Category Archives: WFPB

Posts related to our Whole-Foods Plant-Based approach to healthy eating. We became vegetarians in 2000 and transitioned to being vegans in 2011. We discovered the WFPB concept in 2012.

2015/10/13 (T) Desk Alignment

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I got up at 8 AM, put on my robe, made coffee, fed the cats, and refreshed their water fountain while Linda got dressed and washed blueberries to put in our granola.  We took our coffee to the living room where I turned on the fireplace and we were joined by our feline friends.  I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s post and e-mailed it to myself while Linda pulled up the latest video post from Dr. Michael Greger at NutritionFacts.org.

Linda left at 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark for their weekly walk.  As this will probably be their last walk together until spring they planned to go to lunch afterwards.  While there was some work I could do by myself on the (permanent) installation of the desk there were other aspects of the job that would definitely require two people.  I needed to finish updating the roster for the FMCA Freethinkers chapter so I spent about 30 minutes reading the manual for the new Sony SLT-a99v camera and then got dressed and worked in my office for the rest of morning.

After a short lunch break I resumed working on the roster until Linda got home.  She and Diane had lunch at Baker’s in Milford as it is close to the Metropark parking lot where they meet.  We removed most of the things from the bus we were not currently using, many of which were stored in the sofa storage box.  We got the sofa seat off of the desk pedestals and set it back in place on the sofa base.

I wanted to use pieces of a 24″ X 30″ furnace filter to cover the various air inlets in the desk bases and the air outlets in the OTR HVAC duct.  The best way to hold the filter material in place appeared to be with some very strong tape.  We did not have any such tape on hand so Linda went to Lowe’s and bought a roll of Gorilla Tape while I cut pieces of filter material to fit the various openings.

The left desk base and passenger side OTR HVAC duct showing the pieces of furnace filter material used to seal these openings while permitting filtered airflow.

The left desk base and passenger side OTR HVAC duct showing the pieces of furnace filter material used to seal these openings while permitting filtered airflow.

We got all of the openings taped up but I still needed to fabricate two tongue and groove alignment devices between the pedestals and the center connector/cover.  I make these out of flat mending plates, one on the pedestal (tongue), and two on the connector/cover (groove).  The tongue is flat against the back side of the pedestal vertical board and protrudes about 1/2″ beyond the edge.  The groove is made from two plates, one stacked on top of the other, attached to the back side of the vertical connector/cover board.  The upper plate is just back from the edge of the board and the lower one (next to the wood) is offset from the edge a little more than 1/2”, just enough to create a space for the tongue.  The tongue and groove devices match two others lower down on the connector/cover.  All four of them are oriented vertically allowing the connector/cover to drop into place and force it to align with the matching pieces of the pedestals.  A pair of horizontal plates, one on each pedestal, provide a resting surface for the connector/cover that aligns it horizontally.

With the devices fabricated we were finally able to set the pedestals on the bases, drop the connector/cover in place, and align everything as if the entire desk was a single unit.  We then got the Corian desktop out of my car, brought it into the coach, and set it in place.  It will require some careful adjustments before we screw everything down but it basically fit properly and looked good.  Final positioning of the left pedestal and base, however, would require us to put the front HVAC duct cover in position.

We got the cover out of the library and into the bus for the first time since we brought it home from Jarel Beatty Cabinetry in Logansport, Indiana.  The length was perfect but the bump out where the heater hoses were originally going to loop through was too deep.    I suspect the mistake was in my design/drawings.  Jarel knew this piece was supposed to line up with the left pedestal and base but I no longer recall if he even had the desk pieces in his possession when he was building the cover.  At this point it didn’t matter anyway.  The misalignment is with the base and is not very visible.  Also, the bump out is screwed on to the main cover so it can eventually be removed and trimmed or replaced with one that has the correct dimensions.

Once we had the cover in place I realized that I also needed to fabricate and install alignment plates between the cover and the left pedestal.  I had not planned on this and did not have enough mending plates so we went to Lowe’s to buy more.  While we were there I bought another can of 40:1 premixed fuel and a bottle of bar and chain oil for the new Poulan Pro 18” chainsaw.  We stopped at Walmart to see if they stocked a particular folding chair made by Stakmore that we have seen online, but they did not.  We think it would work nicely as a desk chair, and go well with the interior materials and colors in our bus, but we would like to see one in the round before buying it.

Back home I worked on the alignment plates while Linda prepared dinner.  We had leftover lentil loaf, microwaved sweet potatoes, and a mix of steamed broccoli and Brussels sprouts.  She added a little water to the lentil loaf before reheating it to moisten it a bit.  We both like ketchup on our lentil loaf and I added some Pick-a-Poo sauce to mine.  All three dishes were served hot, which was comforting on a cool evening, and everything was very tasty including the cup of hot tea.

I returned to the bus after dinner and finished installing the mending plates on the HVAC duct cover.  I was not able to put it in place by myself, and there was no reason to have Linda come out and help at this hour, so I set the thermostats back and locked up the bus.

I called Butch and this time the call went through.  I updated him on the installation and testing of the fan-coil heat exchangers and asked him about the operation of our new refrigerator.  He suggested that I isolate the remote temperature sensors by using pieces of the furnace filter material to keep them from touching an objects or surfaces directly.  He and Fonda are wrapping up at the RV Park in Bouse and moving to Quartzsite on Thursday.  After we were done talking I worked on this post while we watched a few TV programs and then went to bed.

 

2015/10/10 (S) The New Camera

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Madeline was awake before 7 AM and coughing loose a bit of nasal/chest congestion.  A little after 7 Linda put on her robe and went to check on her.  I put my robe on too and Linda brought her to bed with us.  She lay quietly between us for a half hour, as dawn gradually illuminated the outside world, but never fell back asleep.  I needed to change position and offered to hold her on the sofa in the living room, which she accepted.  I turned on the fireplace and she climbed up in my lap and snuggled up.  Linda joined us a little while later and the three of us cuddled in the dancing light and warmth of the fire for another 20 minutes.  These are the special moments.

Madeline wanted to see the last part of the Curious George video we watched last night so Linda did video duty while I made a pot of coffee.  By the time the cartoon was done Madeline was awake enough to help make breakfast; vegan pancakes with blueberries incorporated into the batter.  Madeline helped mix all of the ingredients but Linda handled the cooking.  Madeline is only 34 months old after all, and not ready to work with sharp objects or heat.  We had hot real maple syrup and mixed berries on the side with orange juice (not from concentrate).

The whole morning was accomplished in our robes and pajamas and it felt like it was Sunday.  Madeline even got to see a half dozen very large wild turkeys in the street in front of our house.  The cats seem to know when Madeline is seated at the table and often emerge long enough to get a few kibbles and a drink of water.  Madeline got some berry stains on her pajamas so Linda got her undressed to get them out.  Madeline took that as an opportunity to enjoy the freedom of running around in her birthday suit for a few minutes.  You can get away with that when you are not yet three years old.

Everyone got dressed and then took up their stations in the living room.  Linda and Madeline played with Legos and played (with) the organ.  Ms. M and I then played “soccer,” throwing, catching, and kicking a large beach type ball and a small soccer type ball.  Madeline was still a little tired so Linda sat with her while she played an iPad game that involved taking care of a dog.

Yesterday the UPS truck delivered a package from B&H Photo in New York.  Inside was a Sony alpha 99 camera body, specifically an SLT-A99V, which included an infoLithium (Lithium ion) battery and charger, a camera strap, a hot shoe flash adapter, Getting Started instructions, a CD-ROM with software and manuals, and various pieces of paper that included warranties and special offers.  Also in the box was a vertical battery grip (VG-C99AM), five additional infoLithium batteries, a belt-mount battery holder, and two 64 GB SDXC memory cards.

Linda suggested that this was my Christmas and birthday present for the next five years, but the reality is that the old Sony alpha 100 body was an increasingly unsatisfactory camera and needed to be replaced.  I bought the a100 in 2007 or 2008 and have not spent hardly any money on photographic equipment since then.  The a99 has been around for a few years now but is still Sony’s top-of-the-line full-frame (36mm x 24mm) sensor, A-mount lens body, which means it is compatible with all of my old existing A-mount Minolta lenses.  As it turns out, I can also use A-mount lenses designed for smaller sensors, such as the lens that came with the a100.  The a99 detects the lens format and adjusts the use of the sensor accordingly.  The a100 zoom lens, however, was an inexpensive “kit” lens that turned out not to be very sharp, especially around the edges, so it is unlikely that I will ever use it with the a99.

At 24 MP (mega pixels) the a99v is not a state-of-the-art camera by comparison to the newest offerings from Canon and Nikon, or even Sony’s own E-mount product line, but it is double the pixel count of the 12 MP a100, and has many features that the a100 does not have, including much better auto-focus and much better sensitivity to low light.  The maximum effective ISO speed on the a100 is 1600 whereas the a99v is 25600 and can be set even higher if needed.  The a99v also includes a built-in GPS receiver that enables it to geotag images.  It includes a hot shoe flash adapter, as well as a PC flash connection, so I have some hope that I will be able to use my old flash equipment, something I have not been able to do with my much older Sony alpha 100.

The old a100 holds one Lithium ion battery and one Compact Flash card, 4 GB maximum.  It also has an adapter so it can use SD memory cards, but the maximum usable capacity is still 4 GB.  The a99v also holds one Lithium ion battery in the camera body but holds two additional batteries in the vertical grip accessory.  Not only will the vertical grip be handy for shooting in portrait orientation, the two additional batteries should allow for extended shooting time even when using flash.  The body also has two memory card slots both of which can accept SD memory cards up to 64 GB.  Slot one can also accept a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo.

Digital cameras are sophisticated combinations of mechanical, optical, electronic, and computer technologies.  Compared to film cameras of yesteryear prosumer and professional cameras, both single lens reflex (SLR) and single lens translucent (SLT) like the a99v, are feature-rich devices designed to give photographers complete control of the images that are produced.  That also means they are complicated devices with significant learning curves.  Throw in the fact that cameras like the a99v can shoot HD movies with sound and it takes considerable practice over an extended period of time to really master their use.  But I am retired, and photography is one of my three hobbies, so I have, and will take, the time to learn to use this new camera competently.  Competence in this case means the ability to quickly and intuitively select modes and adjust settings to allow me to capture (create) the images I envision.

Brendan called to see how Madeline was doing and arranged to pick up her up later in the afternoon, after the 3:30 PM start time of the U of M football game.  Unless you are attending the game you do not want to drive in, or anywhere near, Ann Arbor for the four or five hours preceding the opening kickoff.  It’s not a great place to be after the game ends either, especially as regards getting in to a restaurant or pub, unless you specifically want to be part of the pre/post game experience.

Madeline wanted to go outside and swing so we put on our shoes and got her into a light jacket.  She is just learning to pump her feet.  She understands the concept but does not yet having the timing.  When she was done with the swing we collected branches and twigs that were lying in the yard and added them to the burn pile.  We then walked around part of the back yard but her shoes got wet from the grass and she wanted to go back inside.

I checked our apple tree and was surprised to see damage that looked similar to that caused by the Emerald Ash Borer.  It’s possible that deer have been chewing at the bark but whatever the cause there are some very large limbs that are now dead.  What concerned me is that I do not recall them being in that condition the last time I looked.  The tree is very old, very large, and has not been properly pruned for a very long time.  We may end up losing it in the end, which would be a shame, but the time to prune is late winter to very early spring and we have not been here at that time of year the last two seasons.  I have my eye on a portion of the western 2/3rds of our yard, however, as prime real estate for some new trees, including some fruit trees.  But not this year, and probably not next year either.

Madeline was hungry after her backyard adventure.  She had soy yogurt and pistachios for lunch and found the pistachios very much to her liking.  She and Linda watched a Daniel Stripped Tiger cartoon and then she laid down for a nap at 1:30 PM.  I snuck off to my office to check e-mail, install the software that came with my new camera, and start downloading updates for the Linux box.  Completing the installation of the Sony Play Memories Home software required the camera to be connected to the computer, so I installed the two SDXC memory cards and one of the fully charged batteries.  On first power up I had to set the date and time.  I then connected it to the computer with the provided USB cable and completed the software installation.

One of the things the PMH software does is go through the PICTURES folder and catalog all of the images it finds by date and makes them accessible through a calendar view.  The camera also came with the Image Data Converter program for dealing with RAW format image files and Remote Control software that allows the camera to be tethered to a computer and controlled from there.  I will eventually have to figure out if/how Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop deal with Sony RAW files.

I quit working at 3 PM, Linda got Madeline up at 3:30, and Brendan arrived at 3:35.  Madeline had been sleeping pretty soundly and did not wake up easily.  She was initially upset that her mom did not come with her dad to get her and got herself worked up enough that she took quite a while to settle down.  To make matters worse she really wanted to stay another night at our house and was resisting going home even though she wanted to see her mommy.  When you are not yet 3 years of age it’s hard to understand that you cannot have mutually contradictory things at the same time, although I suppose in this case that had Shawna come to the house and stayed overnight Madeline could have had everything she wanted.

Linda got Madeline’s toddler bed deflated and packed for travel and rolled up her sleeping bag.  She and Brendan then gathered up all of the things that had to go back to Ann Arbor.  Madeline does not travel light; the clothes, books, toys, stuffed animals, and other accoutrements filled four carry bags in addition to the bed and sleeping bag.

After Brendan and Madeline left I checked my e-mail and replied to several having to do with my duties as secretary of the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  We will be holding our annual meeting by teleconference in the next three to six weeks and I have to update the roster and prepare financial statements.

I transferred the complete User’s Manual for the Sony a99v from the CD-ROM to my laptop, backed it up to the NAS units, and then e-mailed it to my iPad.  I downloaded it to my iPad and spent much of the evening reading it.  We headed off to bed a little after 9 PM.  I tuned into the Create channel on Detroit PBS (WTVS) and watched a series of back-to-back episodes of Cooking with Nick Stellino while I worked on this post.  Nick’s show is charming and he is the poster boy for unapologetic high self-esteem but with no hint of arrogance.  His love of food and passion for cooking is infectious and I enjoy his show.

