Tag Archives: interior remodel (H3-40)

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

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!

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34

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Ron and Mary had a long drive yesterday, and an exhausting 10 days prior to that, so they went to bed tired. Consequently they did not get up early and I did not make coffee right away. I was up at 7:30 AM and went to my office instead. Chris at KF7P Metalwerks accepted my change to the cable entrance box late last night and sent me a PayPal invoice. I paid that this morning and e-mailed him back to clarify and confirm a couple points about the box. Once everyone was up we had coffee (us) and tea (them) on the back deck and enjoyed a beautiful early summer morning. We eventually went back inside and had the granola for breakfast that Linda made yesterday. So good.

After breakfast we gave them a tour of our partially disassembled motorcoach and explained what we are trying to do. I mentioned that the motorized windshield roller shades were not winding up straight and that the driver side was binding part way up. One of the MCD vendors at the rally last week told me to put a piece of tape on one end (lengthwise) to force the shade to not run (in that direction). Ron, who is a retired mechanical engineer, suggested that I create a tapered roller by putting tape around the roller tube at 5 to 7 places. The tape cannot go all the way around the roller tube because of the shade but it can go most of the way around. Ron’s suggestion was one layer towards the outside, two layers next, then three layers and finally four layers in the center. These tapered rollers are commonly used in industry to keep conveyor belts centered.

We had just exited the bus when a minivan that I did not recognize pulled in our driveway. It was the electric power company meter reader. We chatted briefly, and she was very nice but was obviously on a tight schedule.

Ron and Mary needed a duffle bag and some batteries so we drove to the Dick’s sporting goods store at US-23 and Lee Road. They found a nice duffle bag but not the batteries so we stopped at Meijer’s on the way back to the house and they found what the needed there. We also picked up a card for our daughter, Meghan, whose 34th birthday was today.

Back at the house we called Meghan and wished her a happy birthday via voice message. We got a text message later saying thank you. We also had a voice message on our home phone from Pat Davidson at Apex Roofing indicating that the shingles for our new roof would be delivered on Monday. For lunch we had pretzels and pita chips with hummus and some grapes. I slipped off into the small bedroom and opened the box from Cellular Solutions to make sure everything was there. It was.

Although Ron and Mary slept well last night they were still tired and decided to take naps. That left Linda free to go for a walk and me to work in my office. I transferred rough drafts of blog posts from my e-mail to MS Word and then started editing them but did not have time to upload them to WordPress before we had to leave to go to dinner.

We left around 5:15 PM for La Marsa. They were in the second of two days of their 4th year celebration for the Brighton location and everything was 34% off. They were backed up 90 minutes for carry out orders but we got a table after only a short wait. We had Koshary and they had kabobs. After dinner we went for a walk around the Brighton Mill Pond where we saw two gigantic snapping turtles in the pond. One of them almost caught a muskrat and they eventually bumped into one another and seemed to be fighting. It was quite the show. Snapping turtles are nothing to mess around with and the shells on these two were about 2 feet long, front to back. Gigantic.

When we got back to the house we played 13 rounds of Mexican Train. By the time we finished it was midnight and we all got to bed around 12:15 AM.

2015/05/28 (R) Ice Cold Internet

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I was up until after 1 AM last night fussing with my computer but the OS was updated and was running better (I think) when I finally went to bed. I need my beauty rest so I did not get up until 9 AM this morning. Linda had already made coffee so I checked the temperature of the refrigerator (41.4 degrees F) and then got out the soy creamer. 41 is better than 45 but given where the thermostat was set the temperature in the fresh food compartment should have been 35 degrees or lower. We had a very late breakfast of homemade granola and small glasses of orange juice to wash down our vitamins.

Because I did not get to upload any blog posts last night I switched up my routine and spent the morning working at my desk. The weather was very nice so Linda went for a long walk. My computer was back to normal and I managed to upload nine posts to my blog (May 10 through 18) by 1 PM.

I had an e-mail back from Ken Schramm yesterday letting me know that his “last day at Wayne RESA” gathering would get underway around 3:30 PM at Ashley’s Beer & a Grill at Westland Mall. Brendan and Shawna’s celebration is from 5 to 8 PM in Ann Arbor so we will be able to attend both events although we might not make it to Ann Arbor until 6 PM.

Today was our friends’ 44^th wedding anniversary. Butch and Fonda were married the same year we were one day before us. We did not know each other then but are now friends through our mutual passion for converted highway buses.

Brendan called and talked to Linda. It turns out that tomorrow is grandparents/special friends Shabbat at Madeline’s daycare center and Brendan thought we might want to attend. It starts at 10:30 AM and includes lunch. The food at the daycare center is vegetarian but not vegan so we will see how that works out. Brendan is going to take care of Linda’s plants so we will take these with us and go to his house when we are done at the daycare center. I will pick up our electric pressure washer while we are there so I can wash the bus on Saturday. We were going to buy cards today for Ken, Brendan, and Shawna but decided we would do that tomorrow on our way to Ken’s gathering.

Linda made large green salads with chickpeas for lunch. We both put on a few pounds over the winter and really want/need to take them off. After lunch I worked in the bus. I removed the wood trim along the top of the beveled strip mirrors on the wall in hallway. The strips were glued directly to the wall so I put the trim back on. If we do not want to see these mirrors we will have to figure out some way to cover them.

There was a triangular horizontal panel between the upper edges of the J-lounge and the dinette with four switches mounted in it. Two of those switches no longer control anything but the other two still do. I secured the panel above the passenger side HVAC chase and blocked it in so it could not move. I dressed all of the loose wires with cable ties and cable clamps and secured them to the floor. I cut two grates from a piece of expanded metal and secured them over the two holes in the driver side HVAC chase where the sleeper-sofa was installed. That sealed up the last of the holes that the cats might get into. If one of them got into the HVAC system we would have disassemble half the bus to get them out.

I removed all of my tools and miscellaneous parts from the bus and set them on steps leading to the house. I had put one of our folding chairs inside the bus to sit on and moved it to the location of the passenger chair as a safety barrier after I moved the trash can out yesterday. I folded it up and put it back in the bay where it is stored. While Linda vacuumed the inside of the coach with our Shop-Vac I put tools and parts in the garage or back into the appropriate tool boxes. When she was done we got the Shop-Vac out of the bus and put it in the garage.

