Tag Archives: severe thunderstorm watch

2015/06/22 (M) Cable Me This

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We turned the air-conditioning off last night and enjoyed the fresh air, pleasant temperature, and lower humidity.  The overnight low was 58 which made for good sleeping.  We awoke to blue skies and what we thought would be a picture perfect Michigan summer day until Linda checked the morning news (iPad).  There was a story about a storm that moved through the upper plains yesterday and had a bead on Michigan for later today and this evening.  What had been a 10% chance of rain for today had been replaced by a forecast for strong-to-severe thunderstorms with the possibility of strong winds, large hail, and tornadoes.  Ahhhh, summer in Michigan.

Not ones to sit around and wait for the apocalypse we did what any sensible couple would do, I made coffee while Linda reheated the last of the Baked French Toast from yesterday’s brunch.  We had breakfast and then sat on the deck enjoying our coffee and contemplating the end of the world, or at least the possible destruction of our brand new roof.  But it’s insured, so “no worries, maan” as they say in Jamaica.  More coffee please.

We have a whole house generator that runs on natural gas so as long as a storm doesn’t damage it we can survive for a very long time without electric utility power.  Losing our AT&T Internet connection, however, would be a genuine hardship as that would require us to use our Verizon Mi-Fi (without the benefit of the new Fusion5s cellular booster which I plan to install on Wednesday) or go to Panera, McDonalds, or one of the libraries to get online.

Keith showed up around 10 AM to cut the grass.  We were hoping he would make it as we have not had too much rain this past week and the last few days in particular have been dry.  I think this is the first time this season he has been able to cut our grass without it being wet.  It looked nice when he was done.

I got a call from Phil Jarrell.  He had been successful in reaching Mike Fearer of Bid Rite Concrete on Mike’s cell phone.  Based on Phil’s description Mike was interested in looking at our tower foundation project and was expecting me to call so I did, using my cell phone, and this time I was able to reach him.  It turned out that the information about his business on the Internet is out of date.  He is no longer in Whitmore Lake but now operates from near M-59 and Latson Road, not far from us.  We agreed that he would stop by tomorrow at the end of the work day to look at our project.

I did not want to do a lot of heavy work today, as I was still a bit tired and sore, but I needed to mount two lightning arrestors in the cable entry box and mount the cellular booster in the sump pump room so I could figure out what coax cable lengths I needed and go get them from Scott Adams (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics in Wixom.  But first I called Mike (W8XH) to let him know I was planning on Wednesday for the tower work, assuming he was still available and the tower was still standing.

Cable entry box showing copper ground plane with Morgan lightning arrestors (lower left), control line arrestor (center top), and cellular and OTA TV arrestors (center).

Cable entry box showing copper ground plane with Morgan lightning arrestors (lower left), control line arrestor (center top), and cellular and OTA TV arrestors (center).

I determined that I needed two coaxial cables and ordered them from Scott by phone rather than take the time today to drive to his place of business.  They will both be LMR-400 with N-connectors on both ends.  One will be 50 feet long, for our 2m/70cm Diamond X50-N VHF/UHF base station antenna, and the other will be 15 feet long, to get from the cellular booster lightning arrestor in the cable entry box to the repeater (amplifier) in the sump pump room.  I will pick them up early Wednesday morning and install them.

One of the lightning arrestors was for the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster system.  It has N-connectors on both ends, one of which is intended for bulkhead mounting.  It came with an angle bracket that fit over the bulkhead end and I used that to mount it.  I used the 2′ length of LMR-400 that came with the booster installation kit to position the lightning arrestor so the cable from the repeater could exit one of the 2″ conduits and bend around and connect to it.  LMR-400 is a low loss, 50 ohm impedance, coaxial cable that can handle high RF transmit power.  The cellular booster only has a 1 Watt transmitter but is operating at frequencies where energy losses in coax cables become significant.  To do what it does LMR-400 is just under 1/2″ in diameter.  It is fairly stiff and does not make sharp bends so cable runs and connections have to be carefully planned.