 

2015/10/09 (F) All Charged Up

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We finished the current batch of granola for breakfast and had just finished our meal when Chris, from Bratcher Electric, showed up at 8:45 AM to service the whole house generator.  He let me watch and explained the various steps in the process.  The trickiest part appeared to be replacing the spark plug on the back side of the engine.  Everything else was fairly accessible.  There is a 1/4 turn valve to drain the oil and a rubber tube to get it out to a collection vessel.

Chris had what looked like a small gas can but it was painted blue.  It had a clear plastic tube attached to what would normally be the air vent.  The tube was sized to just fit inside the oil drain hose.  A vacuum pump was threaded on to opening where the pour spout would normally go.  A few pumps of the handle and the device sucked the oil right out of the engine and contained it so he could transport it easily and cleanly.  It was a very clever device, and obviously very handy for someone who does several generator maintenance procedures every day.

He gapped the spark plugs at 0.028″, checked the air filter (it was fine), replaced the oil filter, noting the date on the filter with a permanent marker, and put ~2-1/3 quarts of 5W-30 synthetic oil back in the engine.  He cautioned me to only use the specified filter and pure synthetic oil.  The engine runs hot under load and regular oil can lead to problems.  He checked all of the settings and changed the weekly self-test to run at full speed for the entire time.  He prefers that setting as it gets the engine up to normal operating temperature and helps burn off any moisture in the oil.  He started the unit manually, let it run for a while, and then shut it down and put in back in AUTO mode.

Linda prepared the dry ingredients for her vegan chocolate cupcakes and then put together a grocery list.  She left to go to Meijer’s while Chris was still working.  He finished up around 10:15.  I worked on the bus, using split plastic wire loom to protect the wires that power the fans on the heat exchangers.  I then worked on reconnecting the wires from the front bay electric heater to the supply wires.

A close up view of the fill/bleeder valve assembly for the heat exchangers in the desk bases.

A close up view of the fill/bleeder valve assembly for the heat exchangers in the desk bases.

The supply wires run inside the HVAC duct.  They originally came out of the duct and went through a hole in the floor into the OTR air-conditioning bay and then through the partition wall into the front bay.  I had to cut the cable and pull it through the floor from underneath so I could install the new floor tile.  I could clearly see where the OTR HVAC supply duct came into the distribution duct but when I tried drilling from below I seemed to hit metal.   The bottom of the duct was clearly plywood so I drilled from above with a 1/2″ spade bit.  I got through most of the plywood but again seem to hit metal.  I knew there wasn’t anything in that location, like wires, pipes, or air lines, so I switched to a 1/2″ twist drill and finished the hole.

I dropped a screwdriver through the hole so I could locate it from below.  I then pushed the electrical cable from the heater up through the hole and secured it to a fastener on the forward wall with a cable tie.  Linda got back at this point so I helped get the groceries into the house.  She then mixed a new batch if granola and put it in the oven to bake.  I gathered up my electrical tools, uncapped the feed wires, checked them with a volt meter to make sure they were not energized, connected the feed wires to the load wires, and tucked them back inside the duct.

We had a choice as to what to work on next—fill the heat exchangers and hoses with antifreeze or hang the wallpaper in the hallway—so we had lunch.  Summer has passed, but tofu hotdogs with mustard, onion, and relish, along with some red grapes, was still a tasty lunch.

When we got back to work in the coach we decided to hang the wallpaper.  The pieces were already cut and laid out on the bed.  Hanging them not only got them off the bed, it would allow us to get the wood trim off the bed as well and back on the lower wall.  But not today.  The wallpaper adhesive needs to cure for 24 hours before we work around it and does not achieve its full cure for 5 to 7 days.  We have one piece of wallpaper to hang behind the forward end of the sofa but the wall prep is not finished in that area.  Once that piece is up, and we have the Corian top for the desk, we can complete the installation of the desk and sofa.

Shawna was bringing Madeline at 4:30 PM to spend the night with us.  It was already 2:30 and I needed to get cleaned up and put on non-work clothes before they arrived so we called it a day.  I had once again accumulated quite a few tools in the bus.  I gathered up all of the ones I was done with, returned them to the garage, and locked up the coach.  The UPS truck showed up with my package from B&H Photo which I set aside temporarily while I took a shower and got dressed.

The box looked like it had been treated well in shipment.  I opened the box, carefully removed all of the contents, and compared them to the order/packing list.  Everything was there and appeared to be in pristine condition.  I unwrapped the battery charger and Lithium ion battery, put the battery in the charger, and plugged it in.  The new charger is essentially the same as the one that came with my Sony alpha 100 years ago so I got the old one from the basement.  I bought five additional batteries so I opened one of them and plugged it in to the old charger.  I then found the Instruction Manual and curled up with it on the living room sofa while Juniper (the cat) curled up on me.

The directions with the charger and the batteries indicated that it can take up to 175 minutes to fully recharge a battery and that full charge is not obtained until an hour after the charging light goes out.  So, basically, I need to leave the batteries in the charger for three hours to ensure they are fully charged.  The camera takes one battery, and the vertical grip accessory takes two batteries, so my normal operating configuration will be to have three batteries in the use.  That’s why I have a total of six batteries for this new camera.  I will probably buy another charger so I can charge three batteries simultaneously.

I called Chuck to let him know I got my car back late yesterday but would not be able to move the windshields box until sometime next week.  It turned out that he and Barbara were also busy all weekend.  His daughter, son-in-law, and grandson were in town with more family arriving from Trinidad and Tobago this evening.  Tomorrow is his grandson’s first birthday and Sunday he is being baptized at the church in Ann Arbor where Chuck’s daughter was married.

Shawna showed up just after 4:30 PM.  Madeline had fallen asleep in the car and was slow to wake up, clinging to her mom for quite a while.  Linda brought in the various bags of clothes and toys along with the inflatable bed and got everything situated in the middle bedroom.  When Linda mentioned making cupcakes Madeline finally woke up and became cheerful.  Once her focus was on baking with Grandma Linda Shawna was able to slip away without any drama on Ms. M’s part.

Today was Brendan and Shawna’s friend Jorge’s birthday and the three of them were headed to a new restaurant in Detroit to celebrate.  The restaurant does not take reservations and is apparently very popular at the moment so Shawna was not sure if they would actually get to eat there.

With Linda’s help Madeline mixed the ingredients for the cupcakes and managed to pour most of the batter into the baking tray.  Linda then prepared dinner while I played with Madeline.  We did the ABCs on her placemat, and then colored with crayons.  Dinner was mock chicken tenders, edamame, and steamed carrot rounds with fresh orange segments and sliced strawberries, so it was mostly fresh, whole plant-based foods.

As soon as the cupcakes were cool enough to be frosted Madeline coated each one with the special Halloween orange frosting and the back and orange Halloween sprinkles.  I was summoned to inspect the work and then it was time to eat.  Madeline selected a cupcake for herself and then one for me and one for Linda.  We ate them at the table and they were very good.

After cupcakes we played soccer with two different balls, kicking and throwing them all around the house.  By 8 PM we needed to start winding things down.  Shawna had left her iPad and Madeline selected a Curious George video about Christmas.  Linda and Madeline climbed up in our bed where they could stretch out their legs and watched the first 60% of the cartoon.  I opened two more camera batteries and put them in the chargers and then joined the girls.  We will watch the rest of the cartoon tomorrow morning.

I helped Madeline brush her teeth and Linda got her into her pajamas.  Linda read her several stories and finally got her in bed around 9:15 PM.  During dinner Madeline inquired about having pancakes for breakfast.  (I had made the same inquiry over lunch.)  Linda did not have all of the ingredients she needed so after Madeline went to bed I went to Meijer’s in Howell and bought avocado oil and all-purpose flour.  Linda is trying to use up ingredients rather than stock up on them so I bought a two pound bag of King Arthur organic unbleached enriched all-purpose flour even though I could have bought a 10 pound bag of the Meijer’s brand (bleached and not organic) for only 50 cents more.

Just before going to bed I opened two more batteries and put them in the chargers.  We went to bed at 11 PM but did not turn on the TV to ensure that we did not disturb Madeline’s sleep.  I was basically done with the draft of this post and read some more of the Instruction Manual for my new Sony alpha 99 (SLT-A99V) camera and vertical battery grip (VG-C99AM).  I am really looking forward to using this new equipment but it takes a couple of days to charge batteries, install software, and read manuals enough to be able to configure it for first use.  This class of camera has a lot of adjustable parameters with default settings that may or may not be what any particular user wants.

 

2015/10/08 (R) A Mighty Hose

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Linda was up before 6 AM to drive to the bakery ahead of the worst of the morning rush hour traffic.  I was aware of her getting up but fell back asleep.  She is very quiet as she goes about her preparations on such mornings, which I appreciate.

I got up around 8AM, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray.  I made half as much coffee as usual and measured out a bowl of granola, probably a little more than usual.  I took my coffee to the living room and turned on the fireplace, expecting to settle in with my cats and work on my iPad, but the iOS 9.0.2 update was available so I started the installation and read the last few pages of Number Theory and Its History by Oystein Ore.  I read from screens more than from paper these days, but I still like to curl up with a printed book.

Jasper used to sit next to me on the sofa in the morning but seems to prefer sleeping on top of one of the back cushions these days.  Juniper, who never used to pay much attention to me, has taken his place.  She has always sought out warm places to curl up but has always preferred Linda’s lap to mine.

My bus project for today was reassembling the plumbing to the two fan-coil heat exchangers that go in the bases under the two desk pedestals.  Yesterday I cut new holes for the supply and return hoses.  My first task was to remove the hoses from the bleeder valves and install barbed plastic plugs in the ends to prevent coolant from coming out.  I then pulled the hoses back and out through the new openings.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

The area behind the desk where the heater hoses emerge from the passenger side OTR HVAC duct.

I worked on the hose for the right hand (rear most) heat exchanger first.  I positioned the base, routed the hose to the lower fitting, and marked where to cut it.  I put a plastic paint tray liner under the hose before I cut it but more coolant came out than I expected.  I got as much of it in the liner as I could and grabbed a bunch of paper shop towels.  I got the liner outside without spilling any antifreeze and poured the used antifreeze in a one gallon jug that I keep for just this purpose.  I used a funnel that is also reserved for use with antifreeze.

I took the cut off piece of heater hose outside, plugged end down, and set the open end in the tray liner.  We already had a bucket of soapy water in the bus as we had planned on hanging wallpaper yesterday.  I wrung out the sponge and then squeezed some of the soapy water on the floor and cleaned it up with paper shop towels.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

The left and right desk bases and center cover/spacer set in place. The heater hoses are not yet connected.

With the mess cleaned up I slipped two hose clamps over the end of the hose and worked it onto the lower fitting on the heat exchanger.  If only it had been as easy to do as that description!  The 3/4″ i.d. rubber heater hose did not just “slip” over the 3/4″ o.d. copper pipe even with some residual antifreeze lubricating the inside of the hose and the outside of the pipe.  Indeed, it took considerable and simultaneous pushing and twisting to get the hose on.  It was also a lot harder than I expected to work with the heat exchangers installed in the bases, even without the desk pedestals in place.

I was interrupting my work as needed to take photographs and as I finished up the first hose the camera refused to trigger the shutter.  The LCD screen indicated that the compact flash memory card was full so I went to my office to offload the images from the last few days.  My other CF card was empty so I put that in the camera and set it aside.  I had not backed up my photos to the Network Attached Storage units in quite a while so I decided to take the time to do that.  While I was at it I backed up my blog posts from December of 2014 through July of this year along with several issues of The Gypsy Journal.

As long as I was at my computer I checked my e-mail accounts, logged into RVillage, and logged into my account at B&H Photo.  My new Sony alpha 99 and accessories were on their way from New York and due to be delivered by the end of the day tomorrow.  I am excited to finally be getting a new digital camera with a full frame (35mm) sensor that will work correctly with all of my old Minolta A-mount lenses.

By this point it was lunchtime so I cleaned up (antifreeze is definitely NOT good eats) and scrounged around the kitchen for something tasty but easy to fix.  My “go to” meal is usually roasted red pepper hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers.  We had a little hummus left, which I finished, but I was still hungry so I made a bowl of popcorn.  I would probably not make a good bachelor.

I went back to the coach and contemplated attaching the other hose to the left heat exchanger.  While I was thinking about it Linda called to let me know she was on her way home.  It was 1 PM so I decided to wait for her to get home to help me install the second hose.  I had some phone calls to make and used the time for that.

I called Karen at Bratcher Electric to schedule the upgrading of our 60 Amp sub-panel in the garage to a 100 Amp main panel.  While I had her on the phone I asked if Mike would itemize the quote.  I also mentioned that they had picked up two or three whole house generator customers through my referrals and perhaps Mike could provide some consideration for that in the pricing.  Next I called Ferman Miller at Countertop Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to check on the Corian desk top and table.  Ferman answered the phone and said he had called Josh this morning to let him know the pieces were ready for pickup.  I then called Josh to see what his plans were.

We originally agreed that he would pick them up and bring them to our house on his way to visit relatives in the northeast side of the Detroit metropolitan area.  His plans had changed and he won’t be visiting his relatives anytime soon.  He is leaving on Tuesday for a FMCA area rally in the Carolinas and will be gone for a week.  Before he leaves he needs to get something to a customer in Cleveland in addition to getting our stuff to us or deciding that we will have to drive to Shipshewana to get it ourselves.  One option is that we meet him somewhere on Sunday.  Ann Arbor is a possibility but Toledo or Defiance (Ohio) are more likely rendezvous points.

Linda got home around 2 PM and changed into her work clothes.  With Linda’s help I was able to avoid the mess I had with the first hose.  The second hose was even harder to get on than the first one but we managed to do it.  In part because of the arthritis in the joints at the base of my thumbs I do not have as much grip strength as I would like and often need.  The twisting and pushing was hard on my hands and the confines of the base and proximity of crisp wooden edges resulted in lots of small cuts.  This was not something I anticipated in the design and construction of the bases and the installation of the heat exchangers.

I took a break and drove to Northwest Plumbing Supply to see if they had a bleeder valve like the ones in our bus system.  They did not and had never do seen anything like it before.  The showed me a couple of things they did have but I did not buy anything.  I got a call from Brighton Honda that my car was ready for pickup so I headed home to get Linda.  She drove me to the dealership and then went on to Meijer’s for a few grocery items.