There is a maple grab handle on the right side of the entrance stairs (as you enter the bus) attached to a piece of maple trim from the back side. The finish is worn and the handle is loose. I wanted to tighten it, which required access to the back of the trim board. Linda recalled that we had Creative Mobile Interiors (CMI) tighten this handle when we first got the coach so we figured there had to be a way to get to the back of the trim board.

We removed the cockpit HVAC access panel just below the trim board but it did not appear to provide access to the back of the trim board. I removed the only two screws I could see (at the right end of the trim) but it still would not come loose. I figured the trim board had to be screwed on somewhere else and the only possible place was under a piece of inset brass finish trim. This brass trim is used throughout the bus, including around the edges of the Corian counters, and has an adhesive backing. I have found screws under it in other places so I pried the end up and peeled it out, revealing three screws.

I thought I was on the verge of success until I removed the three screws but still could not get the trim board loose. I tried prying it at various points with a screwdriver but it would not budge and we finally came to the unhappy conclusion that it was glued on. Perhaps it is secured from underneath in some manner that we did not see but I will have to return to this when I have more time. Linda suggested that we cut the handle off and install a new one that can be screwed on from the front. She’s a clever girl. As long as the access panel was off we vacuumed out the cockpit HVAC system and then replaced the panel.

About this time a UPS truck went by headed deeper into our neighborhood. Since we live on a dead end street I knew the truck would be coming back so I waited for it and flagged down the driver. I explained to the young man that we had two packages delivered to the wrong house in the same week about a month ago and that I had called the 800 number and talked to customer service but I would appreciate it if he would mention it to his colleagues as we will be ordering a lot of stuff starting in the second week of June. He was very nice and said he would.

Our last bus task for today was the hard one. We moved the passenger chair from the garage back to the bus using a hand truck so we did not have to carry it. It is very heavy but with Linda guiding the top and me supporting the base we got it inside and set in position. We tilted it fore and aft so I could slide the mounting studs into position and line them up with the holes in the base. I then bolted it down to the support rails by tightening the four nuts.

This was all trickier than it sounds. The bolts have square flanges that have to engage in the open slot of the channel to keep them from turning while being tightened or loosened. But that required me to pull up on the studs as the nuts were not going on that easily. As when I took the nuts off, I had to wedge one of them up with a screwdriver while I got the nut tight enough that the bolt would not spin. I reconnected the power to the chair and we checked that all of the adjustments still worked, especially the footrest.

With the installation of the passenger seat we were done working on the bus until after GLAMARAMA and have two seats with seatbelts so we can tow the car rather than drive it separately. This will be much nicer for us and the cats, although I expect the modified interior will freak them out initially. We will be gone most of Friday but have Saturday to prepare food, reload the coach for the week, and wash the exterior. Oh the joys of owning a converted coach.

For dinner Linda served the last of the whole wheat capellini with Portobello mushrooms and asparagus and steamed some broccoli. A piece of whole wheat bread and a small glass of Leelanau Cellars Winter White wine completed the meal. We had watermelon for dessert later.

I returned to my office after dinner and updated our Rand-McNally RVND 7710 GPS. I then continued uploading blog posts. By the time I quit working around 10 PM I had uploaded nine more posts and was caught up! I think 18 posts in one day may be my all time record. I did not get to work on articles for BCM, or copy files between our NAS units, but I was satisfied with what we had accomplished today.

2015/05/24 (N) Nuts to That

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We had our usual coffee and breakfast granola but made a more leisurely morning of it than normal. We finally got dressed around 11 AM and headed to the Howell Farmers Market at 11:20 where we bought another bar of soap from Marjorie. I got to pick this time and chose the ginger-grapefruit. We bought the Eucalyptus soap two weeks ago and Marjorie suggested letting them air dry for two weeks before using them. We will see how long the Eucalyptus bar lasts once we start using it and that will tell us how often we need to purchase from her to stay ahead of our usage, allowing for drying time.

We stopped at Lowe’s to return the “white” toilet seat and buy a “biscuit” colored one. We looked at pipe wrenches but did not buy one. I did by a 14 TPI, 6″ long blade for my Sawz-All that said it would cut metal up to 1/2″ thick. I still hoped to get the nut off of the trailer ball on the lawn tractor without having to cut the threaded stud, but the blade was my backup plan.

We had a brief confab regarding the motorcoach refrigerator alcove and cabinet. I found my small plumber’s toolbox and it had several pipe wrenches inside. I took the largest one and checked to see if/how it would fit the trailer ball on the lawn tractor. It opened more than wide enough and looked like it would snug down tight around the throat of the ball (between the ball and the hex flange base). Linda kept the pipe wrench from slipping out of position on the ball while I used the torque wrench with the 3/4″ drive, 1-1/8″ socket to remove the nut. It was still a bit of work but we got the ball off without cutting, cracking, or heating. I then backed the lawn tractor up to the utility trailer and Linda connected the trailer yoke to the tractor tow plate.

Next we tackled the hall bathroom toilet seat replacement. Once again we encountered nuts that would not come off. This time the nuts were a hard plastic but the bolts were rusted and the nuts would not turn. I eventually cut through the two plastic nuts with a utility knife and pried them apart allowing us to remove the old retaining bolts. We installed the new seat/lid which came with its own special bolt and elongated plastic nut. The nuts had special tips designed for 1/2″ sockets and engineered to break off when tightened to just the right point. We had both nuts torqued down and broken off but the seat was slightly crooked so I had to loosen then, reposition the seat, and re-tighten them by feel. What should have been a simple, short job ended up being a long and difficult one, in part because there was not a lot of room on the sides of the toilet bowl to get under here and work. As we were cleaning up Linda noticed that the toilet tank was leaning slightly to the right relative to the base/bowl and thought we should adjust it.

I was already aware of the leaning tank, and the fact that it was not as tight as it should be. The tank is held to the bowl by two bolts that go through the bottom of the tank and are sealed by gaskets under the heads. I tried tightening the wing nut on the left bolt. Even though it was rusty I was able to turn it, but the tank immediately started leaking from the bolt hole in the bottom. We shut off the water and flushed the toilet to get most of the water out of the tank. Linda held the left bolt head with a long flat blade screwdriver while I turned the wing nut on the underside of the bowl, first by hand and then with pliers. I was careful not to over torque it and the tank was still a bit wobbly, but it was straighter and it did not leak when we refilled it. We will keep an eye on it. A leaky tank will result in water continuously running onto the floor and causing major damage of not detected quickly and stopped.