The other lightning arrestor was for the Antennas Direct DB8e OTA TV antenna and serves a dual purpose as the power insertion device for the tower mounted amplifier.  The coax cable for OTA TV signals is typically 75 ohm impedance RG-6 with F-connectors.  It is half the diameter of LMR-400 and much more flexible.  It is also typically used to receive low power signals and convey them in one direction; from the antenna to the TV.  Because we are 25 miles from the nearest TV tower and some of the towers are 50+ miles away, I ordered a signal amplifier to go with the antenna.

Ideally you want to amplify an OTA TV signal as soon as it comes out of the antenna and this amplifier does just that.  It will mount on the same tower leg as the antenna about two feet below the antenna feed point.  However, being an active electronic device it needs electrical power to operate.  There are two basic ways that could be done.

One way would be to have power wires, such as +5 VDC and DC Ground that are separate from the coaxial cable that carries the radio frequency (RF) energy.  The two OTA TV antennas on our bus are set up this way with three wires to supply power and control the enclosed rotor.

The other way is to provide DC power through the coaxial cable itself, which is how this amplifier is set up.  The nice thing about this arrangement is that the amplifier only has two connections and they are both coax connectors that can be weather sealed.  To get the DC power into the coax cable, however, requires a special device called a power inserter.  The power inserter, in turn, requires the coax to be split into two segments so there end up being four connections instead of two.  The power inserter for this amplifier very conveniently acts as a lightning arrestor as well, which is why I mounted it to the copper back plane in the cable entrance box.

By boosting what I presume will be weak signals from distant towers the amplified signal should be strong enough to survive the trip through the coax cable to the power inserter, from there to a 1-in/2-out signal splitter, and then through additional lengths of coax to the two TV sets.

After getting the two lightning arrestors mounted in the cable entry box I took a break for lunch and then went to Lowe’s for some supplies.  When I got back home I turned my attention to mounting the SureCall Fusion5s cellular booster (repeater amplifier) in the sump pump room.  The sump pump is in the northeast corner of the basement, which is also the northeast corner of our ham shack and office.  (The ham shack occupies the north wall and my desks occupy the east wall.  Most of the rest of the room is storage.)

I gutted and rebuilt this space, with the help of long-time friend John Rauch, before we moved in and created the large closet (small room) around the sump with insulated walls to contain sounds.  I installed an electrical sub-panel in this room to provide power to the office and ham shack desks and to an RV outlet by the pull-through driveway.  I fed the power for the RV outlet through the bond on the east wall just above the concrete block foundation and ran it underground to the far side of the driveway.  It was my intention from the beginning to mount a cable entrance box next to the power feed and have all of the coax cables and control wires for outside devices enter the sump pump room in the same manner as the power.

The ham shack/office walls are finished with T-111 exterior plywood with 4″ groove spacing and I finished the interior of the closet the same way as I knew I would eventually want to mount things to the walls.  I mounted the SureCall Fusion5s booster on the west wall of the closet about a foot inside the door and just below my eye level so I could see all of the connectors, switches, and indicator lights on the top and front of the unit.  It had four mounting tabs, two top and two bottom, that attached easily to the wall with short wood screws.

There is a duplex AC electrical outlet on that wall and one on the opposite (east) wall.  The power supplies for the cellular booster and OTA TV antennas will plug in to these along with the sump pump and the charger/controller for the battery powered backup sump pump.  One of the things I bought at Lowe’s were two outlet expanders which I installed in these two duplex outlets.  I also bought a switch with a pilot light to replace a single pole Decora switch that will eventually control the light in the closet.  I installed the switch but did not complete the wiring as I have to tie it in to the light fixture which requires me to cut the power to that circuit.   I would also like to replace the bare bulb fixture while I am at it but have not yet purchased a replacement.

Although it was late afternoon I decided to install the inside antenna for the cellular booster system and run the coaxial cable that connects it to the booster.  The antenna is designed to mount to a flat ceiling and provide a hemispherical coverage area below the plane of the ceiling.  I had previously figured out that if I mounted this antenna in the main floor hallway near the midpoint of the house I could connect it to the cellular amplifier using a 50 foot length of coax cable that came with the system.

