We spent the morning lounging around drinking coffee and enjoying the holiday. Hey, even retired people need a day off. Actually, we continued to research refrigerator, seating, and upholstery options for the bus, taking a break to have a tofu scramble and toast for breakfast.
We stumbled upon the Yale Appliance blog which proved to be very informative. Yale is a very large appliance store in the Boston area and maintains a blog about appliances. After reading what they had to say in some fairly recent postings we realized that we should probably not be looking for a “counter depth” refrigerator. It also appeared that our best bet in terms of case dimensions and interior volume might be a standard top freezer design and our best bet in terms of both price and reliability might be a Frigidaire.
We went to the Frigidaire website and found that the FFHT1621QB might fit our needs perfectly. It is a 16.3 cu. ft. top freezer design available in black, white, or stainless steel with doors that can be hinged left or right. (We need a fridge with doors the hinge on the left.) It is 28″ W x 30-1/8″ D x 64-3/8″ H and only needs 3/8″ clearance on the top and sides and 1″ in the rear. The depth includes the doors and handles; the depth of the case alone is only is 26-5/8″. Our refrigerator alcove is 33-3/4″ W x 29-1/2″ D x 66-3/4″ H so it will fit easily, recessing a bit more than our current 22.6 cu. ft. Jenn-Air and leaving 5″ to its left for a pull out pantry. The pantry will have be custom built and measure approximately 5″ W x 28″ D x 66″ H including top and bottom mounted slides/guides. Also of importance, we will not have to modify the cabinet above the refrigerator alcove.
In terms of seating we checked out Gilbreath Upholstery’s website but then concentrated on the Bradd & Hall website. Bradd & Hall is a well-known RV (& marine) furniture supplier in Elkhart, Indiana. They handle the Flexsteel RV and marine product lines and also sell the Lambright Comfort Chair product line, although the latter is available directly from Lambright in Shipshewana, Indiana. We have sat in the Lambright Lazy Relaxor Lite swivel recliner (wall hugger) at RV rallies and found it nicely sized and very comfortable for us. It is 24″ W x 33″ D x 38″ H and needs 2.4″ clearance from the wall. It is normally a free-standing chair so we are unclear whether it can be secured to the floor or be used with seat belts. We plan to visit Bradd & Hall on Monday, June 1 before we check into the GLAMARAMA rally and this is one of the things we will ask about.
Bradd & Hall also sells a Flexsteel Barrel Chair with a bolt down pedestal base that locks in different positions and includes a bar for attaching seat belts. It is 26″ W x 30″ D x 34″ high and might be a better fit for our bus and what we are trying to accomplish with our remodeling project. Last, but not least, they sell Flexsteel Captain’s Chairs (which Flexsteel calls “bucket seats” on its website). We need a chair of this type to replace the oversized front passenger chair and possibly to replace the driver’s chair. My hope, however, is to get an ISRI 6800 seat for the driver’s position. These are the seats that are normally installed on tour buses.
An advantage to getting everything from Bradd & Hall, except for the ISRI driver’s seat, is that we can get the same fabric on the passenger Captain’s chair and living room chairs and buy additional materials to have the seat and back cushions made for the sofa that I will build (with storage underneath). We will probably find a folding chair for the desk and can have the seat recovered in the same material so that everything is coordinated.
Linda called the J. C. Penney’s salon to see if Renee was working and had openings. She was, and she did, so Linda booked a time, grabbed her car keys, and headed to Twelve Oaks Mall. That seemed like an opportune time for me to head to the bus to double check measurements and ponder design solutions. I checked the dimensions of our refrigerator alcove and the Frigidaire FFHT1621QB will definitely fit very nicely. The front part of the passenger side of the bus has 13′ 3″ of flat floor space available for a desk and two chairs with a small dining table between them. On the driver side of the bus the aft end of the sofa nook is 7′ 2″ from the entrance step. If I can fit both chairs and the table in the first 7′ 2″ on the passenger side we will have room for a 6′ long desk that is 26-1/2″ deep. That’s long enough to have a file drawer on one end and a printer shelf on the other end with plenty of room in between for a chair.
We have been planning on reusing the Corian top from the old dinette table so I decided to disassemble the top from its base. I had never really looked at the construction before now and discovered that the Corian is glued to a wood panel that is secured to the two massive posts that are screwed to the base. I was able to disconnect the base from the posts easily enough but there did not appear to be any way to separate the Corian from the support structure. I took a few whacks at it with a pry bar and small sledge hammer and it was clearly not going to come loose.
The good news is that we can now select a new table top in whatever size, shape, and material suits us and use the same material for the desk top, which will double as additional kitchen counter space. Our assumption has been that we will use Corian, but Corian is heavy so we will consider other options before making a final decision. We discussed extending the desk top all the way down the wall to the front of the living room, although it would only be about 6″ deep at most, and building shallow cabinetry to go under it and fill in the space above the HVAC chase and below the window trim. That space will essentially be wasted otherwise, and have to be finished in some way, so building small storage spaces is worth considering with or without the extended desk top.
What all of this comes down to is that we have to select the two chairs we want to use in conjunction with figuring out the table size and support system, and then finalize the design of the desk. We plan to recondition all of the woodwork (with Touch of Oranges and Touch of Beeswax) and replace the refrigerator before we install the new floor, which has to go in before the furniture. That’s the order in which decisions have to be made and the work has to be done. Chairs and custom woodwork are potentially long lead items so we need to get them finalized and ordered, but they are the last things to get installed, so it should work out OK in the end.
It rained hard for a brief time mid-afternoon, after which Linda went for a long walk. She was walking almost daily this winter in Quartzsite, Arizona but has not walked much since we got home. That gave me time to work on this blog post.
Earlier in the day we snacked on nuts instead of having lunch. Linda made whole wheat capellini for dinner using the Portobello mushrooms and some of the asparagus we bought yesterday at the Howell Farmers Market. It was delicious.
I had intended to work at my computer most of the day but that obviously did not happen. When I finally went to my office after dinner I had a long chat on the phone with Butch about hardware for the slide out pantry and other bus-related things and then checked a few websites that he suggested as good sources of specialized hardware. I then e-mailed GLCC members about parking with the chapter and took care of some other e-mail. In addition to computer-based work I need to keep working on the bus but I am also at the point where I need to order some things and then settle in and work on drawings for the desk, pantry, and sofa.