Linda cleaned up the bathroom while I put the tools away. We then changed the primary whole house water filter. The filter we use is the same 10″ length as a standard potable filter element but is about 5″ in diameter and has two micron ratings. It’s a spun polypropylene media that is 50 microns at the large outer surface and 5 microns at the small inner surface. In principle it filters better and longer than a single micron rating element by filtering out larger particles first and thus not clogging up the 5 micron material with large particles. The same thing would be accomplished, of course, with two filters in series, or three, or four, each with progressively smaller micron ratings.

The Post-It note by the filter said we had last changed it on 11 November 2013. If that was true it was way overdue to be replaced. The element was completely black from outside to in so it had been in there longer than the fall of 2014 for sure. We are starting to get some slime in the toilet tanks again and the water seems to have a slight black tinge, but that may have been due to the filter element needing to be changed. I may need to have Adams Water Treatment come out again to discuss installing an iron filtration system. Our drinking/cooking water still goes through a reverse osmosis system, so it is very pure.

Having accomplished several rather physical tasks I decide to sit in the living room and work on my blog posts for the last few days. Linda made hot tea for us to enjoy while iPading, after which she reheated the leftover risotto and asparagus from last night’s dinner and we finished the open bottle of 2013 Egri Merlot. After dinner I finally settled in to work on computer-based tasks. I had a long list of things to do but did not get to most them. I did manage to off-load recent photos of the bus interior from my camera to my computer, select a few to use in blog posts, and processed them. I edited a few more blog posts but did not get them uploaded to our website. I then dealt with e-mails and went to bed.

2015/05/23 (S) Radio Cabinet Company

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Today was “V. E.” testing day (volunteer examiner) so a half-dozen members of our amateur radio club were at breakfast even earlier than usual. (Our club does not test volunteer examiners, we have members who volunteer to give amateur radio licensing exams to people who want to get or upgrade an amateur radio license.) We were later than usual and ended up at the far end of a very long table arrangement, as there was a large turnout, but that gave us a chance to chat with a different group of people.

Mike Sharpe (W8XH) had a flyer he printed on his mother’s car, a 2005 Ford Taurus in excellent condition with only 21,000 miles. He was asking $5,800 which is slightly below the suggested Blue Book value. I texted our son to see if they might be interested in the car. Linda and I both had Ford Taurus cars starting in 2000. I had a beige station wagon with a beige interior and Linda had a red sedan with a gray interior. Our children eventually ended up with these vehicles, Brendan with my car and Meghan with Linda’s.

Back at the house Linda made a shopping list and headed to the grocery store while I changed into my work clothes and got to work in the bus. My focus today was deconstructing the cabinet above the refrigerator. I could tell from the dimensions that it was probably a box-within-a-box, but did not know how it was built. I removed all of the carpeting from the inside surfaces, labeling the back of each piece in case I decided to reinstall them. With the carpet out it became obvious that the floor, sidewalls, and back of the cabinet could be removed as I could see the screws and angle brackets that held them in place.

The cabinet above the refrigerator in our bus with the inside panels removed revealing lots of wiring.

The floor was in two side-to-side pieces which were narrow, each sidewall was a single piece, and the back was in two pieces. All of the pieces were sized to fit through the front openings in the face frame, a very clever design. There were cleats supporting the floor and spacing the back and side walls out from the larger permanent structure of the refrigerator alcove. The panels I removed served the dual purpose of getting the bottom and sides to line up with door openings and providing space to run wires while concealing them. Things got trickier after that.

The walnut face frame was assembled with glue and pocket screws. It had cleats along both rails and the two end stiles, all of which appeared to be glued and screwed to the face frame. In addition, the piece of walnut veneered plywood that separated the refrigerator space from the cabinet above was glued and screwed to the underside of the lower rail cleat. In other words, it was a solid and very professionally assembled cabinet. The bottom board was attached to the two sides with angle brackets and it appeared that I might be able to remove the face frame and bottom board once the side and top cleats and brackets were unscrewed. The top rail of the face frame, however, was tucked up behind some ceiling trim, preventing me from pulling the whole assembly straight out. I loosened the trim and found that pulling it straight out was probably not my best option. To get it out I would have to drop it straight down which will require the refrigerator to be out of the alcove.

The Aqua-Hot has been on with the thermostats set to 55 degrees F in case it got too cold. It was cool today so I turned the engine preheat pump on to warm up the main engine. When it was time for lunch I started the main engine and let it high idle while we ate. After we were done with lunch I moved the coach backwards (to release the brakes if they were bound up) and then forward enough to put the tires at a different spot. I set our electronic level on the centerline of the floor and then lowered the front and passenger side rear to level the coach. When I walked around it actually felt level, which it rarely did when trying to level off of one of the floor tiles or the kitchen counter.

I quit working around 2:30 PM as Linda was getting ready to prep ingredients for the risotto she planned to make for dinner and got cleaned up. I used to cook a lot but since we switched to a vegan diet Linda has done almost all of our cooking and, except for making coffee, tea, and popcorn, the kitchen has been her exclusive domain since she retired and we moved to the new house. But I offered to help and she agreed to let me so I diced an onion and five cloves of garlic while she sliced mushrooms and other things. By the time I was done I had about 40 minutes before Steve and Karen were due to arrive, so I updated my medical history for Root Canal Specialty Associates. I have a follow up visit with them in Wednesday.

Steve and Karen arrived at 4 PM and we settled in to conversation and munchies (they brought a mixed fruit salad, pistachios, and mixed nuts). We finished up the open bottle of Malvasia Bianca from Heart of the Desert Winery (Eagle Ranch) in Alamogordo, New Mexico. After chatting for a while about our respective winters—ours in the Southwest and theirs near Venice, Florida—we gave them a quick tour of the inside of the bus. It looks quite a bit different now compared to January 2014 when they spent a couple of nights in it at Williston Crossings RV Resort enroute to Venice, Florida. It will look even more different (hopefully) once we are done with the remodeling.

Linda eventually had to attend to the final preparations for dinner. Karen helped by stirring the mushroom risotto while Steve and I stayed out of their way chatting in the living room. Linda roasted refresh asparagus and sliced a baguette to go with the risotto. I opened a bottle of the 2013 Egri Merlot to go with dinner. Steve does not drink alcoholic beverages or coffee and Karen prefers drier red wines, but she seemed to enjoy the Merlot all the same.