The desired mounting location was opposite the door to the hall closet and the access to the attic is through the ceiling of that closet, so that was very convenient.  We emptied the closet, removed the clothes rod, and setup our six foot step ladder.  I removed the piece of foam insulation we currently use to seal the attic access opening and climbed up, flashlight in hand to check out what was on the other side of the ceiling.

Our desired location for the antenna was free of problems on the back side so I drilled a 3/4″ hole for the mounting stud and used a piece of rebar to poke a hole through the insulation for the coax cable that came out of the stud.  Linda fed the coax and stud through the hole and I put the retaining nut on the stud from the attic side of the ceiling.  The antenna is shaped like a coffee filter, is about six inches in diameter at the ceiling, and tapers down to about four inches in diameter about four inches from the ceiling.  The housing is white plastic and blends in well with the ceiling paint.

About four feet from where we installed the antenna is a chase that runs from the attic to the furnace room in the basement.  It appears that once upon a time something having to do with the furnace ran through this chase, such as the combustion air intake.  The combustion air is now drawn through the back wall under the deck and the exhaust goes out through the east wall of the basement via a double wall stainless steel flue pipe.  The chase is no longer used for furnace or other utilities although there are electrical cables to switches mounted in the bathroom walls and it still contained a piece of 4″ plastic pipe.

I positioned myself near the chase and guided one end of a 50 foot length of LMR-400 coax down through the pipe and through the hole into the furnace room while Linda held the roll of coax near the top of the ladder and unrolled it.  At one point the coax bunched up and Linda had to go to the furnace room and untangle it.  At another point the 4″ plastic pipe slipped through the bottom hole into the furnace room which caught me by surprise.  Once the cable was mostly fed through I routed it to the location of the antenna, connected it to the pigtail coax from the antenna, wrapped the connection in weather seal tape to keep moisture out, and secured it with a cable tie.

With the antenna installed Linda started preparing dinner while I dealt with the 37 feet of coax in the furnace room.  The furnace room does not have a finished ceiling so I had access to the areas above the suspended ceilings in all of the adjacent rooms.  In particular I was able to feed the free end of the coax above the ceiling in the office and into the sump pump room.  I secured the cable with plastic cable ties at two points in the furnace room to keep it away from the flue and various hot water pipes.  I had about 8 extra feet of cable so I made a large coil with two loops such that the free end came off the loop straight down into the connector on top of the booster.  I hung the coil on the wall above and to the right of the booster making for a very neat installation.

I took a shower to try and get rid of some of the fiberglass itch while Linda finished the dish she was making for dinner.  It was a complex Indian style dish with Basmati rice, garbanzo beans, Swiss chard, onions, and shallots, seasoned with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, garam masala, fresh lemon (zest and juice), and fresh dill that Linda grew herself.  The house was filled with the aromas of all these ingredients for a couple of hours as they were prepared and combined into the final dish.  It tasted as good as it smelled with many flavor layers.

Our beautiful blue sky gave way to high, thin clouds through the morning and then to lower, thicker clouds during the early afternoon.  By 2 PM the clouds to the west were dark as I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and the first, heavy rains came as I got to the parking lot.  I waited a few minutes and they stopped so I got into the store without getting wet.  I had the same good fortune on my way back to the car.  The sustained rains came later in the evening along with a tornado watch.  We went to bed before 10 AM but did not go to sleep.  It took me a long time to write this post and we kept a watchful eye on the weather radar.  Although thunderstorms were forecast as a certainty from 1 to 5 AM with the possibility that they might be severe, we finally turned the lights out around 12:45 AM and tried to get some sleep.

 

2015/06/15 (M) Cover Up

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Linda was originally scheduled to go into the bakery today but it got rescheduled to tomorrow so we did not have to be up by any certain time other than to be ready for the delivery of our new roof shingles.  Apex Roofing is scheduled to put a new roof on our house this week, weather permitting, and assuming they can finish up jobs they had scheduled for last week when it rained so much.