I drove to Lowe’s in Howell and was fortunate to find Lars in the plumbing department.  The store was not very busy and he took an interest in showing me various plumbing options that might allow me to replace the bleeder valve with something that would do the same thing while also giving me a way to add antifreeze to the system.  What I ended up with was 3/4″x3/4″X1/2″ copper sweat T and a 1/2″ sweat ball valve with a waste port.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built.

Bruce works on attaching the heater hoses to the fill/bleeder valve T assembly he built.  (Photo by Linda.)

Back home I cleaned some 3/4″ and 1/2″ copper pipe with 120 grit plumbers sandpaper.  I cut two pieces of the 3/4″ pipe about 3″ long and one piece of the 1/2″ pipe about 1-1/2″ long.  I brushed the inside of all the fittings and test fit the pieces.  I then applied flux to all of the surfaces to be soldered, inserted the two 3/4″ stubs into the run fittings, inserted the 1/2″ stud into the bull fitting, and put the ball valve on the other end of the 1/2″ pipe.  I used the lever on the ball valve to mount the assembly in my bench vise.  I removed the waste port cap to protect the neoprene seal and opened the ball valve so as not to trap heat inside.  I then heated the T and the end of the valve and applied the solder.

I figured there had to be an easier way to get heater hose onto the heat exchanger and that Butch was the guy who would know what it was.  I called and he said antifreeze can obviously be used and works fairly well but that a small amount of dish soap would also work as a lubricant and not harm the antifreeze or the Aqua-Hot and its components.  As long as we were on the phone I caught up on their activities.

They were still there at the RV Park in Bouse, Arizona but only until the 15th of this month.  The terms and conditions of their employment as managers of the park had not turned out to be as described during the interview process and they are wrapping up after only a month on the job.  They will move their bus back to Quartzsite and spend at least part of the winter at Joe and Connie’s place where we both spent last winter.  I know it was a big disappointment to them that the situation in Bouse did not work out, but their situation in Q will be familiar, comfortable, and inexpensive, as well as convenient to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club which they joined this past winter.

For dinner Linda made a blend of onions, garlic, mushrooms, and power greens and served it over a baked potato topped with Daiya cheese.  It was very yummy, and the potatoes kept the dish warm all the way to the end.  The weather had turned cloudy through the afternoon and we got the first raindrops during dinner.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

The fill/bleeder valve T assembly with the heater hoses connected. The assembly is located between the bases at the floor and will be hidden by the center connector/cover.

I had really hoped to have the hydronic heating system reassembled today so we went back out to bus after dinner to hook up the heater hose that runs between the two heat exchangers.  This was actually two pieces of hose with my homemade bleeder/fill valve half way between the two exchangers.  Even with dish soap the two hoses were very difficult to get onto the heat exchanger fittings and the bleeder/fill stubs, but I got them on.  Linda took pictures while I grunted, groaned, and moaned and I took a few more when I was done.

It was 8:45 PM when we finally quit working, secured the bus, and went inside.  I cleaned my hands as best I could but I could not get all of the black from the rubber hoses to come off.  We sat for a while in the living room and had the last of the frozen chocolate torte that Linda made a couple of weeks ago.  We finally turned in around 10 PM and watched Rick Steve’s Europe, Travel in the Americas, and a couple of cooking shows while I worked on this post.

 

2015/10/07 (W) The Root Cause

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We had Linda’s homemade granola for breakfast with fresh blueberries.  Berry season is just about over for the year and they will become more expensive as they have to be transported from farther away.  I made a pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams, the half-caff blend that Jeff makes just for us, and we drank it in the living room.  Linda checked in on the world and pulled up the latest video from NutritionFacts.org while I researched hardwood veneers on Rockler.com.

After breakfast and coffee I called Metro Environmental Services to arrange to have the culvert under the road cleaned out.  They were able to schedule us for this afternoon so I accepted that appointment.  I then called Brighton Honda to check on my car and left a message for Rob, the service advisor who wrote up the repair for the driver side door lock.  I had no sooner left that message than I got a call from Karen at Bratcher Electric.

Mike had worked up the quote to install the 100 Amp disconnect, tie it into the output of the transfer switch, and run a 100 Amp 4-wire service entrance cable to the current sub-panel, making it into a main panel.  They would also disconnect and cap the current sub-panel feed from the basement as part of the work.  At just north of $1,300 it was a good $300 higher than I expected.  My expectation, however, was not based on anything specific other than my own sense of the cost of materials and the amount of labor that might be involved, plus a desire for it to not cost more than $1,000.  🙁

With the phone calls taken care of we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning.  Linda worked on stripping the remnants of wallpaper that remained after we removed the mirrors from the lower outside hallway wall yesterday.  I worked on re-routing the heater hoses for the fan-coil heat exchangers.  She got her job done before I got mine done.  That’s usually the way it is.

To start, I removed one of the old 4″ round plastic grates and used my inspection mirror and a flashlight to examine the inside of the HVAC duct.  What I discovered was that the two heater hoses were secured periodically with plastic cable clamps to the outer wall of the HVAC duct.  I also discovered that the metal part of the duct is just the inner wall and top.  The bottom is the plywood subfloor of the bus and the outer wall is the plywood wall.  As originally built the metal portion of the duct could be removed but when Royale Coach did the conversion they built cabinets around the ducts and put wood wiring chases on top of them in such a way that they can no longer be removed without partially disassembling the coach.

The location of the hoses and wires in the duct was such that I could safely use my 4″ bi-metal hole saw to cut access holes for the hoses.  I determined where the cable clamps were located by measuring inside the duct.  I then marked where the access slots in the bottom back of the bases would be located and determined where I needed the two hoses to emerge from the duct.

The manual sheet metal nibbler used to cut a line between the bottoms of the two holes in the HVAC duct.

The manual sheet metal nibbler used to cut a line between the bottoms of the two holes in the HVAC duct.

There was already a 4″ hole at one of my needed locations so I drilled a second one next to it with an inch in-between.  I used Chuck’s hand powered sheet metal nibbler to connect the holes together to make an opening that looked like the track around a football field.  We vacuumed up the metal chips and I then installed door edge molding all the way around the edge of the opening.  I was able to reach the screws holding the first pair of cable clamps with a #2SR screwdriver and remove them.  This large slot will be behind the left end of the center connecting cover of the desk and the hose for the heat exchanger that goes in the left base will come out of it.

 

Plastic U-channel door edge molding installed around the new heater hose opening.

Plastic U-channel door edge molding installed around the new heater hose opening.

The location of the next pair of cable clamps corresponded, roughly, to where I needed the hose for the right heat exchanger to emerge.  I drilled two 4″ holes, side-by-side, at that location and nibbled out the little bit of metal in-between them to make a second slot.  Again, I installed the door edge molding around the entire edge.  The molding was a tight fit, and I had to use a screwdriver to get it to go on the inner curves, but I got it on.  The U-channel is locked in mechanically and has adhesive in it so it should stay put once it has had a few days in place.  Once the hoses are re-routed I will put screen material, and perhaps some solid plates, over the openings to prevent critters from gaining access to the living area by way of the HVAC PCTS (Prevost Critter Tunnel System).

 

The access holes in the OTR HVAC duct in the area behind where the desk will be installed.

The access holes in the OTR HVAC duct in the area behind where the desk will be installed.

Linda had two medical appointments this afternoon, both routine diagnostic procedures, so she got cleaned up, changed her clothes, and left around 12:30 PM as I was finishing up the second slot.  I went inside and was thinking about making something for lunch when the doorbell rang.  It was our mail carrier, Michelle, with a package that was too big for the mailbox.  A few minutes later the doorbell rang again.  I figured it was Michelle again, but it was one of the guys from Metro Environmental Services.  They were supposed to call first but just showed up.

I put my shoes on and walked them down to the clogged culvert that goes under the road.  I was really hoping they could clean it out from the south side but when we went into the woods we could not see the end of the culvert.  They got a metal detector and located the end of the pipe.  It was almost completely buried and had a massive root running right in front of it from a very large nearby tree.  They got a shovel and dug out around the root, exposing much of it and the end of the pipe.

The tree was probably 30″ in diameter at the base and the root was at least 10″ in diameter.  I got my (new) 18″ chain saw but had trouble getting it started.  It turned out it was out of gasoline.  Once I got it started I tried to cut through the root on either side of the culvert.  I thought I was all the way through on one end (closest to the tree) and most of the way through on the other end, but the root would not budge.  I dulled the teeth on the chain to the point where the saw would no longer cut and did not want to take the time to put a new chain on just to ruin it quickly.  The guys finally agreed to hydrojet the culvert from the north side of the road.

The actual cleaning out of the culvert did not take that long.  The pump produces 2,000 PSI and they used about 300 gallons of water from the onboard tank on their truck.  The head on the end of the hose has one forward facing nozzle and many rear/side facing nozzles.  The forward facing nozzle loosens and cleans out the area directly in front of the head while the other nozzles force the head forward and blast whatever is in the pipe back out towards the entrance.

They started with a small head and ran it in until there was water coming out the other end of the culvert.  They then pulled the hose back and switched to a much larger head and ran that all the way through and back.  When they were done muddy water filled the culvert and the depressions on either end.  On the inlet end the water was only about 3″ deep in the bottom of the culvert but on the outlet end it was near the top.  They billed me for the minimum first hour amount even though I think they were here longer than that.

I called Phil to let him know what we had run into.  He was surprised, to say the least, as he thought he had checked the other end of the culvert.  Obviously not, but that’s water under the road, so to speak.  Besides the problems with the root and the discharge end of the culvert being below the surface, it looked to me like the discharge area was something of a low spot and it was not obvious to me where water would flow from there.  I have learned, however, that I am not very good at judging such things visually.

Cory, our neighbor across the street, had come over to see what was going on.  He offered that the discharge area does, in fact, drain to the south through his property and eventually to Golf Club Road.  Cory has been here for 30 years so I have no reason to doubt the truth of that.  The elevation where Golf Club ends at Hacker and where our street ends at Hacker appears to be about the same.  Our street is fairly level while Golf Club has a little bit of up and down, but it is subtle.  I suggested to Phil that we might have to clear a path into the woods for his small digger and do some trenching to give the water a way out.

While Cory and I were chatting I noticed that the trees along this part of the road were hanging out over the road on both sides and were rather lower than they should be.  This is the very thing I complain about with regards to the way most of our neighbor’s fail to maintain their properties along the road.  I decided I should do something about it so I got our pole saw and spent a couple of hours trimming the low overhanging branches.

Linda went to the Whole Foods Market in West Bloomfield following her medical appointments and got home just as I was finishing up the pruning.  She went for a walk while I called John Palmer of Palmer Energy Systems in Florida.  I bought our Magnum inverter/charger for the bus from John along with various accessories and batteries.  I needed a 4-wire terminal block for our Magnum Battery Monitor Kit (BMK) because I had messed up the one that came with it when I originally installed it.  John confirmed that Magnum Energy had recently been acquired by Sensata, and was in the process of relocating the plant to Minnesota, but that several of the old-timers were still on board.  John needed to talk to Tom anyway and asked me to call him back in a week to see if he was able to get the connector.

I checked with the service department at Brighton Honda again and Rob said he expected to get the new door lock mechanism back from the locksmith tomorrow morning and to have the car ready for me to pick up by the end of the day.  It will be nice to finally have it back.

The cloudy weather finally broke today and we saw some blue sky with brighter light levels than we have had recently.  The day was lovely but a little on the cool side by late afternoon so we both had a cup of hot tea.  Linda took advantage of the light to work on her counted cross-stitch project, a holiday stocking for grand-daughter Madeline, and I went back to the bus to sand off the last traces of the old wallpaper from the outside wall in the hallway.

I used our Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander with 80, 120, and finally 220 grit sandpaper.  The sander has an integral dust collection bag but it does not capture all of the dust.  I used the vacuum cleaner to pick up as much of the residual dust as I could and then used a tack cloth to wipe down the wall.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions in sweet barbecue sauce.  She served it open-faced on rye bread, because that is what we had, and steamed some fresh green beans as a side dish.  Yum.

After dinner I drove to Lowe’s.  I needed something I could use to plug the two heater hoses to keep them from leaking as I pull them back through the HVAC duct and out through the new slots I made for them today.  I ended up buying two 3/4″ barbed plastic plugs.  While I was there I looked to see if they had any bleeder valves but they did not.  They do not sell parts designed specifically for hydronic heating systems and I will have to go to Northwest Plumbing and Supply for such items.

While I was in the plumbing isle I looked to see if I could figure out some combination of parts to make a fill valve for the system but did not see anything that inspired me.  I would love to have one or more high point expansion tanks on this system but I do not have any easily accessible places for them from which I could also run overflow drain lines.  There is a good sized volume of unused space behind the drawers on the passenger side of the bedroom but it would be a very difficult place to install anything.  Perhaps Northwest Plumbing and Supply will have something.

On the way home I stopped at the BP station and topped up the fuel tank in Linda’s car.  I drove home with greater consideration for fuel economy than usual and managed to get the average MPG up to 56.7 before it dropped back to 55.4 as I pulled in the driveway.  It will drop into the upper 40s as soon as Linda starts the engine tomorrow morning but it was fun to get it into the driveway with numbers above 55 MPG.

 

2015/10/06 (T) Trimming & Stripping

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We did not get an early start to our day today.  I got up a little after 8 AM and Linda got up 15 minutes later.  Even so, she still had our granola and berries ready before I had the coffee made, but in my defense I had the extra step of transferring the three pounds of coffee we bought yesterday from their paper bags to our metal containers with the air-tight lids.  We were wondering about whether grapes are berries so Linda Googled the topic.  Botanically, grapes are berries but strawberries and raspberries are not.  Also included among the “true” berries are bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants.  That’s right, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants are fruits.

Linda left at 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark for a 10 AM walk.  Mike from Bratcher Electric showed up at 10:30 to revisit the wiring project I needed his company to do.  They are going to install a 100 Amp disconnect switch next to the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage, run power to the disconnect switch from the transfer switch, and then run a 4-wire service entrance cable (SEC) from the disconnect switch through the garage attic to the electrical distribution panel in the closet with the HVAC system for the library.  The electrical panel is currently a 60 A sub-panel of the main distribution panel in the basement and this project will convert it to a 100 A main panel while still allowing it to be powered by the generator if the utility power goes out.