The weather had been beautiful all day and we sat on the rear deck after dinner enjoying our last sips of wine. Once the sun dropped behind the trees it cooled off to the point where it was uncomfortable and we went back inside. I turned on the natural gas fireplace logs but left a window open which seemed to strike the right balance of temperature and mood. By 10:30 PM we had caught up on travels, families, and hobby interests. They had a 45 minute drive to get home and usually leave around that time. We had a long but very satisfying day and were quickly to bed once they were safely on their way home.

2015/05/20 (W) Duraclean

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Today was carpet cleaning day. Linda had been picking up the house for the last week getting ready but we still had a lot of last minute stuff to move, including the cats. We put them in the library along with their food, water, and litter tray. We also moved their cat “tree” out there. They were confused and unhappy about the arrangement but we figured it would be less stressful for them than constantly trying to find new places to hide as Jack moved about the house with his big, noisy carpet cleaning machine.

Jack Hoskins runs a one-man carpet and upholstery cleaning business named Duraclean. Located in Farmington Hills near our previous house, Jack took care of our cleaning needs for the last years we were there. When we bought the house in Oceola Township we had him clean all of carpets after the painters were done but before we moved anything into the house. We did not have him clean the carpets in 2014 but had him out today to do all of them, including my office / ham shack, which was under construction when he was here in 2013. Jack arrived right on time at 8:30 AM, walked through the job with both of us, and then spent most of the rest of the day cleaning. Jack works hard and always does a nice job.

Once Jack was squared away we bagged up the pieces of carpet and pad from the bus that would not fit in the trash container and took the container and the bags to the curb.” (We live on a dirt road and don’t really have curbs, but it doesn’t sound right to say we took the trash to the edge of the street.) We then unloaded the box from my car with the garden trailer I bought at Lowe’s yesterday, opened it, removed all of the parts, and assembled it. Linda broke down the cardboard packaging, gathered up some other cardboard and our usual recyclables, and we loaded them into my car to take to Recycle Livingston later.

Keith Kish (Kish Lawn Care) showed up mid-morning to finish cutting our grass. His Hustler zero-turn riding mower was not repaired yet but he borrowed an articulated stand-behind mower from his son. Something failed in the hydraulic pump on his Hustler and blew a 1 inch hole in it. The cost to replace the pump and put the mower back in service will be significant but his business is primarily based on that machine.

I mostly puttered in the bus while Jack worked in the house and Keith worked in the yard. Linda eventually went to the recycling center and then stopped at Lowe’s to buy some plants, pots, and potting soil. She is going to try growing some tomatoes, which are one of her favorite summer things, and some herbs. She moved the hummingbird feeder away from our deck and hung it on a stand in the shade of a tree we can see from our outdoor table.

I boxed up the ceramic tile pieces that were still spread out on the floor of the bus and moved the box to the garage. That stuff is heavy! I turned on the chassis batteries so I could move the driver’s seat forward to get access to the seatbelt attachment bolts. I unbolted the two seatbelt straps and removed them so I could remove the last pieces of the old white carpet from behind and next to the seat. I then reattached the seatbelts, moved the driver’s chair back, and turned off the chassis batteries. Refinishing the area around the driver’s seat will be its own special challenge and may not get done with tile as I may need something more flexible. It will not, however, be heavy carpet intended for use on floors.

My next task was to remove the flexible duct adapters from the HVAC chases. One of them has an AC electrical cable passing through it, so I will have to undo the cable from a nearby outlet box to get the adapter free. While I was working on these relatively minor tasks I was also thinking about furniture options. It finally dawned on me that we did not have buy an expensive custom made sofa-bed or use chairs instead and try to figure out how to finish that area. I could build a simple but very effective sofa out of wood and have a bottom and back cushion made to the exact dimensions we need using a fabric of our choice. That opened up the possibility of the fabric matching whatever we get on the chairs. The seat cushion could double as a bed for one person, with the back cushion removed, and the seat could hinge up to reveal a large storage area rather than dealing with the complexity of a drawer on suspension glides. The HVAC supply and return could also be easily be accommodated and I would not have to figure out how to finish the chase or conceal all of the wires that run along the floor in front of the chase. I discussed the idea with Linda and she liked it.

I moved the dinette table up front and we considered its size and placement relative to the seating we would like to use on the passenger side of the coach across from the sofa. We agreed that one of the things we would do while we are at the GLAMARAMA rally is visit Lambright Furniture in Shipshewana and Bradd & Hall in Elkhart. We also discussed buying a carpet remnant and trimming it to fit in the front part of the bus while we attend the GLAMARAMA rally.

I called Butch to see how his cataract surgery went on Monday. Apparently it went well, at least his world is suddenly brighter and more colorful. We talked through various bus projects, including approaches I might take to get a flat, level underlayment for the floor tile.

Keith wrapped up his work, collected his payment, and moved on to Sean’s yard just north of ours. I suggested that he come every week instead of every other week as long as the grass is growing as quickly as it has the last two weeks and he agreed. Keith normally does a nice job with our lawn but was now a couple of days behind schedule and trying to catch up using equipment that was not his. He did not want to drive the stand-behind mower over or near gravel, so some areas along the pull-through driveway did not get cut. He was also not able to work around obstructions as tightly as he can with his zero-turn mower, and appeared to not overlap some rows.

Jack wrapped up his work not long after Keith and took off for another short job before calling it a day. I let the cats back into the house and then decided to get out our self-propelled Honda walk-behind mower and trim up the yard in front of the house and some of the areas Keith had missed. It took a while to get the mower started but I eventually did.

Linda made a nice salad and baked an Amy’s pizza for dinner. It was 6:30 PM by the time we finished eating. Linda gathered up the plastic wine glasses and toilet paper holders she bought yesterday at IKEA and we drove to the store in Canton to return them. The glasses were too tall to fit in our wine glass display case in the bus and the toilet paper holders did not fit in the places we needed them to go in the house. While we were at the store we looked at their selection of refrigerators, none of which will fit through the entrance door on the bus, and just wandered through looking for ideas. We were not up that long after we got home, it having been a long but productive day.

2015/05/14 (R) Deconstructing the Bus

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The entry stairwell and passenger seat area of our H3-40. Note the two mounting channels for the passenger seat

I spent most of the day continuing to disassemble the inside front half of our motorcoach while Linda split her time between working in the yard and helping me. But before we got started on that work I made a follow-up appointment with the endodontist who did my root canal last fall. I also indicated that I had been having some issues with my teeth in that area and they scheduled me for an evaluation as well. I got my weekly follow up call from Diane at SteelMaster. She was not very happy when I told her I wanted to consider an arched metal roof for a pole barn type structure and started to argue with me about foundations and poles.

