We both took Advil PM before bed last night as both of us were sore and tired from a long day of work and needed a good night’s sleep.  We awoke at 8 AM to dense fog but it was not unexpected as I saw the advisory on the weather forecast before I went to sleep last night.  I made a pot of the Costa Rican half-caff coffee while Linda washed blueberries and got our granola ready.  We enjoyed our coffee in the living room with the cats on our laps and listened to Dr. Michael Greger’s daily research summary on NutrionFacts.org.

We were still a bit tired and sore but finally got back to work on the bus at 10:30 AM just as Keith showed up to mow the grass.  After opening up the bus and the “workshop”(garage), and getting out the air-compressor and hooking it up, we got the piece of underlayment out of the bedroom that we cut last night but still needed to trim.  I cut about 1/8″ off of the passenger side end and cut off the front corner on that end so it would clear the piece of vertical trim.  With those adjustments it dropped into place and I stapled most of it to the subfloor.  I would have stapled the whole piece but we ran out of staples.

We had already measured and drawn the second piece for the bedroom but without staples we were at a standstill.  Linda needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store, so we closed up the house and bus and made an errand run.  I dropped her at Meijer’s and drove across the street to Lowe’s.  I bought another pack of 1,000 #18 staples, 3/4″ with 1/4” crown because that was the smallest quantity they sell.  I also picked up a small bottle of pneumatic tool oil.  I drove back to Meijer’s and waited in the parking lot for Linda to emerge.  When she did she had eight grocery bags.  I guess “a few things” is relative.  She got a real hamburger patty and one slice of real cheese from the deli to serve to Kate tomorrow night.

Once we had the groceries unloaded and put away we got back to work on the underlayment.  I laid out the next piece for the bedroom which had 11 angles.  Even though I worked from a consistent reference point the numbers did not quite work out so I took additional measurements and made adjustments accordingly.  When I was satisfied that the layout was close to correct we cut the piece out of the partial panel.  I then cut it in half crossways to create two pieces each of which could be installed.  We started with the half piece closest to the driver side.

Keith finished cutting the grass and came to get his check so we gave him the inside tour of the bus.  He had seen the front part before but never been all the way to the back.  He recognized that it was an ambitious project.

The other half of the back bedroom piece, towards the passenger side, took some tweaking but we finally got it in and stapled.  The last piece for the bedroom should have been the easiest, a 42″ x 18″ rectangle for the aisle at the foot of the bed/storage box.  It wasn’t a perfect rectangle, of course, so it also required adjustments.  Things that should be at right angles rarely are and the flanges on the bottom of the HVAC chases do not have straight edges as I assumed they would.  The adjustments are usually small but necessary to get the pieces to fit.  So it was with the last piece for the main floor.

We thought we were done when Linda noticed a small “L” shaped area around the media cabinet behind the driver’s seat.  We still had pieces of underlayment left over that were big enough to cut this piece.  After measuring carefully and laying it out the numbers were once again not adding up.  We still had the piece of art board that I used to create the templates for the base of the refrigerator alcove so I laid out the “L” shape on that but made it larger than needed.  We positioned the template in the bus, trimmed the inside corner (not 90 degrees) and then marked where all the edges needed to be by tracing from underneath.  I trimmed the template down and checked the fit.  It looked good so I transferred it to the underlayment and we cut it.

We were finally done with the main floor underlayment so we cleaned up the bus by moving stuff to the garage/workshop.  I disconnected the DeWalt 15 gallon air-compressor, moved it to the driveway by the garage, and opened the drain valve on the bottom,  it had a LOT of water inside which reminded me that I really need to set up a water separator and inline oiler for use with this thing.  Linda coiled up the power cord while I coiled up the air hose and stored it with the air-compressor in the front corner of the garage.

Somewhere in the middle of all this work we stopped and had lunch around 3 PM.  It was now 6 PM, too early for dinner, so we decided to get cleaned up and go to Lowe’s to look for metal tile edging.  As long as we were going to be out I thought we might drive over to Chuck’s shop in Novi to look at the air ride seat base.  I called Chuck to see if that would work and he was headed that way anyway, so that is what we did.  The Lowe’s in New Hudson did not have what we were looking for but the associate suggested that we try Blakely’s on West Road near Beck Road in Wixom.  Chuck was still at his shop when we arrived so we had a nice chat, got the air ride base, and then went our separate ways.

It was 8:30 PM by the time we got home.  I spent a few minutes checking e-mails and then we sat down to dinner at 9:15, a simple meal of mock fish fillets with vegan tartar sauce and fresh steamed Brussels sprouts.

I continued checking and responding to e-mails after dinner and then checked into RVillage.  I posted a comment on a new topic in the Friends of Curtis YAY! group and a few minutes later got a call from Curtis.  After catching up on each other’s activities and whereabouts he e-mailed me a couple of things to read and react to.  When we concluded our chat I watched the 3rd installment of the video update series from Technomadia about the renovation of their vintage GM4106 bus conversion at MasterTech in Elkhart, Indiana.  I sent them an e-mail regarding a pet friendly hotel that we used years ago when our Golden Retriever (Einstein) was still alive and went with us on a week-long visit to Elkhart to tour motorhome factories.  (Einstein’s AKC name was Karie Jame Ricky Ricardo.  We got him from the Karie Jame breeders and he was from the Latin Lovers litter.)  It was then off to bed to write for a while before going to sleep.