded mock fish fillets for dinner. She made fresh vegan tartar sauce to go with them, boiled some corn-on-the-cob, and roasted some potatoes in the oven. It was a simple but very satisfying meal. After dinner I uploaded more blog posts, getting two of the three that cover the ARRL Field Day event done. That means I am almost through the month of June!

2015/08/03 (M) Happy 37

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Today is our son’s 37th birthday anniversary. Happy birthday Brendan. Linda sent him a happy birthday text and his reply confirmed that they are at Tahquamenon Falls in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

My main task today was to finish the design of the built-in sofa for the bus and get the drawings in the mail to Jarel Beatty, the cabinet maker in Logansport, Indiana. I dovetailed that work with breakfast, lunch, and a long chat with Pat Lintner from our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter, but by 2 PM the two 17″ x 22″ sheets were ready.

I was not satisfied with the quality of the copies I got from The FedEx Office store in Brighton so I drove to the store in Novi where their large sheet scanner/printer does a really nice job. Copies in hand I drove to the post office in Brighton, bought a Ready Post mailing tube, addressed it, put the copies inside, and sent it on its way. Back home I sent Jarel an e-mail letting him know the sofa drawings were on their way and explaining them a bit. I then settled in to continue uploading blog posts to our website.

Later in the evening I got a text message from Jarel with three more photos of the custom walnut desk. He had sprayed all of the pieces and was letting them dry. He planned to work on something else tomorrow but thought he would have the drawer slides and drawers installed by the end of the week. He will probably start on the pull-out pantry but wasn’t sure he would get it done before he leaves for a vacation trip on the 21st. It is unlikely that the built-in sofa pieces will be done by then and the HVAC chase cover needs to wait until after the desk is installed in order to get a final, accurate measurement for its length.

I will probably drive down and get the various desk pieces from him before he goes on vacation so I can install them as soon as the new floor is installed. I have to install the two fan-coil heat exchangers in the bases and redo the hoses before I can put the pedestals in place so it will be easier for me to do this at home. As part of the same trip I will stop at Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan and pick up the fabric we ordered for sofa cushions. If we decide to use A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart I will drop the fabric off there along with drawings of the cushions we need made.

For my evening relaxation I read a little more of “Number Theory and Its History” by Oystein Ore and then went to bed.

2015/08/02 (N) No Swap Sunday

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The forecast for today was for warm, humid weather so we closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioners as soon as we got up. We left around 9 AM for the Howell Farmers Market so I did not make coffee and we did not have breakfast. At the market Linda bought a nice assortment of fresh vegetables. I bought a bag of Kenya AA coffee beans from Teeko’s and some apricot and raspberry Rohlicky from the Czech Bakery. It turns out they are not vegan so I won’t buy them again.

We decided to see if John and Diane were available for dinner. We had no sooner made these arrangements when I got a text message from Chuck indicating that the coast was clear at his shop in Novi and we were good to go on the refrigerator swap. I talked to him shortly thereafter and indicated that we had assumed it would not be today so I had not yet cut the support 2x4s or found the additional help that we would need and, in light of that, had made other plans. That was fine with him and we agreed to aim for next weekend.

Linda surveyed her inventory of ingredients and decided that the warm Farro with dried cranberries and nuts would be a good dish to have Diane help make. Diane retired at the end of the school year in June and had asked Linda if she would show her some of the ingredients and prep/cooking methods she uses. Linda likes working with friends in the kitchen, sharing what she has learned and learning new things herself in the process. Diane is her longest term, non-family friend. As an English teacher she had lessons to prepare and papers to grade almost every evening. As a result John, who has worked most of his adult life as a framing carpenter, took care of preparing their evening meals. Now that Diane is free of her teaching obligations she would like to learn more about cooking.