Driver side sleeper sofa unscrewed from the floor and laying on its back. Both end panels are off and the drawer and slides have been removed.

Wrong move. If you are not going to give me the information I need to make a decision then you are not going to sell me any of your products. She did admit, however, that I could purchase the stamped engineered design drawings without putting a deposit on a materials order. The drawings would cost about $500 which I think is still unreasonable. If the County denies my building permit SteelMaster will not take the drawings back and give me a refund. It makes me wonder how they have ever sell a single building. It’s not like I can take their drawings to another company and have them fabricate the materials at lower cost. I can understand charging something, perhaps $200, just to keep people who are not serious from wasting their time, but $500 seems excessive to me.

Driver side sleeper-sofa with everything removed so I can disassemble it to get it out of the bus.

Diane passed me off to Greg who handles the arched steel roof systems. He has not dealt with me before so he was not frustrated with me. For a 25′ wide x 50′ long building with a 25″ snow load he figured the roof system would be $10k to $13k. The roof profile would be similar to their “Q” style building, which is shaped more like a Quonset hut, and attached to the top of the wall with plates that are similar to the base plates they use for their metal buildings. The stamped drawings only would be $575, so if we decide to pursue this we will just have to spend that money to get these and hope the County Building Department approves the plans. Of course, Diane was willing to sell Chuck and me two complete S Model buildings 32’ x 56’ without end walls for $20,400 total, so $10K – $13K for a roof seems expensive by comparison.

Passenger side of the bus looking towards the rear from the cockpit. All of the furniture is out.

We needed the space in garage where the lawn tractor is parked to store the furniture from the bus until we can dispose of it. The tractor hasn’t been started since last fall (or summer?) so I hooked up the battery charger and let it charge while we worked.

This motor (center) was used to drive two geared pullies via flexible drive shafts (green) to open/close the drawer under the sleeper-sofa. (One of the pullies is visible upper left.)

By the time we quit working around 6 PM we had disassembled the sleeper-sofa and unbolted the passenger chair. We got the chair, both parts of the sleeper sofa, and both parts of the J-lounge out of the bus and into the driveway. I started the lawn tractor and moved it out of the garage and parked it outside behind a thick grove of large trees and dense undergrowth so it was mostly hidden from view. Once we got everything into the garage I removed the flexible HVAC ducts and threw them away. I then started pulling up the old carpet and padding from the living room floor and steps, and removing the carpet from the walls in the entry stairwell and cockpit areas.

The base of the passenger side J-lounge. This was a complicated piece of custom furniture.

[p6 R] I got all of the old material out and into the trash or garage and then removed one of the two filler panels from passenger side front floor and took that to the garage. I could not remove the other filler panel because it had a hole drilled in it with an electrical wire running through it. I will have to cut a slot to get it out and eventually shut off the power to that circuit and reroute the wire as it also passes through one of the HVAC 4” flexible duct adapters and into the HVAC chase. A never cease to be amazed by the things that bus converters do in places they think you will never look.

The upper portion of the passenger side J-lounge sitting in the driveway waiting go in the garage.

We spent some time in the bus considering our remodeling plans. With all of the furniture out we were finally able to see what we had to work with and some new possibilities emerged. The wall paper is badly stained behind the sleeper-sofa area and the wall behind the J-lounge/dinette is unfinished as it was never visible or intended to be. A lot of the woodwork needs to be cleaned and reconditioned. We will do that with the Touch of Oranges Wood Cleaner and steel wool, after which we will apply a nice coat of Touch of Beeswax.

Passenger chair and drawers waiting to go into the garage.

We have assumed from the beginning that we would replace the sleeper sofa with a new one custom designed and built to fit the available space, including a notch for the HVAC chase that would allow it to go all the way to the wall and fit under the window trim. The only way we would be likely to get such a sofa is from Villa and their furniture is very expensive and takes an unreasonably long time to get. Most of the furniture we removed from the bus was Villa, but it was all worn out. We are now considering putting two barrel chairs where the sleeper-sofa was located, perhaps with a small cabinet between them. We need to cut cardboard or heavy paper to match the footprint of possible chairs, cabinets, and the custom desk and set them in the bus to see how they will fit.

The “living room” of the bus looking forward from the kitchen. All of the seating has been removed. Note the black ceramic tile at te bottom of the frame.

Sooner rather than later we will have to make some final decisions so I can draw up final plans for the desk and floor cabinets and get them to Jaral Beaty in Logansport, Indiana to build. We are also going to have to settle on chairs and fabrics and get them on order. Besides the floor we are going to replace the driver and passenger seats, and the refrigerator, so this is a major remodeling project. I also have to rebuild the water bay, but that’s a different project for a different day and blog post.

Driver side alcove where the sleeper-sofa was installed. Note the HVAC chase and flexible ducts used to get air out through the front of the sofa.

It was a very physical day with a few bumps and scrapes but no serious damage to us or the bus. I went to the gas station to top up my fuel tank while Linda fixed dinner. She had some left over white rice and ended up adding it to barley, lentils, split peas, carrots, mushrooms, red onions, garlic, greens, soy sauce, salt and pepper. Everything except the greens was sautéed. The greens were cooked separately and added at the end. It was a delicious and complex combination of flavored and textures. We watched Season 3 Episode 1 of Sherlock and turned in early as we needed to be up very early tomorrow and on the road to the Dayton Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio.

Passenger side HVAC chase with AC cable passing through 4″ flexible duct adapter and then through the floor. Really? Really.

2015/05/13 (W) Dental Deconstruction

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We were both up at 7:30 AM. I made tea instead of coffee and we had a light breakfast. We both had 11 AM appointments with our dental hygienists and left a 9:35 AM to drive to Dearborn. We had only gone a couple of miles when we realized we did not put the trash can at the curb so we went back and did that.

Traffic was light and we arrived at Gusfa Dental at 10:50 AM. My hygienist, Michelle, took me in right away. Linda’s hygienist, Margaret, took her in on time. We both had good checkups with no new issues found or procedures required. The tooth that has been bothering me occasionally all winter may be the one on my upper left, second from the back, that had the root canal last fall, followed by a crown. Dr. Steve did not see any problem on the x-Rays or exam but said that my various complaints could all be associated with a small but persistent infection at the base of the root canal. I am due for a 6-month follow-up visit with the endodontist anyway, and was putting off scheduling it until I had my regular checkup today.