When Mike left I gathered up the two metal cutting tools I borrowed from Chuck, our corded 1/2″ Craftsman drill (which I needed to power one of the nibblers), the small Rigid drill kit, and my telescoping inspection mirror.  My plan was to cut one or two openings in the passenger side HVAC duct for the heater hoses but I decided to do some yard work instead.

We still had some bushes growing out over the drainage ditch by the mailbox and I wanted to get them trimmed up and add the waste material to the timber pile before Phil hauled it away tomorrow (hopefully).  I was still working on this little distraction when Linda got back from her walk so she got a pair of gloves and helped.  The bushes and trees in this area have an extensive system of vines running through them.  I got a lot of the smaller vines cut and pulled free and I managed to trim one bush back enough to create an “entrance” to the inner part of this stand of trees.

Once I was “inside” the grove I found one of the main sources of the vine, a massive thing that looked like something out of a Harry Potter movie.  It was easily 10″ in diameter where it came out of the ground and had 4″ to 6″ pieces branching off in different directions.  I have no idea what kind of vine this but I suspect it is a wild grape vine.  Given its size I surmised that it has been there for a very long time gradually chocking off the trees.  I will have to eventually cut it out, but I would like to find out first just exactly what it is.

Linda helped drag all of the clippings over to the disposal pile where we cut some of them into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile.  We noticed a small tree hanging out into the space above the driveway that Phil is about to build.  We thought the tree was dead and decided to cut it down.  It was 5″ in diameter 6″ above the ground–big enough to require the chain saw–and also had a lot of branches that were large enough to be more expeditiously dispatched with said same machine.

After felling the tree and de-limbing it I was not so sure that it was dead.  We had a half dozen other trees along the northern edge of this stand woods that looked to be similarly dead but I decided not to cut them down.  One in particular had a lot of obviously new, small branches.  We will wait until spring and see which, if any, of these trees develop leaves.  If they are alive I will trim them instead of cutting them down.

We put away the yard tools and took a break to have a light, late lunch of vegan cold cuts sandwiches and black grapes with a glass of beet juice.  I like beets on salads and as a side vegetable.  Beet juice is OK but a bit more of an acquired taste.  We have added it into our daily food plans because of its ability to control blood pressure.  Linda is adding ground flax seed to her granola for the same reason.

Measuring and cutting wallpaper on the dining room table in the house.

Measuring and cutting wallpaper on the dining room table in the house.

At 2 PM we decided to hang the wallpaper in the hallway of the bus so we gathered all of our tools and took them to the coach.  I measured the wall and determined the lengths (30″) and widths of the four pieces; two full width (26.5″) and two partial width (15.5″), one for the left end and one for the right end.  We cut the four pieces on the dining room table in the house where we could unroll over six feet of wallpaper, measure more accurately, and cut more easily.  We cut the two full pieces out of the end of the first double roll and cut the two partial pieces out of the beginning of a new double roll.

Linda took the pieces to the bus and laid them out on the bed.  I was getting ready to pour some GH-95 paste into the tray and roll it onto the wall when I decided to remove the trim board that separates the upper wall from the vertical mirror strips on the lower wall.  My intent was to avoid having to trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper by tucking it behind this board.  What I discovered was that the strip mirrors on the lower portion of the wall were glued to the wallpaper and some of them were loose.

The fact that the mirrors were glued to wallpaper and not to the plywood wall surface meant that they could be removed.  I unscrewed the four vertical pieces of wood trim that framed the mirrors in three panels and then removed the bottom trim piece.  I carefully removed each mirror by prying the underlying wallpaper loose from the wall using a large screwdriver and working from the top down.  When the entire strip was loose I cut the wallpaper to release it.  I handed them to Linda and she stored them carefully inside the built-in sofa.  I managed to get all of them off except one which fractured in several places.  We taped it up and vacuumed up the few glass fragments that were created when it broke.

At this point we were clearly not going to hang the four pieces of wallpaper we just cut as we needed to finish stripping the base layer of the old wallpaper first.  We also had to take a little time to decide how to finish the lower wall.  One option would be to wallpaper the entire wall and not put the wood trim back.  We probably have enough wallpaper to do that, even after cutting the four smaller pieces for the upper wall, but we did not think the wall would look right if we did that.

Another option would be to install wood panels to replace the mirror strips.  In this case we would use a light wood with a natural finish to provide an intentional contrast with all of the walnut trim.  The mirror strips are slightly beveled on their long edges and measure 3/16″ thick at those edges.  That means a 3/16″ hardwood veneered plywood should be a perfect fit, allowing all of the wood trim to go back in place.  Maple or Birch with a natural finish are the most likely choices.

The wood panels is the option we will almost certainly pursue and we do not have to resolve exactly what panels to use in order to finish wallpapering the upper part of the wall.  All told this will push our finish date back a couple of days, but we don’t really have a finish date anyway, and we will like the final result a lot better.  We really do not like the strip mirrors and wish we could remove or cover all of them.

It was only 4:30 PM when we quit working in the bus for the day but we had both had a relatively physical day and were ready to quit.  The lighting in the hallway was also a little dim due to the continuing heavy cloud cover which was having the added effect of lowering our energy level and enthusiasm a bit.

My last couple of e-mails to Lou Petkus of the SKP Photographers BoF had gone unanswered so I called Lou to make sure everything was OK.  It was; he and Val have just been very busy.  We know about busy.  We had a nice chat about cameras and RVing plans for the upcoming winter.

Linda always puts nice dinner meals on the table and tonight was no different.  She halved and cored a white acorn squash and baked it in the oven with a little vegan butter and brown sugar.  She had a few Brussels sprouts left over and some baby carrots so she added onions and sautéed them to make a very good vegetable medley.  Finally, she heated a package of mock chicken in orange sauce.  The trio of dishes was not only tasty but lifted my spirits; not that either of us are down, but the weather has been heavily overcast for several days and had a slightly depressing effect on our moods.

I got a call from Phil after dinner updating me on his availability to work on our driveway and French drain project.  The 2-day job he started yesterday morning is probably going to take him the entire week to finish so there is very little chance we will see him back at work on our project before next Monday.  He did, however, find time to call a company that can hydrojet the culvert under our road and find out their pricing.  He gave me the name and phone number and I will call them tomorrow and try to set something up.  The other upside is that we have more time to pull dead trees out of the woods in front of our house, cut them up, and add them to the disposal pile, if we so choose.

Linda’s favorite TV shows are concentrated on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings so we watched NCIS and NCISNOLA followed by an episode of LIMITLESS, just to see what it was like.  I watched Two and a Half Men, which I happen to find very amusing, and then went to sleep.

 

2015/10/05 (M) Pondering Wallpaper

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I woke up to stay at 7:20 AM, got up shortly thereafter, and got dressed to work.  Today was finally wallpapering day.  I fed the cats and refilled the reservoir on their recirculating water dish.  Linda was still sound asleep, and I suspected that she did not sleep well last night, so I closed the bedroom door while I ground the coffee beans so as not to disturb her.  She is still fighting off a cold and/or allergies and so am I.  I used the last of the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans plus a couple of scoops of the Kenya AA.  We are a day or two away from being out of coffee and will have to get some more when we go out this morning to buy wallpaper paste and tools.

Linda got up at 7:40.  Phil had not shown up yet nor called to update us on whether he would be here so we were left to guess that he was on his way to the other last minute job that he said he would probably have to take care of today and tomorrow.  The temperature at 8 AM was 55 degrees F with light fog.  It looked very wet outside but I could not tell if it had rained overnight or if it was just heavy dew.  The high was forecast to be 72, and we have the electric heaters on in the bus, so the walls should be warm enough for us to hang wallpaper today.

We left at 9:30 to go buy wallpaper paste and a few tools at Lowe’s in Howell.  We stopped at Teeko’s on the way and ordered three pounds of coffee beans.  We got one pound each of the following, roasted to order:  1) Sweet Seattle Dreams (1/2 Seattle Blend and 1/2 Sweet Dreams decaf blend); 2) Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff; and 3) 1/2 Sumatra Manhelding with 1/2 Sumatra decaf.  At Lowe’s we bought a gallon jug of Roman GH-95 Wallpaper Paste for Kitchen and Bath.  It is supposed to be more suitable for high moisture environments and since we tend to use the bus with the windows open it can get humid inside.  We also got a smoothing tool, a 24″ paint shield to use for as a trimming guide, a 1/4″ nap 9″ long roller cover, and an inexpensive paint brush.  We stopped at Teeko’s on the way home and Roger had our coffee beans ready for pickup.

Back home I gathered up the tools we already had and took everything to the bus.  I got a scrap of underlayment to use as a small work surface for measuring and cutting off lengths of wallpaper.  We did not have room to set up a work surface in the bus that was big enough to roll out the wallpaper and apply paste to the back side so we decided to apply the paste to the walls using a roller and brush.

Before we got started installing the wallpaper Keith showed up around 10:45 AM to cut the grass.  I wasn’t sure he would come today due to the wet conditions, but he did not think it was wet enough to be a problem.  It’s been two weeks since the last grass cutting and it definitely needed to be mowed, at least in some places.  We also cut up and moved a couple of downed trees so he was finally able to mow the grass where they had been.

I had just finished chatting with Keith when Phil showed up around 11 AM to pick up his small excavator.  He had been at another job since 7 AM.  It was supposed to only involve “moving some stone around” so he only took his front loader to the site.  When he got there he was shown a much more extensive landscaping plan and a job site that included removing tree stumps and other digging operations.  Even with that his plan is to be back at our place on Wednesday.

My first task was to sand the primed walls.  I used the Porter-Cable palm sander, first with 120 grit sandpaper and then with 220 grit.  Linda then wiped down the walls with tack cloth while I put the sander away.  There is not a lot of room to work in the bus so we try to remove tools that we are not using.

We finished gathering our tools and materials, including two big buckets of water (one with mild soap) and spent an hour pondering the wallpaper installation.  Part of the pondering involved measuring the three wall areas that were ready for wallpaper and deciding where we would start and how we would proceed from there.  By the time we were ready to cut and paste wallpaper it was 12:30 PM so we took a break and had a sandwich and grapes for lunch.

When we unrolled the first double roll of wallpaper we noticed periodic faint horizontal “lines.”  These turned out to be slight impressions from the outside edge of the end of the roll which was very tightly wrapped in clear plastic.  We decided to cut four shorter pieces to go behind the desk and behind the sofa just in case the impressions did not smooth out and disappear.  We cut two more short pieces to continue forward under the windows on the passenger side.  We then cut longer pieces for the corner behind the desk and the wall at the kitchen end of the sofa.

The last time we hung wallpaper was 30 years ago.  It was all pre-pasted and required reverse rolling the piece to be hung, immersing it in a water tray to activate the glue, and then slowly pulling it out as it unrolled and drained.  We then slid it into position on the wall, smoothing it out and removing the air bubbles as we went, and finally trimming it.  The wallpapers we used were thinner than the stuff we have for the bus and we created seams by overlapping adjacent panels slightly and cutting through both pieces half way between the overlap.  The free edge pieces were both removed and we had perfect seams.

The wallpaper we bought for the coach is a heavier vinyl that is washable and scrubbable.  We got the paper from Delux Drapery & Shade Co. in Ann Arbor but it did not come with installation instructions other than to follow the adhesive manufacturer’s directions.  The associate at Lowe’s, however, was very helpful and told us specifically not to overlap and trim the seams the way we had years ago.  The appropriate technique for the heavier vinyl wallpapers is to butt the edges together and roll them flat.

You always reach a point in every project where there is nothing left to do but to do it.  We poured some of the paste into a paint tray (with a plastic liner for easier cleanup later).  I started on the passenger side of the bus in the corner behind the desk on the back side of the pantry.  I used the brush to cut in the corners where the wall met the adjacent woodwork and used the roller to fill in the field.  We butted the right edge of the panel into the corner along its full length and then smoothed it towards the left and top as best we could.  The wall curves in as it goes up but I got the top edge tucked and trimmed.  I made a relief cut at the bottom of the window surround on the left which allowed us to finish smoothing the bottom portion of the panel under the window and get the upper panel tucked in, where the wall meets the surround, and trim it.  I then trimmed around the window release mechanism and along the bottom of the panel.

Wallpaper tools in sofa (seat removed) and wallpaper on wall behind the sofa.

Wallpaper tools in sofa (seat removed) and wallpaper on wall behind the sofa.

The vinyl wallpaper did not trim easily even with a new, very sharp, break-off style blade.  It also did not want to stick to the wall and we ended up peeling it back in places and spreading more paste.  We had primed the walls with Zinser 1-2-3, a water-based acrylic primer, so they should not have been very absorbent.  We hung a total of eight pieces, five on the passenger side and three on the driver side, and stopped for the day.  The wall in the hallway was prepped for four additional pieces but we decided to defer those until to tomorrow.  We cleaned up all of the tools and then relaxed for a while in the living room.

Linda prepared dinner while I worked on this post.  I could not figure out from the odor what she was making but it sure smelled good.  It turned out to be a tofu scramble, a vegan interpretation of scrambled eggs, and she served it with toasted raisin bread.  Very tasty and very satisfying.  It’s the one breakfast dish that she makes that does equally well as a dinner meal.

I drove to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to get some door edge trim/guard and stopped at the Meijer’s supermarket for tissues and laundry supplies.  The door edge trim is a plastic U-channel that I will use to cover the edge of a hole (or holes) I will cut in the passenger side HVAC duct for the Aqua-Hot heater hoses to base through into the desk bases without making any sharp turns.

We felt like being entertained and settled in to watch several TV shows.  In-between two of the shows I made popcorn, a rare treat for us but one we really enjoy.

 

2015/20/04 (N) Family Trees

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I was awake at 7 AM and got up at 7:20, showered, shaved, and dressed for the upcoming visit by our son, daughter-in-law, and younger grand-daughter.  We did not have breakfast, as they were bringing bagels with them, but I did make a small pot of coffee to get the day started.  While it was brewing I gathered up a load of laundry and put it in the washing machine.

We finally turned the furnace on a couple of days ago so the house was cool but comfortable.  Even so we turned on the fireplace and enjoyed our coffee while we awaited our visitors.  Brendan sent a text message indicating a 9:30 AM arrival and it was only a few minutes later than that when they showed up.  Today’s visit was the result of specific request by Madeline yesterday to see her Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce.  She will be coming back on Friday after pre-school/day-care and spending the night.  She is then going to go see her Grandma B and Cliff in Denver while her mom attends a conference.