Linda wanted some non-dairy ice cream for dessert so I was sent to get it. I went to the Home Depot in Brighton first where I bought some thin (1/8th inch thick) rubber sheet material, a small tool pouch, and 2-person forearm lift strap. The rubber material will be for the edges of the plywood in the new built-in sofa, cushioning the seat when it is closed. The tool pouch is for working on the tower (my carpenter’s tool belt is too big) and the lift strap is to help with the refrigerators and anything else heavy we might need to move.

The only place within a seven mile radius of our house that consistently has the non-diary “ice cream” we like is the Kroger on M-59 at Old US-23, so that’s where I headed next. In addition to the Coconut Bliss they had a cashew milk based product so I bought some of each. I bought vanilla and salted caramel in the CB brand and snickerdoodle in the cashew product. By the time I got home I only had a couple of hours left before John and Diane were due to arrive so I worked in my office and uploaded blog posts for June 16 – 20.

John and Diane arrived right on time at 4 PM. I opened our bottle of Viva La Roja from Heart of the Desert Winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we settled in to easy conversation. I found this red table wine particularly to my liking; very smooth with a hint of sweetness and no tannin.

Linda and Diane eventually started preparing dinner. John and took that as an opportunity to go look at the bus project. The ladies made a mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and other add-ins and put out a choice of dressings and sliced a loaf of Italian bread that they brought, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio that we opened to have with the meal. The main dish was Farro with dried cranberries, almonds, onions, garlic, and kale. It was all very tasty and well received.

By the end of the meal it had cooled off enough to sit on the deck comfortably. Linda served the cashew milk snickerdoodle non-dairy ice cream with fresh sliced strawberries and it was very good. I showed them what we had done with antennas on the tower and the cable entrance box and then we went back inside. John still works full-time so they left around 9 PM as it takes at least 30 minutes to get back to their house in Farmington Hills which is about a mile from our old house.

2015/08/01 (S) Refrigerator Swapping (NOT)

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We had a good crowd for our weekly SLAARC breakfast. We sat across from Mike (W8XH) and had a chance to discuss what to do about the ‘extra’ user accounts on our computers. We also discussed the release of Windows 10 that occurred on the 29th of July and all came to the conclusion that we would not be upgrading anytime soon.

When we got home I talked to Chuck on the phone. He said the sun room company was still moving out of the building in front of his shop and that there was still too much stuff in the way to be able to move our buses around. Given the circumstances we agreed that we would not do the refrigerator swap today and probably not tomorrow.

At breakfast Mike suggested that we look in the Users folder on our computers to see what files were associated with each of these previously unknown users and then delete the User accounts. It turned out that these users did not exist, or at least had no folders or files associated with them that we could find. Linda’s computer did, however, have a couple more folders in the Users folder that did not have User accounts associated with them. When we deleted each of the phantom accounts we were given the option of saving any associated files in a folder on the desktop. We selected that option each time but no such folders ever got created, confirming (I suppose) that there were no files associated with that account.

Bill, who takes care of the computers and software for the bakery, installed software on our machines when we first got them and Linda speculated as to whether these phantom accounts might have been inadvertently created at that time. At this point we will probably never know. We have strong security systems in place and are reasonably careful in how we interact with the online world, but it was a bit unnerving to find these accounts on our machines.

We were on tap for another warm, humid day and I elected not to do any work on the bus or in the garage. With the phantom User accounts taken care of I transferred the photos that I received of the custom walnut desk from Jarel from my SG3 phone to my laptop computer and edited them for use on our blog. I copied recent photos from my DSLR camera to my computer and then settled in to copy blog post drafts from e-mails into Word and edit them.

In the course of the day I did a couple of loads of laundry, worked on the sofa design/drawings, chatted on the ham radio, and took time out to have lunch and dinner, which was the left over Pad Thai. Having sat for a day or two the dish had absorbed the liquid and, although Linda thought the broccoli was now too soft, I liked it better than when it was freshly made. I also got to add a generous amount of peanuts, which is how I remember Pad Thai being served in restaurants. After dinner I started reading “Number Theory and Its History” by Oystein Ore.