It was 12:30 PM by the time we left the dental office and we were both hungry. We wanted something other than fast food but considered going to Neehee’s Indian diner on Ford Road. We decided not to go there as it was not very good the last time we went and they had changed the menu, eliminating some of our favorite dishes. It is also several miles west of I-275 and that stretch of Ford Road is always congested and annoying to drive. We stopped at the Macaroni Grill at 7 Mile Road and Haggerty Road instead. We have always found the Macaroni Grill restaurants to be acceptable Italian food in a slightly quaint setting. Today was no different. Linda had rigatoni with arrabbiata sauce (spicy tomato), garlic, mushrooms, and spinach. I had capellini with garlic olive oil and the same add-ins. We had our fill of fresh baked bread to go with the pasta and were very full by the time we finished lunch. We used to eat like this a lot more often which is part of the reason we both had a weight problem.

We thought about stopping at Brighton Ford to pick up some literature on the F-150 but decide to drive to Lowe’s at I-96 and Latson Road instead to look at refrigerators. The smallest one they had on display was 14.3 cubic feet which gave us a chance to see the approximate size of the 13.5 cubic foot Fisher & Paykel. The F&P is narrower and slightly taller than the one’s at the store, but has a bottom freezer drawer and fits our available space much better. Lowe’s can order the F&P and it will take two weeks to get. If I decide to do the fridge swap at Butch and Fonda’s place in Indiana we will have to pick up the F&P in Kokomo as that is the nearest Lowe’s.

Driver side sleeper sofa in our H3-40 with motorized drawer removed.

When we got home I changed into my work clothes and worked in the bus. After emptying the drawer under the jack-knife sofa and removing the APC UPS from under the foot rest area I removed the drawer, footrest cover, and front end panel. I then removed the two HVAC duct transition boxes and then the two drawer slides. With all of that out of the way I was finally able to remove the four 1/2″ lag screws from the four corners that secured the sofa to the floor.

Driver side sleeper-sofa with forward end panel and HVAC adapter box removed.

Getting all of the furniture out will be much easier if we remove the front passenger seat so I worked on that next. I had never looked carefully at how it was installed until now. The chair has a 12″ wide x 15″ deep base plate that is bolted to the floor. The bolts stick up from below and the nuts go over them. I could not see the studs but I could feel the ends and eventually realized that Royale coach had installed the carpet OVER the base plate. To remove the seat I would have to remove the carpet or at least cut it and fold it back. The carpet had to come out eventually anyway and be replaced with vinyl tile so I removed it. It was more work than it sounds, and took quite a while, as there was not a lot of room to work under, behind, or to the left of the seat, but I got that piece of carpet out.

Villa passenger seat in our H3-40 showing inside edge of mounting plate and studs with nus. (Front of coach to the left).

Removing the seat will now be a simple matter of loosening four nuts and lifting it off the studs, except for the fact that it is heavy. The studs are presumably the threaded ends of T-bolts with the “heads” in two channels, front and rear, that are installed across the floor. There is an opening at one end of each channel that allows the T-bolts to be inserted/removed. My presumption is that all of this is Prevost factory designed and built, not something Royale Coach did, but the driver’s seat does not appear to be installed the same way, so maybe not.

Power base for Villa passenger chair in our H3-40. This thing is complicated!

I finished working in the bus around 7 PM, put my tools away, and closed up the coach. As a consequence of our big lunch we were not hungry and skipped dinner. I called Butch to discuss the project and get some advice. I then called Chuck and brought him up-to-date. We finished the evening by watching Season 2, Episode 3 of Sherlock on DVD.

2015/05/12 (T) Dealing with the County

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I finally paid a visit this morning to the Oceola Township offices and talked to the assessor and zoning administrator. I had a satellite image of our property on which I had drawn the proposed barn and driveway. All they need in order to issue a land use permit is for me to show the size of the building and the setbacks on the image. I also visited the Livingston County Building Department. I talked to one of the counter clerks who had me talk to Rick, who is one of the inspectors. He had just built a large pole barn and used 6×6 posts set in 26″ diameter holes back filled with concrete. The bottom of the posts need to be at least 48″ below grade to get below the frost line so I will figure on posts four feet longer than my exterior wall height.

Based on my preliminary online research and visits the land use, building and electrical permits are the only other ones I will need in order to put up a bus barn. The clerk gave me a check sheet of the documentation I will need to provide. I would have to file some additional paperwork with the County Health Department, but would not need permits from them or from the Drain or Road Commissions.

I drove to the Township offices on Latson Road by way of Hacker and M-59. Hacker was so bad the last few days due, in part, to heavy rains that it was more pothole than road and many of them were larger and deeper than normal. The road grader was repairing the road and it was digging deep. The grader was still working when I returned home but the road was already much better. The road needs to be rebuilt with a substantial amount of road gravel and with proper drainage ditches along both sides. Or paved. Paved would be good. Linda read something last fall that indicated Oceola and Hartland Townships had agreed to pave Hacker Road from M-59 south to Golf Club. We checked when we got home this spring but could not find any reference to such a project.

Back at the house I settled in to create a scale drawing of the floor plan of our bus and then draw in the 16″x16″ floor tiles. I added up the various areas yesterday and added 25% for waste, but that turned out to be a low estimate. By drawing the tiles I was able to count how many I would actually need. I called Lynch Carpet in Howell and talked to Clint to get a rough price estimate for the materials. The 16×16 Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tiles are packed 14 to a box and can only be ordered by the box. We need 190 tiles for the project so we will have to buy 14 boxes (196 tiles). That turned out to be 50 square feet more than my original estimate, but would leave us with only six full tiles as spares, assuming I do not ruin any during the installation. Fortunately, the vinyl adhesive and vinyl grout were less expensive than I expected, so even with a freight charge the bottom line was similar to my first estimate. Using these tiles it will be approximately a $2,000 project.

My layout has the tiles in a standard pattern with the grout lines lined up in two directions, one running parallel to the long axis of the bus and the other perpendicular to that. I presumed that this would take less tile and require less cutting but after seeing the layout I am not so sure. I will probably make a second drawing with the tiles turned 45 degrees and see if it makes more efficient use of the tiles. We plan to use a grout that is very similar in color to the base color of the tiles so the grout lines will tend to blend in rather than standout as a design feature, and perhaps make the orientation of the tiles less important visually.