The truck from Wimsatt Materials in Waterford showed up at 8 AM with our shingles but they were unable to deliver them.  They brought them on a boom truck that was too tall to fit under the phone lines across our driveway and there was nowhere else they could position the truck that would allow them to operate the boon.  They were on the phone with their dispatcher and I called Pat Davidson at Apex roofing to let him know what was going on.  The decision was that they would be back this afternoon with a conveyor truck which would fit under the wires and be able to get the bundles up to the roof.  Pat called back to let me know they would be starting in the morning around 7:30 AM.

Later in the day someone showed up in an Apex van with a large enclosed trailer.  We moved our cars and he backed it up in front of our single garage door.  Wimsatt did not return with shingles so they will presumably deliver them first thing tomorrow morning.  They will need to back into the driveway and position the truck in front of our double garage door but that is also where Apex plans to put their debris trailer.  The guy in the van also made it sound like there would be at least six cars/trucks here needing someplace to park.  It should be an interesting morning, especially given the overnight weather forecast which includes drenching rains and possible severe weather and flooding.  The forecast for the daylight hours, however, looks OK.

After the Wimsatt truck left we finished the last batch of granola for breakfast and then got busy with our chores and projects.  Linda spent part of the day at her desk working on the financials for our local ham radio club (SLAARC).  She also tried to contact PayPal to opt out of their upcoming RoboCall campaign but was not able to get through to a real person.

I settled into my office for the morning, dealing with e-mail but focusing on editing blog posts for the last seven days.  Kate got in touch with me to see if we wanted to see The Bikinis musical production at the Meadow Brooke Theatre this week.  Wednesday through Sunday is the final run.  She also forwarded an invitation to a former colleague’s retirement gathering in a couple of weeks.

We have an RV Critter Guard that seals around our 50 A electrical cord and water hose to keep “critters” from entering the coach via that access hole.  We lost our original foam insert when I forgot to remove it from the cable entrance hole in the floor of the bus utility bay and it fell (blew) out while we were driving.  I checked the RV Critter Guard website and my exact products were not listed.  I measured our existing tongue and groove plate and then contacted the company via their contact form and explained what I needed.  I got an e-mail back indicating that my product was custom made and asking me for one additional dimension from the plastic plate.  I got that measurement and e-mailed it to them and indicated that I wanted another plastic plate and two spilt foam inserts.  I expect to receive an e-mail tomorrow with the price.  Once I have that I will call them to place the order.

I have tried several times in the last two years to order products from EZ Connector but they have always had another question for me that required me to go check something and I have never managed to close the loop with them.  I’ve been on a roll the last couple of weeks and decided that today was the day to get this done.  The company is in California, so I called them during the afternoon (my time).  The woman I spoke to on the phone gave me some good information but suggested I e-mail Joe with my requirements.  Joe e-mailed me back and answered several questions but had another one for me.  I responded to that question and went on to something else while I await the prices.  Once I have the pricing I will have to call them and finalize the order.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh from Coach Supply Direct and got a series of revised quotes from him for our new RV furniture and window shades.  What I really need are the drawings that show the exact dimensions of each piece including the size of the base and the location of the pivot (swivel) point.  Apparently he is having difficulty getting these from Flexsteel.  I would also like to have these for the Lambright Comfort Chairs but we took our own measurements at Bradd and Hall.  The whole process of getting furniture is getting very frustrating.  I need to contact Mike at Suburban Seating regarding the ISRI 6860 and pick a day to drive to ISRI USA in Galesburg to look at fabrics.  While I am at it I should probably get a price from Prevost.

I finally got back to work in the bus this afternoon.  I shut off the auxiliary air compressor, closed the valve on the air manifold that supplies air to the toilet and other house accessories, and drained the water separator.  I then investigated what will be required to remove the toilet.

There is a shut off valve on the water line behind the toilet so I closed that.  The water line is attached to the toilet mechanism with a plastic connector with two wings and looked like I could undo it by hand.  The air line looked equally easy to disconnect but the drain looked a bit trickier.  It goes out the back of the toilet rather than through the floor.  There is a metal sleeve with band clamps at each end that connects the discharge pipe to the drain line.  Fortunately the band clamp screws are accessible.