2015/07/31 (F) A Blue Moon Family Gathering

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As soon as Linda got up this morning she busied herself making collard greens cole slaw while I made our morning coffee. Once the cole slaw was assembled and in the refrigerator we had breakfast. We were due at our daughter and son-in-law’s house later in the afternoon for a family gathering so we decided not to take on any overtly physical tasks today. We both got cleaned up instead and settled in to more sedentary tasks.

Linda has been getting somewhat regular text messages from Mara apprising us of her travels and I have been getting text messages from Jarel with photographs of the progress on the construction of our custom walnut desk/workstation for the bus. Linda worked at her desk and I worked in my office transferring the photos from my phone to my computer and working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Linda restarted her Samsung laptop computer (for some reason that I do not recall) and was presented with a choice of four user profiles for logging in. One was hers, one was named ‘Diane,’ and two of them where random letters. Until that moment we were unaware that these other accounts existed on her machine. She selected her usual account and logged in. I checked my ASUS laptop computer and discovered that I also had a user profile named ‘John’ of which I was unaware. We noted that we have, coincidentally, been good friends with a couple named John and Diane for 36 years.

I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to ask him about this situation. He is a friend from our local SLAARC ham radio club who works part time as an independent computer service provider and has become our ‘go to’ guy for computer issues that do not involve the bakery software or VPN. Because he is often working during the day I do not always hear back from him immediately, but we knew we would see him at breakfast tomorrow and decided not to do anything until we had talked to him.

We plinked away at our tasks until it was time to get ready to go to the family gathering. Brendan and Shawna were headed ‘up north’ and needed to borrow a few things. We had previously gathered up our portable induction cooker and battery powered camp lantern and loaded these in the Element along with the Thule car top carrier. We loaded the cole slaw, a bottle of wine for dinner, and a bag with a couple of gift bottles of wine and cards for Brendan and Shawna’s upcoming birthdays, and headed for Dexter.

Meghan and Chris are very interested in professional sports and today at 4 PM EDT was the trading deadline for 2015 Major League Baseball season. That’s a big deal if you are really into professional baseball. They had the radio on when we arrived and were following the trading action closely.

Meghan had obviously been hard at work on dinner preparations long before we arrived. She and Chris had acquired a Sous Vide, a countertop appliance for cooking foods in sealed bags immersed in hot water, and she was cooking country style pork ribs with two different sauces. The bags had been in the Sous Vide for over 24 hours and from comments during dinner the meat was obviously very moist, tender, and tasty. Meghan had also prepared tempeh for us. She had soaked it and then pan grilled it with the same two sauces; a classic bar-b-que and a mustard. Except for the meat everything else was vegan; collard greens cole slaw, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad. Meghan had a pudding bar for dessert that included vegan tapioca and chocolate puddings in addition to regular chocolate pudding, and lots of toppings.

Before dinner Brendan and I tried to figure out a way to mount the Thule car top carrier on their Subaru Outback but it became clear fairly quickly that we did not have the correct adapters and could not engineer a way around that. There was no possibility of buying them at this point so we put it back in our car to take home.

Grand-daughter Katie and boyfriend Josh arrived late having run into traffic on their drive back from Iowa. Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline were still there but getting ready to leave. After introductions Katie and Josh had dinner. Meghan then got out the “Ticket To Ride” board game. We played one complete game with me and Linda working as a team. This is Katie’s favorite game and she came in first. Katie is very bright but is also, apparently, very competitive. This was a side of her we had not seen previously.

By the time we were done it was dark so we all gathered up our things and bid each other fair well. It was a clear night and the full moon had just risen and now shone brightly over the land. It was a Blue Moon, the second full moon of the month, and the kind of evening that you could see well enough to go for a midnight hike in the woods. The next Blue Moon will be in January 2018, so that are not common events.