Brendan and Shawna brought five bagels, one for each of us, with cream cheese and lox for them and hummus for us.  They also brought sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions.  We provided our Melt non-dairy butter substitute, a large pot of Kenya AA (single origin) coffee, orange juice, a bowl of mixed fruit, and a bowl of honeydew melon.  It was a wonderful mid-morning breakfast.

After breakfast the adults took turns playing with Madeline.  At one point Brendan reminded her to ask me something and what followed was a request to take a tour of the bus.  So we did!  Madeline is not yet 3 years old, and the bus does not really mean anything to her yet, but Brendan and Shawna wanted to see the work we had done.  We are looking forward to taking Madeline with us for short trips when she is a little older.

Madeline normally takes a nap at 1 PM and Shawna was a bit tired too so they packed up and left around 12:30 PM and drove back to Ann Arbor.  There was a “block party” taking place later this afternoon for their block and they wanted to rest before it started.

We needed to get some yard work done yet today so we changed into our work clothes.  I moved the laundry to the dryer and then got busy figuring out how to start and operate the new Poulan Pro 18″ chain saw.  The quick start guide had 10 steps, numbered and clearly illustrated.  I followed the steps carefully and it started right up.  We gathered up our rake, hand saw, wheelbarrow, and compound pruning shears along with a face shield, safety glasses, hearing protector, and heavy canvas work gloves and headed down to where the dead tree fell across the road a few days ago.

The tree fell across the road and had been moved out of the road by a neighbor shortly after it fell.  I had gone out a little while after that and cleaned up the limbs on the other side of the road and the small debris that was still in the road.  The tree, however, was still in the ditch along the side of the road and need to be cut up and moved.  Phil said he would take it and dispose of it if we cut it into pieces not longer than five feet and piled it by all the other timber and yard debris.

This turned out to be just the first of five trees that we cut up this afternoon.  Once the first tree was done we cut down a second one that was still standing but very dead and leaning out towards the road.  Better to take it down now than have it fall during the winter.  This tree was only 20 feet from the first one and not quite as tall, the top having broken off some time long ago.  These were both ash trees, killed by the Emerald Ash Borer beetle.  It saddened me that all of this wonderful ash timber was going to a landfill instead of a sawmill, but we had no practical way to turn it into usable lumber.

While Linda acted as spotter for cars I made a “V” cut about three feet above the ground on the side where it was going to fall and then made a relief cut on the back side until it toppled under its own weight.  Once it was down I quickly cut it into shorter pieces and Linda got them off the road.

As long as we were working along the edge of the road I decided to prune or remove a few other saplings, bushes, vines, and deadfall so that Keith could mow the grass in the drainage ditch.  That turned out to be quite a bit of extra work but it needed to be done.  We encountered two different bushes with serious thorns and had to work carefully.  Without gloves, eye protection, and heavy weight long sleeve clothing and blue jeans it would have been dangerous and painful.

There is a complex of vines that runs all through this stand of trees.  We cut a lot of smaller runners and pulled them free form the other growth but I cut several at ground level that were at least 3″ in diameter.  A thorough cleaning and restoration of this particular stand of trees will take more time than we have to spend right now, but perhaps we can get some of this kind of work done next spring and early summer along with finishing the interior of the bus and redoing the water bay.

We have had a large tree down at the west end of our property for quite a while, and Keith has just been mowing around it, so we moved all of our equipment down there and worked on that area of the yard.  There were a lot of other small limbs scattered about and dead/broken branches hanging in several trees.  We gathered up the smaller stuff and cut it into manageable lengths and wheelbarrowed it to the disposal pile.  I then used the chain saw to remove the larger limbs and cut the tree up into four foot lengths.  It was 10 inches in diameter at the base and 30 feet long before we cut it up.  There is also a lot of pruning that needs to be done to the trees in this part of the yard, and some of it will require the pole saw and/or a ladder, and/or some careful climbing; but not today.

With that area cleaned up we moved our gear to the firepit (burn pile).  We have had a conifer tree on the ground next to the firepit for the entire summer and, once again, Keith has had to mow around it.  This tree was about 6 inches in diameter at the base and 20 feet long.  Linda found a second, smaller, tree and dragged it over.  I pruned all of the smaller limbs with the compound shears and then used the chain saw to cut off the larger branches and cut the trunk up into four foot lengths.  Rather than transport all of this material to the disposal pile we added it to the burn pile.  The pile is now about eight feet in diameter and four feet high so it should make quite a fire when we finally light it up.  I think we will wait for a chilly fall day to do that, if we get to it at all this year.  The longer the pile sits here the more of a problem it will be, however, as small animals will undoubtedly use it for shelter and to build nests.

It was 4 PM when we quit and we had only worked for three hours but it was very physical work and we were tired, or at least tired enough that we were not going to start working in the bus at that point.  By the time I cleaned off the chainsaw and we put all of the tools away it was 4:30 PM.  We changed out of our work clothes and I added them to my second load of laundry for the day.  We sat in the living room reading and writing for an hour or so until Linda pulled together our dinner.  In the interest of time she microwaved a couple of sweet potatoes (yams), steamed some Brussels sprouts, heated the last two mock chicken scaloppini, and poured a couple of glasses of Franzia Moscato.

After dinner I tended to the laundry and then settled in to work at my desk for a while.  I logged in to RVillage and saw that Curtis had posted in the Stakeholders group that he was holding Go To Meeting sessions today at 9 AM and 5 PM PDT.  That was noon and 8 PM EDT.  We had obviously missed the noon meeting, and would have anyway with company here but as it was only 7 PM we could still participate in the evening meeting.  We had an hour to wait so I decided to start uploading blog posts starting with August 1st.

I uploaded the posts for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, including a few photos, but something did not seem right as the photos did not corresponded to the posts.  I checked more carefully and observed that I had renamed photos from early September with early August dates.  I quickly edited the two posts that included photos and deleted the images from the posts.  I am two months behind again uploading posts and having to go back and select/process photos for my August posts will only delay the uploading further.  Ugh.

I launched Go To Meeting at 7:55 PM EDT and let Linda know it was time for the meeting.  Curtis was already online and we eventually had eight stakeholders checked in, some of which were individuals and some of which were couples.  Curtis, the founder and CEO of RVillage, gave us an update on recent development work, new features to be released next week, monetization of the site, and the progress of the current round of investor financing.  The meeting lasted about 45 minutes.

I was glad I caught the error with the photos for my blog but I was not in the humor to spend hours working on fixing it this evening.  Linda cut a couple of pieces of the vegan frozen chocolate torte that she made last weekend and that was reason enough to quit working at my computer for the evening.  We spent an hour relaxing in the living room eating our torte while reading and writing.  Yesterday Phil said he would call this evening and let us know whether he would be here tomorrow or at another 2-day job, but he did not call.

When we finally turned in a little before 10 PM we watched TV for a while before turning out the lights.  We caught the last half of a program on the glass blowing school at Pilchuck and “A Woman in Battle” about a Cuban born woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Civil War on the Confederate side but ultimately became a Union spy.  Tomorrow we hang wallpaper in the bus and we will need to be well rested so it was lights out by 11 PM.

 

2015/10/03 (S) Wallpaper Stumps

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Last night we discussed not going to breakfast this morning and that was sufficient to give us permission to sleep in.  We got up at 7:30 AM, too late to make it to South Lyon by 8, so I made coffee while Linda cooked oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits.

There was a hawk on the ground just behind our house.  It took flight but stayed in the area dancing with a crow.  In spite of seeing it repeatedly–on the ground, perched in a tree, and in flight–we could not identify it other than to be fairly certain it was not a red-tailed hawk.  Red-tailed hawks are the most commonly seen raptor around here but they are very distinctive due to their red tails.

I checked the bus and the temperature was 54 degrees F, too cool for wallpapering.  I had left two electric heaters on last night but obviously did not set the thermostats high enough.  The refrigerator freezer compartment was 24 degrees, which is way too high, and has me concerned that something has broken, perhaps as a result of driving on our very bad roads.  I settled in to enjoy my coffee (as best I could) and await the arrival of Philip Jarrell from Precision Grading.

Phil showed up at 8:35 AM.  The fact that he was probably starting work on our French drain and driveway extension project this morning was the main reason we decided not to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast.  I left Phil alone long enough to get his equipment unloaded and then went out to chat with him briefly.  He had already communicated with me by phone during the week about what he wanted to accomplish today, and where he needed to start the work, but I always like to be on site when a contractor arrives and double check these things.  That is especially true when they have big equipment that can move a lot of earth in a short time.

Phil was using his smaller backhoe to dig up tree stumps and pull debris out of the woods along the area where the pull-through driveway extension will run.  He also pulled out concrete blocks, pipes, and other building debris that has been thrown there over many years.  I did not, however, have him pull out the two piles of bricks as I presume they are the same as the ones on the house and we might want to keep them for future repairs.

I needed to get the air-ride seat base back to Chuck this morning so I put it in the car and drove to his shop in Novi.  He was just pulling his stacker trailer out of the shop with his forklift when I arrived.  After he finished getting it out and positioning it I gave him the air-ride base and he put it in the trailer through the side door.  We chatted briefly about moving the two remaining windshields, during which time Barbara showed up, so I left them to their chores and headed home.

Back at the house we decided not to try hanging wallpaper today.  The temperature was in the low 50’s and it was drizzling lightly and intermittently.  Not wanting to waste the day we decided to straighten up the temporary workshop we have set up in the garage.  We had just started that when we got a call from our son and he put his daughter on the phone.  Madeline wanted to come visit her grandparents which we were all too happy to oblige.  A return call pinned down the day/time as tomorrow morning.  I helped Linda load the recyclables into her car and she took them to Recycle Livingston.  She stopped at the Meijer’s in Howell on the way home to pick up ingredients for a fruit salad for tomorrow’s visit.

Part of the reason for cleaning up the garage/shop was that when I went to pull out the tub with all of our wallpapering tools I could not find it even though we both remembered recently seeing the tools somewhere.  The more we looked the more it seemed that “recently” was either a long time ago or a product of our collective imaginations.  We still have a lot of stuff in boxes from our move 2-1/2 years ago and we have boxes stored behind boxes in the garage making it difficult to get to many of them.

We worked steadily except for a lunch break and a couple of quick chats with Phil.  Lunch was a half sandwich of hummus and onions on rye with leftover potato salad and collard greens Cole slaw.

Phil was working by the culvert that goes under the road and had dug away the earth in front of it.  I got down and looked in; it was completely clogged.  Phil said he knew a company in Walled Lake that could open it and clean it out using a hydro-jet system and agreed to give them a call on Monday.  He was setting up his laser level to shoot the grade and mark the route for the French drain when I went back inside.We did not get the garage completely cleaned and organized but by mid-afternoon it was a lot better than when we started.  I eventually spotted the dark gray tray that we have used in the distant past for wetting pre-pasted wallpaper.  It was on top of some upper cabinets, not down on a shelf where we had been looking.  Inside were all of our wallpapering tools except for a long edge that we used for guiding the razor knife when trimming corners.  The smoothing tool was falling apart and completely useless so we threw it away.  We will need to pick up a few new tools when we buy the wallpaper paste.

Linda made some hot tea and settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project while I worked on my iPad.  I eventually went back to the garage to see if I could find my small gasoline powered chain saw.  Fortunately, it was where I remembered last seeing it.  We have a dead tree that needs to be cut down before it also falls across the road and several trees that are already down and need to be cut into small enough pieces so that Phil can use his front loader to move them to his dump truck.

As long as Phil is hauling wood debris off of the site we might as well take advantage of his willingness to take whatever will fit in his truck.  The alternative is for us to haul it to the fire pit with our (currently non-functioning) lawn tractor and burn it.  Unfortunately I could not find the small red plastic gasoline container that I use for gasoline mixed 40:1 with 2-cycle oil for use in small, air-cooled 2-stroke engines such as the chain saw.  I also could not find our Ryobi multipurpose trimmer/saw and figured I had lent all of this to one of our children, probably our son.

Our 13″ McCullough chain saw has not seen regular use over the years but has always been willing to run when needed and proven to be very handy.  It’s a nice size for cutting down small trees and de-limbing larger ones.  In order to use it I needed a small gasoline container.  I would normally go to Lowe’s in Howell but much of the drive is on dirt roads.  It had been drizzling all day and the dirt roads were sloppy so I went to The Home Depot in Brighton.  The entire route is paved except the first/last mile from/to our house.

THD had quarts of pre-mixed gasoline and oil in 40:1 and 50:1 ratios.  Although expensive compared to the cost of gasoline at a filling station, I did not have to buy a new container, a bottle of oil, stop at the filling station on the way home, deal with mixing everything in the correct ratio, add Stabil fuel stabilizer to the container, and then remember what was in the container or label it.  Sometimes the price of convenience is a price worth paying.

When I got home I added the fuel to the tank of the chain saw and set all of the controls according to the starting directions.  I figured it would take a few pulls of the handle, perhaps quite a few, to get it to start but I did not expect the engine to be locked up.  On a couple of tries I got the crank to turn slightly but mostly it would not budge.  I have no idea what is wrong with it but I suspect that something is rusted or bent.  Whatever the case I have no intention of taking the time to try to disassemble it to find out.

Dinner was salad and leftover pizza with a small glass of wine.  I went to Lowe’s after dinner and bought a new chain saw.  Lowe’s sells at least five different brands of chain saws but they feature Husqvarna.  I bought a Poulan Pro 18″ model figuring the longer chain bar would be useful for cutting down and/or cutting up slightly larger trees.  I got it for 1/2 to 2/3 of the comparable Husqvarna models.

Poulan is Husqvarna’s less expensive product line and it seemed good enough for the occasional use it will get.  We have too many trees on our property to be without a functioning chain saw, however, and Phil will be done cleaning and hauling timber at the end of his next day here.  I will probably take the little McCullough somewhere to see if it can be repaired but that may not be until next spring.  Even if I took it someplace on Monday I would not have it back in time, assuming it can even be repaired.