The toilet is screwed to the floor with four Philips head screws.  The centers of the screw heads are threaded and there are plastic caps with posts that screw down into the mounting screws to conceal them.  With the water, air, and waste lines disconnected once I unscrew the base the toilet should slide forward and then we may have to lift it to get clear of the water line.  The trick to getting it back in will be to get the four mounting screws back in the exact same holes.

The humidity outside was near 100% and I did not feel like running the bus air conditioners so I did not remove the toilet today.  I need to get it out, however, to remove the last few pieces of ceramic tile from the bathroom floor.  Once it is out it will have to stay out until the new floor is installed.

I tried pulling on one of the window latch knobs on the fixed window across from the kitchen counter and was surprised by easily it moved the latch.  I did not pull it far enough to unlatch it but it appears that getting the window unlatched will be relatively easy.  Getting the frame open without damaging the frame seal, and getting it closed again so it is weather tight, may be slightly more challenging.

I used a chisel to try removing the thinset and mastic that was adhered to the plywood subfloor.  It came off better than I thought it would but it was a slow process.  In addition to being humid in the coach it was very warm as I have had to leave the roof vents closed with the fans off due to the rainy weather.  I removed enough thinset, however, to convince me that it is worth renting the power floor scraper from the Home Depot in Howell for a day and see how it works.

Late afternoon Linda worked in the kitchen making another batch of her fabulous granola and a black beans and rice dish for dinner.  She soaked two Hatch chilies, two Ancho chilies, and four Pequin chilies and used them in the bean dish.  I had a call from Pat Lintner before dinner to let me know that they took their Prevost to McMillers in Nappanee and were very pleased with work and the price.

I thought about driving to the Lowe’s in Howell after dinner to order the new Frigidaire refrigerator for the bus but it got too late to go.  We have decided to have it delivered to Chuck Spera’s shop in Novi.  We can pull it inside and he has a forklift, so hopefully that works out OK.

We were both tired and headed off to bed at 10 PM.  The weather radar showed a band of more intense rain setting up to our southwest and taking aim at us.  Linda fell asleep quickly but I was still up writing when the rains started around 11:15 PM.  We had the house closed up with the air conditioner running and a small fan for air movement so the sounds of the weather are not as noticeable as when we have the windows and doorwalls open.  I checked the radar again on Wundermap and it looked like we might be in for a long stretch of persistent rain unless the line drifted south just enough to miss us.  The strongest weather in the region stretched from Ft. Wayne, Indiana WSW to just south of Logansport, Indiana but there were lots of pockets of yellow with some orange on the screen over all of the southern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula and the northern half of Indiana.  It looked like it might be another restless night.

 

2015/05/26 (T) Reflections

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I decided to put off doing the laundry until later in the week.  Linda made a grocery shopping list while we had our morning coffee.  I called Pat Davidson at Apex Roofing to discuss the installation of a roof access hatch.  We did some online research for pest control companies in the Brighton-Hartland-Howell area and decided to call Best Pest Control LLC.  I talked to the owner, Ryan, about his perimeter defense package, and decided to give his company a try.  They will spray outside the house for ants, spiders, hornets, wasps, and yellow jackets.  I called Phil Jarrell from Precision Grading and left him a voice message regarding some additional driveway work, a French drain for the west end if the property, and a hole for a ham radio tower foundation.

I showed Linda the pullout pantry slide hardware I found last night on the Rockler website, a German made top-bottom pair specifically designed for this application and able to support up to 450 pounds.  It’s pricey, but it looks like the right stuff for the job.  We also found some assembled pullout pantries online, including some that were 5″ wide, but they were not deep enough and getting just the right height looked tricky.  We really want to maximize the use of our available cubic inches.

Keith showed up around 10 AM with his new Scag riding lawn mower.  He is still going to have the Hustler repaired as a backup, but the Scag is a nicer/better machine.  It is fuel injected, which should be more reliable, and it is faster, which makes more efficient use of Keith’s time.  It also has a seat that can be adjusted from soft to firm, making for a more comfortable operator experience over the course of a long day.

As much as I need to work at my computer and drafting table I need to work even more in the bus right now.  I started by reassembling the inside of the cabinet above the refrigerator, except for the liner carpet, and reinstalled the fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling.  I am keeping the carpet pieces for now, but mostly to use as templates for new material.  I would have preferred white Formica interior surfaces, as they are brighter and easier to keep clean, but the bus has a lot of curves and carpet is a very conformable and forgiving material.