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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I had had a 9:30 AM appointment at Brighton Honda to have a drive shaft replaced and suggested that we just continue on to the Brighton Panera a half mile down the road for bagels and coffee. Linda never refuses to go to Panera so that is what we did. The Wi-Fi was out of service but we both bought things to read so we did not care. We sat in the two comfy armchairs by the fireplace, which was turned on, because the temperature inside was very cool, a frequent problem with this particular Panera store. We each had a bagel and many refills of our coffee cups and stayed long enough that Brighton Honda called to let me know my car was ready to be picked up. We left at 12:30 PM and Linda dropped me off to retrieve the ca.

Back home we had the leftover couscous with caramelized onions and the rest of the kiwis for lunch. Linda finalized her grocery list and headed off in search of food. I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Through the course of the day I had QSOs with Jim (N8KUE) on the Novi 440 repeater and with Chris (K8VJ), Steve (N8AR), and Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. I also installed an updated driver for the NVIDIA GPU in my ASUS laptop, installed updates on the older Sony VAIO workstation (which still has Windows XP Pro), installed updates on the Linux box, and took time out for dinner (a delicious red lentil potato curry) and dessert (very sweet watermelon).

I went back to work in my office and sent an e-mail to Mike (W8XH) concerning Windows 10. He replied via the South Lyon 2m repeater. We had a long chat from 10:10 PM to just after 11 PM that was joined briefly by Steve (N8AR). There was also a group QSO taking place on the Novi 440 repeater that I listened to in the background. After I turned the radio off and came upstairs Linda said it appeared that my ham radio transmissions were interfering with our OTA TV signals. The antennas are on the same tower but the OTA TV antenna is mounted below the Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm vertical ham antenna so I was a little surprised that it would be causing interference. The vertical antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern which resembles a donut sitting on a horizontal surface, so the location directly under the base of the antenna should be a region with very little signal. Apparently that is not the case and I will eventually have to do something to remedy the situation. For now, however, the solution will be to not use the radio when someone s watching television.

2015/07/28 (T) Mighty Dremel

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I got up at 8 AM. I must have been sleeping soundly as I was unaware until then that had already gotten up. She had gone for a walk and left me a note. The high temperature today is forecast to hit 90 degrees F and she wanted to get her walk in early. I fed the cats and checked the mouse trap in the pantry. We caught another one overnight so I carried the trap back to the northeast corner of the yard and released it.

I made our morning coffee and had just settled in to work on my iPad while it brewed when Linda returned from her walk at 8:35 AM. We enjoyed our first cup of coffee and then had breakfast. She made a batch of her fabulous granola yesterday but we have to finish the previous batch first.

Today was the day to get back to work on the bus. First I spray lubed the two overhead garage doors, both rollers and section hinges, and ran them up and down and back up. I needed to open them anyway to get out the ladder and tools and sometimes it’s better to spend an extra minute while you are thinking about something and just take care of it. Besides, I had no way of knowing if I would accomplish anything else today so at least the doors worked more smoothly.

This is where the “stop block” was located. The left screw came out but the right one did not. I had to grind it off.

In a very real sense our entire bus remodeling project hinges on getting the old refrigerator out and the new refrigerator in. The refrigerator swap, in turn, hinges on being able to open the fixed window panel on the passenger side of the bus. That panel is hinged at the top by a pair of rolled channels, one on the top back edge of the window frame and the other on the lower back side of a rail that runs almost the entire length of the bus. Most of the upper body side panels are hung from these rails and secured at the bottom with latches or other fixed hardware.

The window frame in question has two latches that can be released allowing the frame to swing open and provide an emergency exit, except for the two “stop blocks” in the upper outside corners which are attached to the frame (with two screws) just below the rail. As the name suggests, these blocks appear to stop the frame from opening more than about 10 inches. That would make emergency escape difficult but it makes it impossible to remove a refrigerator. We know these frames will open farther as someone posted a photo of an H3 on one of the Prevost bus websites with this same frame open almost 90 degrees (horizontal).

As I have described here before I successfully removed the left block and the left screw from the right block a couple of weeks ago but have been unable to remove the right screw from the right block. Early in my attempt to remove it I stripped the Philips head and things just got worse from there. I borrowed an impact screwdriver from Chuck, which successfully extracted the left screw but the right screw would not budge. I eventually bought and used three different screw extractor sets and broke two drill bits using one of them.