Back home I turned on the natural gas fireplace and we relaxed in the living room reading, writing, and playing games on our iPads.  With the new iOS 9 Apple changed the Game Center so the login screen pops up every time you open any game.  It is REALLY annoying and apparently we are not alone in that view.  Linda was checking online to see if there was a way to disable it and saw a lot of chatter on the subject, none of it positive (but no way to disable the “feature”).  She did find something that said it should stop popping up for any game where you have clicked “Cancel” three times in a row but she has canceled the login more times than that yet is still getting the screen.  Interestingly, the login screen has stopped popping up on my iPad.  The only difference between them is that I used mine the other day while waiting at Discount Tire without any connection to the Internet.  Maybe that confused it.

We turned in just before 10 PM hoping to watch a little television but did not find much on that interested us even on PBS.  We searched through the channels and happened on a program titled “If You Build It” (on one of the three PBS affiliates we can pick up) about project-based learning.  It was interesting.

 

2015/10/02 (F) Tire Nibblers

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It dropped into the mid-40s last night and the house cooled off proportionally.  It starts getting light at 7 AM these days and cool mornings are just another reason to stay under the covers a little longer.  I finally got up at 7:30 AM, got dressed to work, and made our morning coffee.  After our breakfast of fresh mixed berries and homemade granola I turned on the fireplace and we enjoyed our coffee to its dancing light and warmth.

Chuck called to let me know he had set out one of his sheet metal nibblers for me to pick up at the shop.  I left around 10:30 AM and drove Linda’s Honda Civic to Discount Tire in Howell.  (My Honda Element is tied up at Brighton Honda until the middle of next week to get a broken driver-side door lock replaced.)  I noticed last night while we were out that several tires on the Civic were under-inflated and the sidewalls were badly weather-checked.  They still had plenty of tread but the paperwork indicated they were put on five years and 80,000 miles ago.  Time for a change.

At Discount Tire the sales associate confirmed that the date code was from 2009 and corroborated my observations.  The tread was probably good for another 20,000 miles but I do not mess around with old tires with cracked sidewalls.  Michelin no longer makes the Defender, at least not in the P195/65R15 size, so I bought a set of four Continentals that should perform equally well and last for 90,000 miles.  That means they will age out before the wear out, which is fine with me.  It was going to be a two hour turnaround time so I texted Linda and Chuck and settled in to wait.  Thank goodness for iPad games.

The technician pulled the car in at noon and a few minutes later asked me if I had the key for the wheel locks.  I had looked for it earlier and not found it.  He wasn’t sure he could get them off at all and would certainly ruin them in the attempt.  That sounded like a bad situation getting worse so I had them set the tires aside while I took the car to Brighton Honda and had them remove the special lug nut from each wheel using their master key set.  I bought a new set at the Honda dealership (so any Honda dealer can remove them in the future) and had them put those on and made sure I had the key when I left.

While I was there Rob gave me a quote on four Continental tires.  The installed price, including a rebate in the form of a Visa gift card, was 30% lower than the price I paid at Discount Tire so I showed the quote to the guy at the counter when I got back.  He said the quote was for a different, less expensive, discontinued tire.  I had no way of knowing if that was true or not but he also asked if the guy who wrote me up gave me the rebate form for the tires I bought.  I said ‘no’ so this guy printed out an extra receipt and gave it to me with the rebate form.  That narrowed the price difference to 20% and I was satisfied with that.  I liked the tires I had purchased and did not want to undo and then redo the sale.  I have also had good experiences over the years with Discount Tire, including their nationwide free rotation and balancing policy.

When the tires were finally mounted, balanced, and installed I headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi.  He was there when I arrived and had three different metal cutting tools laid out to show me.  One was manual, one was electric, and one was powered by a drill.  We decided that the manual one and the drill powered one were most likely to work for what I needed to do.  He put them in a cardboard box along with cans of three different chemicals he was getting rid of.  His trash, my treasurers.

On the way back to the house I stopped at the Shell station at Beck and Grand River Avenue to top up the fuel tank.  I texted Linda and then headed for home.  I arrived home at 3 PM to find lunch on the table.  That was a nice surprise.

After lunch we uninstalled the desk in the bus and set the pedestals on part of a large blanket in the center of the kitchen floor.  We draped the blanket over them and then uninstalled the hinged sofa seat and set it across the pedestals.  We folded the blanket back over the seat and set the desk bases on top of it.  We now had clear access to the wall behind the desk and the wall behind the sofa.

I got a 3″ brush from the basement and then got the Zinzer 123 Primer, opened it, and stirred it.  It was still in good shape as it has been in the library since last fall when we repaired and repainted the west wall after Darryl was done installing the new HVAC system.  Rather than pour it into another container I found a lid from a copy paper box to put it under the one gallon can.  Linda finished masking off the woodwork and counters in the bus and then helped me spread painter’s plastic to protect the floor.  We spread out an old bathroom towel, put the box lid on that, and then put the can inside the (upside down) box lid.  I set the can lid aside and worked directly out of the can.

I started in the back of the hallway and primed the upper half of the outside wall as I worked towards the front.  The lower half of this wall has vertical mirror tile wainscoting.  We wanted to remove it but assumed the pieces were glued directly to the plywood wall, as they are elsewhere in the coach, in which case removing them would have done a lot of damage.  We repositioned the plastic, towel, and paint and I continued up the passenger side priming the plywood next to and (mostly) under the windows.  Completing that side up to the cockpit required one more repositioning of all the stuff.  I was working in close proximity to the new living room captain’s chairs so we wrapped those in painter’s plastic as well.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

Bruce primes the bare plywood behind the sofa and under the driver side living room window.

I moved to the driver’s side and primed the area under the window and up the left side.  Even though Linda had masked off all of the woodwork with painter’s tape I worked carefully and stayed away from the tape.  We are not sure that the priming is even necessary and I did not want to risk getting any on the woodwork.

By the time we finished it was 5:30 PM and we were done working on the bus for the day.  We had only worked for a couple of hours, and only accomplished a small task, but it was a critical path task that stood in the way of getting a whole chain of other important things done.  Tomorrow we will sand the primer with 220 grit paper using the palm sander and try hanging the new wallpaper.

Linda made a pizza for dinner using the gluten-free almond meal recipe she got from Mara.  She topped it with greens, onions, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Daiya non-dairy cheese.  There is also cheese in the crust along with garlic and other good things.  We had a nice salad first with walnuts, beets, and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.  The salad was very good and the pizza was outstanding.

Philip Jarrell called to let us know he would be here at 8 AM tomorrow to start our French drain and driveway project, weather permitting.  Detroit Public Television shows classic movies at 8 PM on Fridays and tonight’s selection was “Bullit” starring Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset.  We watched This Old House and a couple of travel shows after that and then went to sleep.

 

2015/09/27 (N) Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon Eclipse

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We were up at 7:30 AM.  I got dressed to work and made coffee.  We had our usual breakfast and coffee and then got busy.  I worked in the bus while Linda picked up the house.  We had company coming in the early afternoon and wanted the house and the bus to be presentable.

I sanded the wall behind the sofa using the Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander we bought yesterday at Lowe’s in New Hudson.  I started with 80 grit paper, switched to 120 grit, and vacuumed up as much dust as I could see.  I then gathered up tools and materials and put them in the garage.  I wanted the steps to be safe so I removed the three rusted screws from the old step between the copilot floor level and the main floor level and temporarily reinstalled it.

With Linda’s assistance we put the sofa platform back in place and screwed it down.  We moved the desk pedestals out of the way and I brought the bases out from the garage.  We set the bases in place, put the pedestals on top, spread them apart, and inserted the connecting cover that goes between them.  We aligned the parts so they looked OK but did not screw them back together or to the wall and did not put the temporary plywood top back on.  We removed the painter’s plastic and towels from the chairs and disposed of them or stored them as appropriate.  Linda vacuumed thoroughly and then I took the vacuum into the house.

I showered, shaved, and dressed while Linda vacuumed in the house.  I was settling in to work on my iPad when she informed me that the display on the main thermostat was blank.  I assumed initially that it needed a new battery but it turned out that this thermostat does not have a battery, at least not one I could find ad replace.  This thermostat controls the heat for the living room, dining room, and kitchen and the air-conditioning (cooling) for the entire main floor.  It is also Wi-Fi enabled so we can monitor and control it via the web when we are away.  We are not running the furnace or the A-C at the moment so the loss of this unit was not a crisis but it was still troubling.

I did not want to get involved in diagnosing and fixing this problem at that exact moment but I checked the other three thermostats to see if their displays were working.  They were, and since all of the thermostats get their power from the same transformer it was clearly not a failed transformer or open circuit breaker.  Thus it appeared to be a power supply problem to this particular unit.  I tightened the wire connections on the solenoid valve for this zone but that did not fix the problem.

At least three possibilities occurred to me at that point: 1) the thermostat had failed, 2) The power is routed to the A-C air handler before going to the thermostat and a wire/connection got disturbed when Rebecca was in the attic, and 3) the solenoid had failed and was no longer passing power.  Although the system is simple enough I am not an expert on how it is wired so there might be other possible explanations and I did not have a way to determine the likelihood of each possibility.  Cooler weather is coming this week so I will have to get this resolved in the next few days.

I settled in to use my iPad to finish Friday’s blog post, write Saturday’s post, and start today’s post.  Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine showed up around 2 PM.  Bill and Karen are members of a couple of bus groups we belong to and Cathy is Bill’s sister.  They are from the greater Toronto area of Ontario, Canada and are staying at the Jellystone RV Park in Frankenmuth from mid-September through mid-October.  After greetings all around Bill and I went to the bus so he could see what we have doing while everyone else settled in.

When Bill and I came back in everyone else was sitting on the deck behind the house munching on grapes and pretzels while chatting and swatting hornets.  A week or so ago we left one of the hummingbird feeders on the table and the hornets had discovered it.  Even though we removed it and fogged the area this morning they kept returning.  Linda had me fetch the fly swatter from the bus so we could deal with them more effectively.  She brought out some of our ICE brand fruit flavored water.  Our guests had not seen this product before but seemed to enjoy it.  At least they each finished the bottle they had selected.

Linda started final dinner preparations with Karen’s assistance.  Dinner was cheese burgers, vegan potato salad, and collard greens Cole slaw.  Linda bought real beef patties and real cheddar cheese for our guests but everything else was vegan, including our burgers and cheese.  She cooked the burgers on the grill but we ate inside.  Linda made a frozen chocolate torte for dessert and served it with fresh strawberries.  We did not realize that Catherine does not eat chocolate or strawberries so we felt bad that she did not get dessert even though she said she was not hungry at that point.

We retired to the living room to sit more comfortably and continue chatting.  Jasper appeared from wherever he had been hiding (sleeping) and made friends with everyone.  Tonight was the rare conjunction of a Supermoon, Harvest Moon, and a full lunar eclipse that was also a blood moon.  It was cloudy at sunset/moonrise but gradually cleared off.  When Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine were leaving at 10 PM the eclipse was near full and fully visible we watched it for 15 minutes during which time the last wisps of clouds moved off to the north leaving a clear, star filled sky with a large, dark, reddish moon.  The next full eclipse of a Supermoon occurs in 2033.  I will be 81 then and fully intend to see it.

We relaxed for a while, reading and writing and checking on the moon, before going to bed.  By 11 PM the earth’s shadow was passing and the sun was once again illuminating the left edge of the moon.  I checked again at midnight and the eclipse was mostly passed.  It had been cloudy most of the day and we were fortunate that it cleared off in time for us to see this relative rare event right from our yard.  Relatively dark night skies is one of the advantages of living a little ways out in country.

 

2015/09/26 (S) A Step in the Right Direction

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We missed our ham radio club breakfast last week because we were at an RV rally and we plan to be at another rally three weekends from now so in spite of all the work we still have to do on the bus we went to breakfast in South Lyon.  After breakfast we went to the Lowe’s in New Hudson, which is close to South Lyon, and bought a Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander.  The sander is small enough to get into corners but has an integral dust collection bag.  The bag can be removed for sanding in really tight spots, but it cuts down on airborne dust while sanding and reduces the amount of cleanup afterwards.  We have several other Porter-Cable power tools and I am generally pleased with them.

Back at the house we took care of a few chores and then got to work on the bus.  Linda continued working on stripping the old wallpaper behind the sofa while I pondered for a while about what to do before deciding to concentrate on rebuilding the landing at the top of the entry stairs.  This landing is where the pneumatic entry stairwell slide cover was installed.  Without all of that “stuff” in place the last step up to the landing was now too short and the step up to the copilot level was too tall.  More importantly, the step heights were all different, and would be a built in trip hazard if not corrected.

I determined that the 2.5″ wide poplar boards installed on edge with a 3/4″ thick plywood floor and a top layer of 3/16″ SurePly underlayment would match the top surface of the plywood in the driver’s area.  That would (should), in turn, allow me to install the new vinyl floor tiles so they bridge that seam.  I will have to reuse the plywood in the driver’s area, but worst case that will require using adhesive remover followed by floor patching compound and sanding before installing the tiles.

The landing was not “square” (of course) so I made and rechecked measurements several times.  I then built a four-sided frame that fit snugly and had the front board aligned with the face of the plastic riser.  I am going to tile the steps and I am not going to use underlayment so I needed these surfaces as aligned and flat as possible.  I will probably use floor patching compound, however, to fill the gaps before installing the tile.  I used screws to secure the frame to the adjacent vertical wood that forms the riser to the copilot level and to the base of the landing with angle brackets.

I needed a piece of 3/4″ plywood approximately 31-1/8″ x 27-5/8″ for the new landing as the old piece I took out was not in good shape and I did not want to reuse it.  I did not have any other 3/4″ plywood pieces that were large enough so I went to Lowe’s.  They did not have 3/4″ half sheets (4′ x 4′) but I bought some more angle brackets while I was there.  I then went to The Home Depot.  They also did not have 3/4″ half sheets, but they had full sheets of 23/32″ sanded plywood that looked like it would work and a nice panel saw with an employee available to operate it.  I waited while he built a complete set of closet shelving for a couple and engaged in some domestic counseling.  He then cut the plywood sheet into two 4′ x 4′ pieces and helped me load them into a cart.  I was able to get them into my Honda Element by myself and close the back hatches.  I had a nice QSO with Steve (N8AR) on the drive home via the South Lyon 2m amateur radio repeater.