Later in the afternoon I called Pat at Apex Roofing to let him know our shingle selection. I left the information in a voice message and Pat called back later to confirm. We are going to use the Certainteed Max Def Resawn Shake shingle. We are still thinking about the skylight tubes. We talked about putting one or two in the living room and possibly one between the kitchen/dining rooms and one in the hallway. I realized that the air-conditioner would probably be in the way of the one for the kitchen/dining area, so we will not do that one.

Linda made granola today and made baked/stuffed acorn squash for dinner along with an asparagus, carrot, green bean sauté and fresh sweet Bing cherries. I took care of some e-mail and then we had slices of the Mother’s Day vegan cake. I called my sister to check on how our grand-niece was doing. She called me back later and we had a long chat. Linda and I then watched season 2, Episode 2 of Sherlock.

After Linda fell asleep I was still up (writing) when a noise started and did not stop. I suspected it was the water sanitizer recharging, as the water softener had recently recharged, but I got up to make sure that’s what it was and not something else like a sump pump that was stuck in the on position. It was the sanitizer, so I closed the laundry room door to reduce the noise and went back to bed. I really need to soundproof the laundry room and reprogram the softener and sanitizer to come on at better times.

2015/05/09 (S) ICAAN, Can You?

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Today started with our usual SLAARC breakfast. Linda has been cleaning up the financial records for our ham radio club and discovered in the process that the status of our EIN application was murky. She has spent some time this past week trying to track down just what happened so she can figure out what to do to fix it. She finally determined yesterday that the EIN that was issued by the IRS was indeed valid and approved but it does not appear that the 501(C.)(3.) non-profit status was ever established correctly.

When we got home we loaded the disassembled plastic foundation from our old Select Comfort mattress into the back of my car along with our usual tubs and bags of recyclables and drove to Recycle Livingston. We had no other errands to run and returned home directly.

Scotty (AC8IL) reminded me at breakfast that Universal Tower in Mt. Clemens, MI (Clinton Township) sells free-standing aluminum towers that are compatible with the used Heights tower we bought last year. I may be able to get a tower section to replace the iron clamshell and also a base to set in the concrete. I made a quick check of their website but some of the pages did not load correctly on my iPad.

I checked the ICANN domain name registry for “SLAARC.com” and all of the owner/contact information still referenced Gary, who set it up originally in 2009. I dealt with a change in ownership for “dactm.org” years ago and it was not a simple, easy process. Add in the GoDaddy factor, and moving the domain name registration and web-hosting from GoDaddy to QTH.com is something I am not looking forward to. I sent an e-mail to Mike and Larry seeking their input and assistance. I checked and replied to a few other e-mails and then went upstairs. Our USPS carrier, Michelle, came to the door with a small package that would not fit in our mailbox. It was my prescription medications that we thought would be delivered on Monday next week.

Linda headed to the grocery store while I changed into my work clothes and started working on getting the dinette in the bus disassembled and removed. I figured out that the dinette was, indeed, built in two pieces. The base was screwed to the floor and had a u-channel around the top that was sized to receive a similar upside down u-channel on the bottom of the upper part. The two channels were locked together by screws inserted horizontally from the inside. The upper part was the seating and seat backs, most of it with built-in cushioning. All of the leather furniture in the bus is in less than ideal condition and the foam cushioning is shot. The furniture was designed so that the only way to replace it would be to remove it, disassemble it, rebuild it, and reinstall it. We do not like it enough to do that and after owning the bus for over five years we now know how we want to change the furniture and re-purpose the space.

Needless to say, but said anyway, coach converters only care about making the original buyer happy and count on them getting rid of the coach long before any of these design decisions become an expensive maintenance and repair issue. And that is a shame, really, because luxury motorcoach conversions are elaborate, expensive custom projects and the buses being used for these projects are capable of being driven for 50 years and 2,000,000 miles given the required routine maintenance. Over that kind of time and miles the house/systems are also going to need maintenance but they do not seem to be designed/built with that in mind.

When Linda returned from her shopping she helped me get the two pieces of the dinette out of the coach and into the garage. She then got back to work at her desk finishing up the accounting for our ham radio club. I continued working in the coach figuring out how to disassemble the J-lounge sofa that occupies the rest of the passenger side of the living room and mated to the dinette. Like the dinette it was a custom designed piece of furniture built specifically for this coach and constructed in the same way. The differences were its size (longer), and three powered accessories. From front to rear the accessories were a footrest, center table, and drawer.

The footrest is self-explanatory. The center table rises up/out of the base in the center of the couch (after removing the loose seat cushion that covers it) and goes back down/in if you need that spot for sitting. We set it at a comfortable height, level with the tops of the seat cushions, without it intruding into the limited isle space and pretty much left it there. The drawer would have been just a drawer if not for the large rubber tube used to open and close it at the touch of a button.

The tube, about 1/4″ in diameter, is arranged like a long, skinny race track above the drawer and under the seat. At the back end, deep in the bowels of the couch, is a motor with a vertical shaft connected to a horizontal drive pulley. The tube is looped around this drive pulley and the other end is looped around a second horizontal pulley at the front edge of the drawer opening. That pulley is free to turn. If that’s all there was to it turning on the motor would cause the tube to just go round and round in one direction or the other. The top back of the drawer, however, has a little finger sticking up that was clamped to the tube so when the tube moved it pulled the drawer with it. At least it did before the tube broke. The big drawer under the sleeper sofa is also powered by a similar mechanism, or was until the tube broke. Neither of these drawers has worked as a powered drawer in the 5+ years we have owned the coach. The motors work, but they do not cause the drawers to open or close.

All of these mechanisms are very clever but ultimately completely unnecessary. Footrests can be actuated manually, drawers can opened and closed by hand, and a table can be built in where it needs to be. These mechanisms also add weight, require power, wiring and control switches, represent potentially difficult (expensive) maintenance and repair items, and take up space that could be better used to store things. To paraphrase a popular song of my youth “the things that pass for luxury I can’t understand.”

Because of all of these mechanisms the J-lounge was considerably more work to disassemble as they made it more difficult to access the screws that held the top piece to the base and the base to the floor. In order to get to everything I had to remove the footrest, the table, the drawer box, and two decorative panels. The drawer was attached to a pair of substantial double suspension glides by four bolts with Nylok nuts inside the drawer. The suspension glides did not have release mechanisms so I had to remove the drawer box. The two rear bolt heads were virtually inaccessible but I eventually figured out where to position the slides so I could push the bolts out from the inside.