The interior of the bus deconstructed in preparation for a new floor, seating, and custom desk.

The interior of the bus deconstructed in preparation for a new floor, seating, and custom desk.

My next task was cleaning out and securing the area under the bed platform.  I removed the half box covers, the flexible ducts, and the floor-mounted cleats.  I threw the ducts away and stored the other pieces in the garage.  I then reattached the strip light on the top edge of the forward side of the base, reinstalled the two circular HVAC registers (so the cats could not try to get under the bed through the holes), put the cover plates back on the two duplex AC outlets and reinstalled the outlet expanders which also have dual USB charging ports.  I need to put some sort of temporary netting over the port holes in the section of the HVAC chase under the bed, but I need to find a suitable material for that.  The long term plan is to seal those holes and install registers in the sections of chase outside the bed base.  I thought about disconnecting the lift struts for the bed platform so I could raise it higher and reinstall a drawer onto its glides, but decided to leave that for another day.

While I was working in the bus Ryan from Best Pest Control called me back and said he had a crew that could fit us in within the hour so I said “sure.”  I closed up the house as they would be spraying around all of the windows, doors, and doorwalls.  Two guys showed up a little while later and I walked them through the job, wrote a check, signed the work order, and they got busy.  They found two hornet nests by the east end of our deck and destroyed them.  I hate to kill even a hornet but they have been buzzing around our windows and doors, poking at voids in the mortar on the face brick, and occasionally getting into the house and we need to put a stop to their use of our residence as a place to build their homes.

The pest control guys were already gone and Keith was driving away as Linda returned from the supermarket.  I helped get the groceries into the kitchen.  After they were put away we had a light lunch around 1 PM of fresh baby carrots, mini bell peppers, sourdough pretzel nibblers, hummus, and red grapes.

The dinette seat used to fit in this corner The strip mirrors have been removed from the outside wall next to the window.

The dinette seat used to fit in this corner The strip mirrors have been removed from the outside wall next to the window.

I have been taking a lot of short breaks while working on the bus.  It was warm and humid again today and warmer still in the coach even with windows open and the roof vent fans exhausting air.  But the breaks are not just to rest, they are also to ponder the details of how the interior will get rebuilt and what additional deconstruction still needs to take place.

In the front of the coach there was a 120 VAC electrical cable coming out of an access hole in the passenger side HVAC chase, passing through a 4″ flexible duct adapter, and disappearing through a hole in the floor.  I originally thought the cable came from the duplex outlet on the wall just above the access hole but I discovered that it did not.  It was routed through the chase from somewhere farther back in the bus.  I determined that that the hole in the floor appeared to go into the OTR HVAC bay and sure enough, when I opened the bay there was the cable coming through the ceiling.  It turned towards the center of the bus and then went through the wall into the bay to the front.  It was then easy to determine that it was the power feed for the electric heater mounted on the rear wall of the front bay.

The storage area under the end platform with the 4" flexible ducts and cover boxes removed.

The storage area under the end platform with the 4″ flexible ducts and cover boxes removed.

At that point I knew which circuit breaker to turn off and was able to cut the cable in the living room without risking an electrical shock.  I slipped the 4″ duct adapter off and set it aside.  We don’t generally use the electric heater in the front bay, and certainly do not need it this time of year, so I wire-nutted the ends of the hot and neutral wires, coiled them up, and stowed them in the HVAC chase for the time being.  I coiled the end of the wire coming out of the floor around one of the Aqua-Hot coolant hoses so it would not drop into the bay below.

The area of the bus that was the outside rear corner of the dinette kept drawing my attention.  That corner was decorated with vertical strip mirrors with beveled edges.  There are also strip mirrors used as wainscoting on the lower portion of the outside wall of the hallway and at the end of the hallway opposite the bathroom door.  The strip mirrors are the one thing in this bus we have never liked but they did not bother us enough to not buy the coach.  Now that we are involved in a major interior remodeling, however, we are looking for ways to remove them or cover them up.  We really do not like them.