Linda had long since finished working on the wallpaper and busied herself in the kitchen preparing collard greens Cole slaw and vegan potato salad.  It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening but I still had enough light to work outside.  Linda was still busy cooking so I decided to go ahead and try to cut the plywood for the new landing.  Again, it was not a rectangle, i.e., an equiangular quadrilateral (four right angles and four sides with opposing sides parallel and equal in length) so getting the shape exactly right was tricky.

I determined that the right front corner, as viewed from the entry steps, was a right angle, or close enough to one to provide a known starting point.  I put the plywood on 2″x4″s on the flat in the driveway to elevate them so I could clamp a saw guide in place and provide clearance for the saw blade.  I measured the lengths of all four edges as best I could and placed the right front corner at a factory corner of one of the 4′ x 4′ pieces.  I marked the length of the right side and the front on the two factory edges.  The left side was longer than the right side and the rear side was longer than the front side so I marked arcs for the left and rear lengths and found their point of intersection.  If the right front corner was, in fact, a right angle them this had to result in the correct shape.  The key word in that last sentence is “if.”

I tried to confirm my layout by measuring the lengths of the diagonals on the plywood and on the bus but I could not get accurate measurements in the bus.  I triple-checked my measurements and layout then marked the guide lines for the setback on my circular saw; 6-5/8″ to the inside edge of the teeth on the blade.  Truth be told I initially marked the guide lines on the wrong side of the cut.  I started to adjust my guide board to the outside of the blade and then thought better of the idea.  The guide needed to be set up so that if the blade wandered off course it would cut into waste material rather than the finished piece.  I re-measured and marked the guide lines in the proper place, checked their location with my small square, checked with the saw, made minor adjustments, and finally made the first of two cuts.  I then repeated all of that and made the second cut.  When I set the piece in place in the bus it was a perfect fit.  I was so pleased that I had Linda come out to see it.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.

I like to quit on a high note so that was the end of our bus work for today.  We did not make dramatic progress but we kept moving and got things done that needed doing.  My work today involved a certain amount of pondering and on-the-fly engineering combined with careful, repeated measuring and accurate cutting.  This kind of work is never fast.

A beautiful sunset had developed, which meant it was getting dark, so I put a few things away and closed up the bus while Linda prepared our dinner.  She made a nice salad and heated a couple of Amy’s vegan (non-dairy) lasagna entrées.  A glass of Moscato was a welcome accompaniment and we enjoyed a second glass as we relaxed in the living room.  We got a Rockler catalog in the mail today so I looked through that.  If you are into woodworking it’s the adult equivalent of the Sear’s Christmas catalogs of yesteryear.

I called Butch at 10 PM.  It was 7 PM in Bouse, Arizona and I figured they would be done working for the day and probably already had their dinner.  The daytime highs there have been reaching 110 degrees F so Butch and the other RV Park employees have been starting work between 6 and 7 AM and trying to finish up by 1 PM.  He did not elaborate but said the situation the first two weeks has not been exactly what they signed up for.  He had already responded to an e-mail from Linda with more details so we let it go at that and talked about other things.  We wrapped up our conversation at 10:30 and I went to bed.  I was going to play a couple of games and then go to sleep but there was an update available for the iPad OS so I installed it.  9.0.1 was a big update and took quite a while to install.  I was very sleepy by the time it finished and turned out the lights.

 

2015/09/21 (M) Back to Bus Work

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We were up a little after 8 AM.  I showered while Linda prepared our breakfast fruit–blueberries, raspberries, and peaches–to go with our granola.  I made a pot of coffee, using up the Costa Rican half-caff, and then sat down to eat.  After breakfast we sat in the living room enjoying our coffee to the warmth and glow of the fireplace while Linda downloaded and installed iOS 9 on her iPad.  The download was 740 MB so I waited until the installation was done on her machine to start it on mine.

When we finally got to work our first task was to unload all of the wood from the car and store it in the garage.  My next task was to call Ferman Miller at Countertops Plus in Shipshewana, Indiana to make sure he got my message on Friday with the dimensions for the Corian top table.  I got his voice mail again and left another message.  I then called Josh at Coach Supply Direct to bring him up to date, got his voice mail, and left a message.

Linda planned to get a few things at Whole Foods Market as she needed to drive to Ann Arbor anyway to pick up our wallpaper from Delux Draperies and Wallcoverings.  While she took care of that I started figuring out what parts I needed to reconfigure the heating system.  Before making a run to the store I found all of my plumbing tools and supplies.  I got 20 feet of heater hose and 10 band clamps from O’Reilly’s and various copper fittings from Lowe’s.  I also got a drain hose and a clean bucket to catch/hold antifreeze.

Back home I removed the seat and back cushions from the sofa and stacked them on the chairs.  I removed the temporary plywood top from the desk and stored it in the garage.  I then uninstalled the desk pedestals from the wall and from their bases.  There wasn’t much else I could do without Linda’s help, so her return soon thereafter was timely.  We had a light lunch and then moved the pedestals to the sofa.  That left the bases free for me to work with.  I still did not have all of the parts I needed to install the fan-coil heat exchangers in the bases.  I also needed to remove the heater hoses in order to mount the heat exchangers and replace the hoses with different lengths and angled fittings.

As I was contemplating all of that I got a call from Chuck Spera.  He was in the process of setting up an appointment to have the lower windshields replaced on both of our rigs and wanted to make sure I was still interested and check my availability.  He called back a little while later to let me know we were set for next week Tuesday in the morning.

I then got a call from Joe Cannarozzi.  Joe has done a lot of work on our bus over the last five years, especially the chassis.  He called to confirm that I still wanted him to stop at our place on his way back to Chicago around Halloween and discuss what I needed done.  Yes, I did, and what I needed was routine maintenance; lube, oil, filter(s), brakes, and possibly axle hub seals.

When we first started working with Joe he had an active, full-time mobile bus repair business, specializing in Prevost chassis service.  The last couple of years he has worked a regular gig in upstate New York from April through October.  He still services a few buses, like ours, starting in the north in the late fall and working his way to Florida for the winter where he tries to get to the Keys and take 4 to 6 weeks off before working his way back up to New York in the spring.  When we wrapped up the call I texted Chuck to let him know that Joe would be coming this way.

I called Ferman again and this time he answered the phone.  He had gotten my two previous messages and I was correct that there was not enough material in the large sheet of Corian to make the table.  He had not had a chance to check his stock to see if he had any more of the Sandstone.  I mentioned that Josh had another vendor with a 30″ by 40″ piece.  Ferman indicated that if he doesn’t have another piece he would be willing to work with that piece if Josh got it.  I called Josh and he answered this time so I walked him through the current status.  He called the other vendor and called me back.  The piece is 30″ by 48″ and he was willing to sell it for $175.  Josh and I agreed to give Ferman a couple of days to check his stock before pursuing it.

Linda was working at her desk on a proposal for the bakery and preparing a bank deposit for our GLCC chapter.  I went to the garage and began soldering 3/4″ copper plumbing fittings.  I need to route the 3/4″ rubber heater hose around corners that were too sharp to just bend the hose so the copper fittings will take care of that.

Linda called me to dinner at 6 PM.  We had a nice salad, vegan Italian sausage with onions, and Brussels sprouts as a side.  A small glass of Moscato made a nice accompaniment.  After dinner I checked my e-mail and took care of the cats’ liter tray.  I then drove to Lowe’s for two more 45 degree street elbows.  On the drive home I talked to Mike (W8HX) on the South Lyon 2m repeater.  We discussed getting me back up our tower sometime in the next 9 days if my work on the bus progressed to the point where I could afford the time.  We went to bed early enough to watch a few TV programs and then fell asleep.

 

2015/09/19 (S) Rally Wrap Up

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Today was the last full day of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) annual Surplus and Salvage Rally.  It started with strong storms overnight but they had dissipated by breakfast time.  The skies eventually cleared on brisk winds with a chilly northerly component and the high was forecasted to be 67 with some clouds.  The clouds turned out to be white, scattered, and fast moving and it turned out to be a lovely late summer day with a hint of fall in the air.

The breakfast provided as part of the rally was pancakes and sausage but Linda and I had our granola and finished up the berries.  We decided to stay around the campground and have an easy day.  Initially, however, we had some post-breakfast excitement.

Juniper caught another mouse.  It was another very small dark gray house mouse, obviously very young but old enough to wander away from a nest in search of food and water.  I got it away from her and into the paper cup that we kept for this purpose and put the paper bowl on top.  Linda took it back to the woods and set it free.

Even after catching two mice in the last 16 hours the cats continued to show great interest in the base of the bathroom sink cabinet.  The front of the toe kick space has one of the many brass colored expanded metal screens for the OTR HVAC ducts and several things were becoming clear to me at this point.  1) We had a nest somewhere in the bus; 2) the nest was likely in the base of this cabinet, or accessible from there, and 3) the baby mice were apparently small enough to get through the expanded metal grate.  I also suspected that something had happened to the mother mouse which is why the babies were leaving the nest.

Some of this was confirmed when I got down on the bathroom floor with a flashlight and was looking through the grate when a small mouse came out of the 4″ flexible duct.  I tapped on the grate and got it to turn around and go back.  I measured the rectangular opening.  Linda cut a piece of cardboard about 1″ larger in width and length and I taped it over the opening.

We were away from the coach visiting with Scott Crosby of http://BusGreaseMonkey.com and others before Scott left for home.  Scott and Tami Bruner came over too, followed by their friends/neighbors Misty and Gary who brought their GM3751 Silversides to the rally.  When we returned to our motorcoach it was immediately obvious that Juniper had caught, or at least cornered, something, probably another mouse.  Her posture and vocalizations are distinctive in the presence of prey.  What was odd was she was by the front of the new built-in sofa rather than in the bathroom.

I shushed her away and she left the area without much protest.  I did not see a mouse and walked to the bathroom to make sure our cardboard cover was still in place.  It was, so if there was another mouse it must have gotten into the living area of the bus through some other opening, perhaps the OTR HVAC air return under the sofa.  When I returned to the living room the mouse was climbing up onto the top edge of my slippers.  I did not see exactly where it came from but it could have been inside one of them to escape the cats.  I got the paper cup and bowl and caught it fairly easily.

I put on my Crocs, which we use as easy on/off camp shoes, walked back to the woods at the southern boundary of the campground, and set the mouse free.  It scampered under some leaves but its odds of survival were probably as small as it was.  The temperature was forecast to drop into the upper 40’s tonight and I heard a Great Horned Owl off in the distance.  Still, its survival odds in the bus were probably worse.  We had live trapped an adult house mouse under the kitchen sink when the bus was still at home, but that was a couple of weeks ago so there is no way it could have been the mother of these current juvenile mice unless it found its way back into the bus.  My assumption was that the mother was not around and the young mice were desperately trying to find food and water.  These circumstances made me a bit sad, but we simply cannot have mice getting into the living area and becoming play toys for our cats.  Ultimately we need to find a way to keep them out of the bus altogether but so far a solution to that problem has proven to be elusive.

The official rally lunch was leftovers after which folks divided up whatever was left.  Linda split the remaining salad lettuce with Vickie and took some bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and bottled water.  I grabbed a mostly full 2 L bottle of diet Coke.

Marty Caverly stopped by to see the bus remodeling and stayed to chat a while.  Marty had spent the better part of a day at the Back-to-the-Bricks Rally last month getting Pat and Vickie’s cruise control to finally work reliably.  He spent most of this morning getting their air leveling system to work reliably.  Marty is an electrician who did a lot of work with electronics in his 40 years with General Motors and is the “go to” guy in our club for most electrical issues.

There was a lull in our social activities and Linda settled in to read while I worked at my computer transferring drafts of blog posts from e-mail to Word.  I edited a week’s worth from the third week of July and got them ready to upload but did not post them.  I will do that when we get home.  I used the MCD day shade while sitting at the desk to cut down the light while still affording me a view.  Linda forgot her iPad and was using mine to read one of the latest novels in Nick Russell’s Big Lake series.  She went for a walk which gave me an opportunity to work on this post as I write them using the Note app on my iPad.

We saw Pat and Vickie walking towards the office and figured they were making arrangements for next year’s Surplus and Salvage Rally.  They stopped at our coach on the way back with the signed contract.  The dates are September 21 to 25, 2016 and the nightly camping rate is $35 plus tax for 50A full hookup sites.  It’s pricey, but the campground is conveniently located in the heart of the Elkhart area with convenient access to many RV surplus businesses.  We also get the exclusive use of a meeting room with a full kitchen, and they always reserve sites for us that are close to the meeting room.  It should be a lovely time of year to have the rally, being the first five days of fall.  Unfortunately we will probably not be attending as we do not plan to be back from New England by then.

Meals for this rally usually include dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday also being a business meeting, and breakfast on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  The only lunch is the “must goes” on Saturday.  Saturday dinner is traditionally out at a restaurant and the choice this year was McCarthy’s on the Riverwalk.  The Elkhart River splits as it comes into the city, joins back up with itself and eventually flows into the much larger St. Joseph River at two points.  McCarthy’s features some very interesting Irish fare but the ambiance is slightly upscale restaurant rather than an Irish pub feel.  Our food choices were very limited, of course, but we knew that before signed up to go.

We rode over with Pat and Vickie and sat with them at one end of the table.  I think we had 13 of the 23 attendees at dinner.  Linda had a Guinness and I had a lighter beer that had “cider” in the name.  We each had a house salad with a very nice balsamic vinegar dressing but no cheese and an order of French fries.  The service was OK but not outstanding.  I asked for Tabasco sauce and Vickie had to remind the waitress to get it.  I was over half done with my fries by the time it arrived.  The serving was small but the fries were good and we did not leave hungry.

Most of us went for a walk along the river after dinner.  The sun was already below the downtown skyline, however, and it was chilly.  None of us brought jackets so it was a shorter walk than it might otherwise have been.

Back at the campground Scott and Tami started a campfire in the fire pit by their rig.  Linda and I brought over our chairs, blankets, a bowl of grapes, and our glasses of wine.  Vickie brought her chair, popcorn, and a popcorn skillet designed for popping corn over an open fire.  Dan brought his chair and joined us.  It was a clear, crisp evening but the fire (and blankets) made it comfortable, the popcorn and grapes made it yummy, and company made it worthwhile.