The Dremel with a cutoff wheel installed. The stop block was unusable by the time I got it of.

I borrowed a soldering gun and Dremel Kit from Chuck on Saturday and finally got around to using them today. The idea of the soldering gun was to heat the screw causing it to expand and then contract when it cooled. This will sometimes cause screw threads to separate from tapped holes. In this case the block was already turning relative to the shaft of the screw but the screw was not turning so I hoped the heat might free it from the threaded hole in the frame. To find out, however, I needed to create a slot in the shaft that would accept a flat blade screwdriver, in particular the large bit that is part of Chuck’s impact screwdriver kit. Enter the Dremel.

In order to create a wide enough slot I put two cutoff wheels on the arbor. The block is at the top of the window frame so standing at the highest safe step of our 8-foot step ladder I was at a comfortable height for holding the Dremel vertically and cutting a horizontal slot. The cutoff wheels are about the size of a quarter so the slot extended well beyond the screw head, or what was left of it, into the block. Using the Dremel was a last resort and I knew that once I made that decision the block was going to get destroyed.

The Dremel cutoff wheels cut through the block, which is aluminum, very easily and did not have any trouble with screw or the broken drill bits. The drill bits eventually loosened to where I was able to extract them with pliers. I tried several different screwdrivers in my newly created slot but to no avail. I sprayed WD-40 around the block and screw using paper towels to catch the overspray and clean up any runs. I kept cutting the block until I was able to pry it off of what remained of the screw. With less than a quarter inch of the shaft left I cut a slot in the end and tried to unscrew it but the tangs just broke off. I tried unscrewing it with pliers but it would not budge. The protruding stub would interfere with opening the frame 90 degrees so I used the Dremel with a cutoff wheel to grind the shaft down flush with the frame.

All the "stuff" I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Some of the “stuff” I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Linda came out to help at this point. I repositioned the ladder and then we unlatched the frame on the inside. Linda pushed it out while I supported it from outside. It opened farther than it had before but we did not try to raise it to a horizontal position. The frame/glass is very heavy and we did not want to risk having it come loose at the hinge. We closed the frame and latched it. I took a few pictures and then put all of the tools away. The weather was very warm and humid and that was enough outside work for today.

We had hummus, pita chips, and black grapes for lunch. After lunch I spent a few minutes in my office checking e-mail and then typed up the minutes from our July SLAARC meeting. I then started working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

I have a very long list of things to do but the furniture design remains a priority as I need to make sure Jarel has all the information he needs to keep moving forward on the custom cabinetry. Although I will be assembling the sofa Jarel will be cutting all of the pieces. I will be using a long rip of a full sheet of plywood and a long piece of 3/4 x 3/4 walnut hardwood as an edge band for the horizontal platform. In order to give Jarel a cut sheet I needed to design the unit. I also needed to design it so I knew it would fit when assembled.

I took an occasional break to chat with friends on the two local ham radio repeaters that we tend to use but otherwise stayed on task until late afternoon. I had pulled a book on cryptology from our personal library and started reading it. I took a nap before dinner and continued reading afterwards. Fascinating stuff, cryptology.

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

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I got up at 7:25 AM and fed the cats. There was a very large tom turkey feeding in the back yard by the basement walkout and just far enough out from the house that I could see him from the dining room doorwall where we keep the cats’ food dishes. He walked up the west slope and then cautiously headed for our lower deck. I kept an unseen eye on him from the kitchen corner window as he headed east towards the main deck. I thought he might have spotted Linda’s tomato and herb planters but he kept on going. Perhaps he caught sight of Jasper, or me, or his own reflection but something spooked him and he trotted to the east end of the deck. He had Jasper’s full, undivided attention by this point and just walked around until he decided to walk down the stairs into the east yard and around the east end of the house. I lost sight of him after that but we have seen turkeys feeding on that end of the house before and they have ready access to dense, protective cover from there. I suspect this is the same lone tom that we have seen feeding in Cory’s yard across the street.