Somewhere in the middle of this work Linda came out to bus. It was good timing on her part as I was at a point where I had to assume awkward positions to reach things and having her hand me tools was very helpful. The top back edge was wedged under the window trim so once everything was unscrewed we moved the couch out from the wall enough to lift the top off, verifying that it was unscrewed from the floor and the top was completely disconnected from the base. We did not carry the pieces out of the coach, however, as we need to remove the front passenger seat first and create space in the garage for the pieces. The couch and dinette are about 16 feet long when installed.

Disassembling the couch was not a problem as we are not going to reuse this furniture nor are we going to try to sell it or even give it away. The most we might do is see if the metal has any value as scrap. If not, Linda will call our garbage service to see if they will pick it up on our regular trash day. I plan, however, to remove and keep the motors, pulleys, and acme screw linear actuators; you never know when you might need something like that. 🙂

I asked Linda if she wanted to go out for a pre Mother’s Day dinner and she said yes. We went to La Marsa in Brighton and got there before 6 PM which allowed us to find a parking spot and not have to wait for a table. I had their fresh lemonade, made with juice from fresh squeezed lemons and oranges blended together with ice. I suspect it also had honey as it was sweet. It was delicious. The pita bread and garlic spread were good as usual. We split the salad, which was god, and an order of zesty almond garlic Ghallaba (vegan). This is the second time we have had this dish here and it has been a real disappointment both times. We have come to the unhappy conclusion that the food at this La Marsa is simply not as good as the food at the Farmington Hills location. Sadly, it is one of the few places in Brighton or Howell where we can get something vegan besides a salad or a no-cheese pizza.

When we got home I made some decaf coffee and we settled in to read, write, and play games on our iPads. We looked at the website for Polar Power Inc. They are a competitor to SunFrost and make similar kinds of refrigerators but with some important differences. They sell to the marine market and have super-insulated units with remote compressors that run directly on 12VDC or 24 VDC. Unfortunately the only unit they make that will fit in our enclosure is 9.6 cubic feet, and some of that is the freezer compartment. It would allow us to build a generous vertical slide out pantry, but it is just not enough refrigerator volume. Replacing the refrigerator is going to be a difficult project but it will be nice when we are done, especially if we can gain a tall, narrow, deep pantry in the bargain. I plan to call SunFrost and Polar Power to see if they will make a custom sized unit and if so, what the added charge would be, but I expect the answer to be “no.”

I am once again behind on posting blog entries and need to upload all of the posts so far for May. I did not take any photos in that time so they will be a bit less work. I did take photos today, however, so now that we are back in project mode I really need to get back in the habit of off-loading images daily, selecting a few for the blog, posting it, and filing all of them for use in future magazine articles.

2015/05/07 (R) Meshuggah Nuns

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We spent part of last night researching a new refrigerator for the bus. Possibilities included models from 13.5 cubic feet to 17 cubic feet from various manufacturers. We found one that was a close match to the dimensions of our current unit, but we are thinking about downsizing to create space for a slide out pantry.

One huge disappointment is that all of the SunFrost models, including their 16 cubic foot unit, are 34.5″ wide. Our refrigerator cubby is only 33-3/4″ wide and there is no easy/practical way to modify it to make it wider. Although very expensive, the SunFrost units are super insulated and use 1/5th the energy of comparable capacity energy efficient refrigerators. They are also available with 12 VDC or 24 VDC compressors, thus avoiding the inefficiencies associated with using the inverter when boondocking.

I spent some time measuring the floor and wall surfaces in the bus that are currently tiled or carpeted but did not calculate the area. I need to do a drawing and put together an Excel spreadsheet as the bus has a lot of odd shaped spaces.

We drove to ABC Supply Co. in New Hudson to pick up samples of Certainteed Landmark Pro shingles. We had narrowed down the possibilities to three choices but needed to see them next to our brick, siding, and trim.

On the way home we stopped at Lynch Carpet in Howell to return the Armstrong tile samples and determine delivery time, which was 2-3 weeks worst case. We did not get a quote since I did not have the square footage figured out yet, but Clint made a note of the tile and vinyl grout we like.

We left the house around 4:15 PM and drove across M-59 to Rochester. The Rochester Mills Beer Company restaurant was in downtown, about five miles east of the Oakland University campus and the theatre. It was after 5:30 PM when we got to the parking lot. We did not expect Kate before 6:30 PM so we ordered a hummus appetizer plate and two beers. The hummus platter featured three different flavored hummus that were very good. Linda had a chocolate coffee tasting dark brew and I had a Framboise. Framboise is a raspberry beer that originated in Holland and tastes more like raspberries than beer. Perfect!

Kate left work at 5 PM. The drive from that part of town to this part of town is one of the worst in the Detroit area, and that is a terrible time of day to do it, but that is what she did because she did not have a choice. She stopped for flowers and a card but made it to the Rochester Mills Beer Company in time to enjoy a pizza and some beer. We had a no cheese veggie pizza with a whole wheat crust that was pretty good. Linda had a different but still dark beer for her second serving while Kate and I both had the Wit’s Belgian style beer with orange and coriander. Although much more beer-like than the Framboise, it was agreeable. Except for some “guest beers” everything at the Rochester Mills Beer Company is brewed by them. It is very local, very fresh, and very good as far as beer goes. They also feature Michigan wines, which we always appreciate seeing in a Michigan restaurant, but we were not having wine this evening.

We made it to the theatre with only a few minutes to spare. Kate got the tickets from will call as they were under her cousin’s name. We had great seats in row D just left of center. Meadow Book is not a large theatre and sitting this close to the stage made for a very intimate experience. The playbill was the musical “Meshuggah Nuns.” We were not familiar with this musical but it was delightful. The 5-member cast were all professionals, including Cindy Williams (Shirley from the Laverne and Shirley TV show) and Eddie Mekka (Carmine Ragusa from the same TV program). They all gave excellent performances but Jeanne Tinker, who played Sister Amnesia, was our favorite. When dressed in a habit one really has to act with their face and hers was very expressive. She also had the “comic” part in the cast and was very funny.

The show ended at 10 PM after which we visited briefly with Kate’s cousin, Mikeala, who is part of the theatre crew working with costuming. We chatted with Kate a while longer in the parking lot and did not get home until close to midnight.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: interior remodel (H3-40)

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34

2015/05/28 (R) Ice Cold Internet

2015/05/24 (N) Nuts to That

2015/05/23 (S) Radio Cabinet Company

2015/05/20 (W) Duraclean

2015/05/14 (R) Deconstructing the Bus

2015/05/13 (W) Dental Deconstruction

2015/05/12 (T) Dealing with the County

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