In the case of the former dinette mirrors, I had previously determined that the ones against the wall of the coach were mounted (glued) onto a sheet of plywood that appeared to be mounted to a pair of cleats along the two vertical edges.  I tried prying under the bottom of the first strip but it cracked and chipped.  It quickly became apparent that removing these strip mirrors from whatever they are glued to was probably not a viable option.

The beveled strip mirrors in the hallway of our bus. We really do not like these things.

The beveled strip mirrors in the hallway of our bus. We really do not like these things.

[p4 R]  After removing a 1-1/4″ wide piece of thin trim wood I was able to loosen the left (forward) edge at the bottom.  The walnut trim around the fixed window just forward of the mirrors, however, prevented me from pulling it out any farther.  I had a reasonably good idea how the window trim was attached but first I had to remove another piece of 1-1/4″ thin trim that covered the gap between the window trim I needed to remove and the trim for the next window forward.  With Linda’s help I removed eight screws and the 3-sided window trim came right off.  We set it carefully aside and returned to the mirrors.

With the window trim removed we were able to pull the left (forward) edge of the plywood mirror backing out enough to see behind it.  Our lucky “break” (no pun intended but, whoops, there it is) was that the screws holding the plywood to the left cleat pulled out of the cleat.  I say lucky because the screw heads were under the glass mirror strips and none of the mirror strips broke.  We kept working it out until the upper edge bumped into the return air grill trim on the underside of the upper cabinet.  We removed the grill and set it aside.  We were then finally able to pull the left edge out far enough that I could remove a couple of screws that were holding the right cleat to the panel that forms one of the back walks of the pantry.  Something was still holding it and when I changed position I saw that there was another screw near the top.  I removed that screw and the whole panel came out with the right cleat still attached.  Three more screws and the left cleat was also out.  We reattached the return air grill to the underside of the upper cabinet and then reattached the window trim.

The wallpaper behind this panel was in very good shape except for the screw holes where the cleats were attached.  We plan to put shelves in this corner to utilize the space and they may get used for some ham radio equipment.  Regardless of what ends up there having the mirrors out gives us more room for the shelves and will just plain look better.

A view from the kitchen of the dinette corner and hallway. A custom desk will go where the dinette seating used to be and double as work surface for the kitchen.

A view from the kitchen of the dinette corner and hallway. A custom desk will go where the dinette seating used to be and double as work surface for the kitchen.

The mirrors on the other wall of this corner are glued directly to the walnut panel that forms one of the backs of the pantry.  I tried loosening the bottom edge of the one in the corner and it cracked.  That area will be concealed by the desk, but we will cover all of the mirror strips with some sort of thin panel.  We have the same problem with the mirror strips across from the bathroom door and may just have to live with those as I have not come up with an attractive way to cover them.  I need to investigate the strip mirrors in the hallway.  There is a good chance that they are glued to plywood panels that are screwed to the wall at locations covered buy wood trim.  If we are lucky removing the trim will allow us to unscrew and remove the mirror panels.  If not, we will just put the trim back on.

I have had the idea for a while that we could make another low pantry or shallow storage area along the hallway wall above the HVAC chase where the strip mirrors are currently located.  Linda does not like the idea as she is concerned it will make the hallway to narrow.  The storage would not be any deeper than the HVAC chase is now, and would not be any higher than the wood trim along the top of the strip mirrors, which serve as a kind of wainscoting.

By this point it was 5:30 PM.  Linda headed inside to fix dinner while I got trash and materials out of the coach and carried them to the garage.  Linda let me know that a severe thunderstorm watch had been issued effective until 10 PM.  It rained lightly off and on until we sat down to eat and then the downpour came but we did not have anything severe, just heavy rain for a while.  She made a dish using garbanzo beans, garlic, kale, salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice.  It was delicious and the fresh lemon juice really made it sparkle.  She also served the last of the risotto she made for dinner when Steve and Karen were here on Saturday.  We had strawberries with Lotus brand Biscoff cookies for dessert.  I worked on this post on my iPad, took a shower, and went to bed.  I never did make it to my office today.