I sat and played games for a while and then started working on this post at 8:15 AM. At 8:30 I caught a glimpse of a deer crossing the road into our yard by the main driveway but could not get up to get a better view as Juniper had settled in in my lap. Linda got up around that same time having finally gotten a good night’s sleep. I got dressed and made coffee. We finally had breakfast at 10 AM.

My initial focus for today was to finish the drawings for the pull-out pantry, design/draw the cover for the front half of the passenger side HVAC duct and wiring chase, and design/draw the small cover that will connect the chase cover to the left side of the left desk pedestal base and hide the heater hoses. I took occasional breaks to chat with friends on the South Lyon 2m repeater and finished my drawings at 4:30 PM.

Linda located a FedEx Office location in Brighton so I drove there instead of to the one in Novi to make copies and buy a mailing tube. The copies did not come out as well as at the other office so I rolled up the originals and put them in the tube. I checked to see what it would cost to have FedEx deliver the tube. Their cheapest method was going to cost $28 and take three days to get there so I went across the street to the post office and mailed them to Jarel in Logansport, Indiana it for $2.94. It will be there by Thursday and may get there by Wednesday.

When I got home I e-mailed Jarel to let him know the drawings were on the way. Linda then reheated various leftovers for dinner. I had started the day with an ambitious list of things I wanted to accomplish but by the time we were done with dinner I decided I had accomplished enough for the day and took an uncharacteristic nap. I had just woken up when Butch called and we chatted about buses for a bit. We turned in earlier than usual and watched Antiques Roadshow and the concluding episode of Ken Burn’s “The Dust Bowl” on the Detroit PBS station.

2015/07/26 (N) Rearranging

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I was up at 8 AM but did not make coffee as Linda was still asleep and the grinder is fairly noisy. I put the last load of laundry in the washing machine, cleaned the litter tray (which we keep in the downstairs shower), and then worked in my office. Jasper (the cat) came down to assist me but mostly ended up supervising.

All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.

I mounted the fourth (last) arm on the wall-mounted rail in our ham shack. I swung it back against the wall to get it out of the way as I do not have a monitor that I want to install at that position at the moment. I cleaned up the tools and staged them by the stairs and then moved the coiled coax out of the way and cleared a few things off of the desks so I could move the desks back into position. I left them farther out from the wall than before so they were appropriately placed relative to the three wall-mounted monitors. I then put various pieces of ham radio equipment back on the desks.

Monitors obviously need computers. I removed the Dell Precision laptop from my computer desks, removed the computer from the combination docking station and monitor stand, cleaned all of the pieces, and reassembled it. I set it at the left edge of the ham desks, slid it under the left monitor, and placed our old Icom IC-706 HF transceiver on the monitor platform, just for appearance sake. We are not using thus radio at the moment but it fit nicely in that spot.

I placed the GoBox with the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver and 12VDC power supply at the right edge of the desks, put the MFJ-998 Intelli-Tuner to its left (under the right monitor), and put the larger variable voltage DC power supply on top of it. The time we spent yesterday determining where to mount the rail on the wall was time well spent. The monitors are at a comfortable height for viewing when seated at the desk, tilted down slightly to avoid glare from the overhead down lights, and the bottom edges are high enough above the desk to permit sizeable equipment to slide under them. The desks are also far enough out from the wall to make it easy to attach and manage cables.

I rearranged my primary ASUS laptop on my computer desks and checked my e-mail accounts. I have had a discussion going on this past week with Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine about hats with the BCM logo and responded to a couple more of those communiques. Around 10:15 AM I heard footsteps and knew that Linda was finally up so I wrapped up the work in my office, transferred the laundry to the dryer, and went upstairs.

Linda was working at her desk and was not hungry but wanted coffee. She did not sleep well last night so I made a pot of Sumatra Manhelding which is NOT one of our half decaffeinated blends. I got myself a bowl of granola and had a large glass of orange juice. We spent the rest of the morning in the living room reading, writing, and menu planning.

The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.

I like to hear the grandfather clock strike 12. Besides the charming Westminster chimes, it serves to announce that the part of the day has arrived where I am supposed to get some of the physical work on my to-do list accomplished. Today, however, my #1 priority was to redesign the pull-out pantry so I limited my physical work to gathering up my tools from the basement and moving them to the garage, moving the bus back to its normal parking spot, and taking photos of cabinet details in the bus for Jarel. I mixed in a little e-mail, a few computer updates, some ham radio, and time for meals, but basically I worked at my drafting board most of the day and evening.

For dinner Linda made a very tasty dish that we had not had before. The base ingredient was rice and she used basmati even though the recipe called for brown. I prefer basmati rice to brown rice so it was a good substitution as far as I was concerned. The other ingredients were garlic, power greens, mushrooms, and blanched fresh green beans. She sliced and caramelized a large onion and used it as a topping. This was essentially a “1-pot” dish in that all of the ingredients ended up combined prior to serving. Linda makes a lot of dishes like this and we both like them. This particular dish had the crunch of the green beans, the chewiness of the rice, and the soft earthy character of the mushrooms held together by the garlic and olive oil and topped with sweet earthiness of the caramelized onions.

At 8 PM local (EDT) I participated in the weekly SLAARC Info Net for the first time in a couple of years and did so from the comfort of our ham shack. It was a pleasure using our new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band transceiver with our Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm antenna at a height of 40 feet and connected by good coaxial cables all the way through. Club president Harvey (AC8NO) served as net control operator and did a nice job.

After the net wrapped up at 8:45 PM Steve (N8AR), Andy (N8DEV), and I chatted for another 20 minutes trying to find some rhyme or reason why our Yaesu FTM-400’s are experiencing random audio dropouts. We did not get it figured out and wrapped up our QSO so Steve and I could check into the LARK (Livingston Amateur Radio Klub) net that started at 9 PM (EDT). This was the first time I had checked in to this particular net even though LARK is based in Howell and the repeater is closer to us than the ones in South Lyon or Novi.

The LARK Net was much briefer than the SLAARC net and concluded at 9:16 EDT. Steve and I went back to the South Lyon repeater where Paul (N8BHT) heard us and joined the conversation. When we finally wrapped up our testing QSO I went back to work on my pull-out pantry drawings. I was about to shut everything down at 10:45 PM EDT when Mike (W8XH) announced his presence on the South Lyon repeater. He was mobile but full-quieting and I did not experience any dropouts during our 25 minute QSO. I took a few minutes to e-mail Jarel and then called it a night. I had a few almonds as a snack, got ready for bed, and worked on this bog post for a while.

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Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

2015/08/30 (N) A Day of Rest (NOT)

2015/08/26 (W) Delux Delay

2015/08/24 (M) Skimcoating

2015/08/23 The West Side

2015/08/22 (S) Clean and Level

2015/08/21 (F) Have Fridge Will Travel

2015/08/20 (R) On The Level

2015/08/19 (W) If It’s Wednesday This Must Be Indiana

2015/08/18 (T) Walking Grind

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

2015/08/16 (N) A Send Off For Katie

2015/08/15 (S) Steve and Karen

2015/08/14 (F) Back-to-the-Bricks (Again)

2015/08/13 (R) Sanding Success

2015/08/11 (T) Sanding Prep

2015/08/10 (M) Keep on Buss’in

2015/08/09 (N) Sounds of Silence

2015/08/08 Fridge Swap Gallery Post

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

2015/08/07 (F) Arrangements

2015/08/06 (R) Three Quarters Framed

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

2015/08/03 (M) Happy 37

2015/08/02 (N) No Swap Sunday

2015/08/01 (S) Refrigerator Swapping (NOT)

2015/07/31 (F) A Blue Moon Family Gathering

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

2015/07/28 (T) Mighty Dremel

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

2015/07/26 (N) Rearranging