Although relaxing in some ways, rallies are intense in other ways.  We have only been here 3-1/2 days but we arrived tired, ran around taking care of things, and when we finally relaxed the tiredness washed over us.  We gathered up our things and went back to the coach at 10 PM where we watched an episode of Grantchester on the local PBS affiliate, went to bed, and fell asleep.

 

2015/09/14 (M) Final Prep (for now)

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We were up at 8 AM and had breakfast but I did not take the time to make coffee.  I gathered up the laundry and started a load.  I then headed to Lowe’s to buy an outlet strip that I could easily hardwire.  I looked at angle iron to support the upper back edge of the interpedestal desk cover at the wall but did not buy any.  The iron has holes and slots manufactured into it that I thought might allow me to adjust its location vertically without having to move the location of the screws.  Alas, the slotted openings were horizontal rather than vertical.

Linda was cooking a batch of granola when I got home and made a pot of coffee.  I decided to tend to some travel preparation items before getting back to work on the remodeling project.  I wanted to check/adjust the tire pressures while it was still cool.  The tires were all down about 1.5 PSI, which was very good given how long it has been sitting.  I used the new 6-gallon air-compressor to bring them up to the pressures I like to run and it worked OK.  I will have to pause a little more often while it re-pressurizes but it is less than half the size of the 15-gallon DeWalt and will travel with much more easily.

My next task was to unload the front bay which I did while Linda continued to work on our food for the week.  We find it much easier to deal with food at rallies if she “cooks ahead” and “reheats to serve.”  I set everything in the driveway in front of the bus and tried to sort it into two groups; things were staying home for this trip and things that were going with us.

I then opened the drain valve on the fresh water tank, which goes through the floor of the water bay, and let the water run onto a container lid so it wouldn’t dig a hole in the gravel driveway.  I was getting ready to deploy the fresh water hose(s) when I noticed that they were in need of some serious cleaning.  Linda agreed to take care of that and cleaned their storage tub too.  Ditto for the waste water (sewage) hoses and their storage tub.  Her taking on this task allowed me to return to working on the installation of the desk.

I had a 12″ long piece of 1/8″ aluminum angle and decided to use it to support the upper back edge of the interpedestal shelf/cover.  I drilled and countersunk five holes in one of the flanges.  Linda finished cleaning the hoses and then got our wireless thermometer from the house.  It has a base thermometer and two wireless remotes so she put one remote in the freezer and the other one in the fresh food compartment.  We wanted to monitor the temperature and dial it in to where we needed it before loading the refrigerator with food.

The stacked mending plates used to create a tongue-&-groove alignment system between the center cover and both the left and right desk pedestals/bases.

The stacked mending plates used to create a tongue-&-groove alignment system between the center cover and both the left and right desk pedestals/bases.

I removed the interpedestal cover and set the left pedestal aside so I could complete the AC wiring connections.  I mounted the outlet strip to the wall centered between the two pedestals and about two inches below the level of the underside of the plywood that will support the Corian top.  The outlet strip had a 15 foot cord.  I determined how much of that length I needed to get through the right pedestal and forward along the wiring chase to where the other wires were located.  I cut off the extra length, routed the power cord into the right pedestal at the left upper rear corner, down the inside left rear corner, and out the left end of the upper base.  From there it ran forward to the other wires where I connected them.  I turned on the circuit breaker and then turned on the outlet strip.  The switch lit up, indicating the presence of 120V AC.  I used my Etcon tester to check the duplex outlet by the passenger seat.  It also had power so the wiring was good.

I set the interpedestal shelf/cover back in place, aligned with the right base, and then aligned the left base to it.  I checked the distance from each end of the base to the HVAC duct and adjusted it to be the same.  We then adjusted the position of the left pedestal until we were satisfied with the alignment with the interpedestal cover.  We checked the alignment of the front top edges of the pedestals with a 6′ metal ruler.  Everything looked OK so I secured the pedestal to the base using two screws that will be hidden by the laser printer in normal use.

I needed to screw the pedestal to the wall in the two upper corners to minimize the visibility of those screws.  It was not flush to the wall at those points so I used a shim in the upper right.  We will have to cover the vertical gap at the left rear with molding.

Bruce finds the center of a drawer front by finding the point where the diagonals of the face intersect. The handle mounting holes were located horizontally 1-1/2” to either side of this center point.

Bruce finds the center of a drawer front by finding the point where the diagonals of the face intersect. The handle mounting holes were located horizontally 1-1/2” to either side of this center point.

We put the removable plates back in the bottom of each pedestal.  I drilled the holes for the pulls in the four desk drawers, installed the pulls, and put the drawers back in the desk.  To find the correct location for the holes Linda suggested that we put a piece of painter’s tape in the center of the face and then draw a small segment of the two diagonals to find their intersection.  For the two small drawers that was all we needed as they got single knob style pulls.  For the two larger drawers we needed to locate the holes 1-1/2″ to either side of the center on a line through the center parallel to the top and bottom edges.  I measured carefully and I think we did a pretty good job.

Sometime during the morning I texted Jarel the dimensions for a 3/4″ thick piece of walnut 1-7/8″ high by 34″ long to use as a face for the edges of the three layers of plywood under the refrigerator.  He texted back and said “no problem” which lead to an exchange of a dozen e-mails clarifying just exactly what I wanted.  I did not mind, better that than assumptions that result in wasted time making parts that don’t fit.  Jarel is an experienced cabinet maker and is meticulous in his work.  He knows all the questions to ask about things I did not specify and does so before cutting any wood.

Our last construction task before departure tomorrow was rehanging the bathroom door.  I measured the distance from the bottom hinge to the bottom edge of the door and compared it to the distance from the hinge in the door frame to the floor.  It looked like it should fit without rubbing so we hung the door.  (The old ceramic tile rubbed as the door was swung to its fully open position, but the thickness of the underlayment and vinyl tile is less than the ceramic and thinset, at least in that area.)

Linda was still trying to prepare our food for the rally as there will be very little of the included food that we can eat.  She made a grocery run while I returned to emptying out the front bay of the bus.  I plan to leave most of the stuff that was stored in that bay at home so Josh has access to the ceiling to see if we can through-bolt mount the two captain’s chairs in the living room.  I might also store all of the GLCC stuff down there as Linda will be coming down on Wednesday in the car with the cats and we want to minimize the amount of other stuff in the car.

I thought about sanitizing the fresh water system by using the 12V DC water pump and the winterizing valves/tubes to draw a dilute chlorine solution from a bucket and pump it through the fresh water pipes.  I decided against it based on available time and higher priority items that needed to be done.  I connected the clean fresh water hoses to the coach and started filling the tank.  I checked that the fuel polishing pump was off and checked the air springs and latch on the generator.  I made a mental note that the aft air springs (front of the Yanmar diesel engine) needed air and made sure the slide tray was latched in place.  I was going to start the generator and let it power the air conditioners but decided to forego for now that as well.

We had unlatched and removed the towbar from the bus receiver earlier in the summer.  I used one of our hand trucks to move it over by the car.  I put the passenger side rear seat down and loaded the towbar in behind it along with the bag that holds all of the other pieces.  That left plenty of room for the two cat carriers, litter tray, and any miscellaneous things she may bring along on Wednesday.

We put the mattress back onboard and Linda made the bed, but forgot the electric heating pad.  Linda did some cleaning and then we loaded clothing and food.  Computers, cameras, and other technology will go on first thing tomorrow morning.  We then got the various GLCC items out of the garage and staged them by the passenger side of the bus.  I loaded our personal items onto the driver’s side half of the slide tray and loaded the GLCC stuff onto passenger side half.

Our goal was to be done by 5 PM but it was 6 PM when I finally had the pressure washer ready to use.  It took me a little over an hour to spray the car and the coach and I wrapped up for the day at 7:30 PM.  We had seitan stroganoff for dinner with the 2013 Egri Merlot and had watermelon for dessert.  It was another long day but we got a lot accomplished and most it did not require me to work on my hands and knees, for which I was grateful.

 

2015/09/13 (N) Club Business

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Linda is still fighting her cold and I was up way too late last night so we slept until 9 AM this morning.  Because we were getting a late start, and neither of us was hungry, I made coffee but we skipped breakfast.

It was 51 degrees F in the bus so I turned on all three electric toe kick heaters and put on my zip front sweatshirt that I use to work in cool situations.  We took all of the freezer packs out of the house refrigerator freezer compartment and moved them to the freezer compartment in the bus fridge.  Linda also filled four large containers with water and snapped the lids on.  We put those in the refrigerator compartment on the bus, turned on the power, and put the wireless remote thermometer in the freezer compartment.

I was going to raise the front of the refrigerator until the top hinge for the freezer door just touched the ceiling of the alcove but our relatively inexpensive model apparently lacks that adjustment.  Linda was also concerned about how we will latch the doors for travel.  She remembered seeing a very clever latch for a fridge with doors like ours at the GLAMARAMA rally in early June and found a picture of it on her phone.  It is actually fairly simple and if custom made could be installed using the holes for the center hinge (between the doors) on the handle side (right side) of the fridge.

(I still like Scott Bruner’s solution best.  He devised an electromagnet system that is activated by turning the ignition on but has an override switch.  He and Tami have a cafe door, bottom freezer drawer unit.  One electromagnet holds plates on top of the cafe doors where they meet at the center of the fridge.  A second electromagnet is mounted on the right side of the lower case and holds a plate on the side edge of the freezer drawer front.  Very clever, and very fail safe.)

Bruce installs the fixed side of the piano hinge to the top of the wiring chase above the OTR HVAC duct.

Bruce installs the fixed side of the piano hinge to the top of the wiring chase above the OTR HVAC duct.

Our first construction task for today was to finish installing the built-in sofa.  This was a semi-permanent installation with everything in its final place and screwed in.  We will have to disassemble it once to finish cutting it and screening off the openings in the OTR HVAC duct and to drill the 4″ diameter holes in the vertical front panel for the circular registers.  We also need to find a pair of suitable length lifts to support the seat in the open position.  Finally, we need to find and mount some 12V DC LED lights and replace the momentary contact switches in the aft end cabinet with on-off versions.

It took us until 12:25 PM to finish the sofa (for now).  We took a brief break and had an apple for a snack.  Our next task was to put the plywood bed platform back in the coach.  That sounds simple enough but we knew from taking it out that it would be difficult to put back in.  The platform is the size of a queen size mattress, in two sections joined by a piano hinge.  It’s big, bulky, and very heavy, with no good handholds but we managed to get it into the bedroom and setting flat on the storage box base.

The physically hard part was behind us but now we had to get the fixed part of the platform screwed back down to the base, requiring us to put 18 screws back in the holes they came out of.  I rewired the aisle lights before we did that as I was easier to get to the wires.  We used two screws to index the location, checked the reveal along the length of each side, and screwed it down.  I then reconnected the two gas springs while Linda held the platform up.  I also connected the wiring for the two cargo lights but they did not come on.  I will have to change the bulbs and see if that’s the problem but for now we had more pressing tasks.

A view from near the co-pilot/navigator seat of the built-in sofa with the hinged seat base lifted up to reveal internal pieces and storage space.

A view from near the co-pilot/navigator seat of the built-in sofa with the hinged seat base lifted up to reveal internal pieces and storage space.

We went inside, each had an apple, and then returned to the bus.  I had planned to temporarily mount two 12V DC switches but did not have time to fabricate a temporary mounting plate.  We needed the switches hooked up so I just reconnected the female spade connectors on the cable to the spade lugs on the switches and draped the wires over the arm of the passenger chair.

Our next task was to temporarily install the desk.  The installation was only temporary in the sense that we would need to disassemble it to get the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers installed in the bases.  My preference was to get the heating system configured as part of the desk installation but we ran out of time before our appointment at Coach Supply Direct.

Our first sub-task was to cut the 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood spacer to fit on the right side of the right pedestal/base.  I cut it to be shorter than the desk and not as deep as the base, which is recessed at the front to create a toe kick space.  I cut the lower back corner out so the space would fit around the HVAC duct / wiring chase.  We peeled off some clear tape from the mirrors in the right rear corner down below the level of the top of the desk and set the spacer in place.

Our next task was to redo some AC wiring to get power to the space between the pedestals and reconnect the passenger side front duplex outlet.  To get power to the interpedestal space I decided to run 2C+G (Romex) cable from the wiring chase through a hole in the bottom of the pedestal, up the inside rear left, and out through a hole in the upper rear left side.  This hole and cable will not be visible unless someone crawls under the center of the desk.

In order to get the cover/shelf in the foot well aligned with the left and right pedestal/base components I decided to use mending plates attached to the back side of the bases and pedestals.  We started with the right hand components.  I attached a plate to the back side of the left rear base projection and one to the underside of the left end of the upper bottom section of the pedestal.  We set the base in place, put the pedestal on top of it, and set the cover/shelf in place.

We carefully shifted the components until we had them aligned the way we wanted.  I then secured the pedestal to the wall (which is 5/8” or 3/4″ plywood not sure which) with a single screw through the back panel centered from side-to-side and a couple of inches down from the top edge.  We double-checked the alignment of the pieces and then secured the pedestal to the base with three screws.  The base is not screwed to the floor or anything else except the pedestal.

We set the left base and pedestal in place and fussed with the alignment for but it was already 4:15 PM.  We had planned to quit working at 4 PM to get cleaned up for our SLAARC meeting and have dinner.  We still have a lot to do tomorrow for me to be ready to leave on Tuesday morning, but it should be manageable.

We went to Panera in Brighton for dinner and both had the Edamame Soba Noodle Bowl.  It was a generous serving that was tasty and filling even though it was only 390 calories.  It was very high in sodium, a common but unfortunate problem with most of Panera’s food, so not something we would eat often.

We arrived at the South Lyon Witches Hat Depot Freight House at 6:30 PM for the monthly meeting of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).  We had a larger group than usual, at least 30 people.  The business meeting was brief and followed by a program by Steve (N8AR) on the Yaesu Fusion technology.  Steve and several other club members brought different radios to demonstrate and let the attendees try.

We left in time to get home by 9 PM and watch an episode of Sherlock on Detroit PBS, followed by Rick Steve’s Europe and then Music Voyager.  We’ve been working long, hard hours and it was nice to take an evening to relax and do something other than work on the bus.

 

2015/09/10 (R) Illuminating

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Linda had to go to the bakery today so she was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:15.  I was vaguely aware of the activity but fell back asleep and finally woke up a little before 8 AM.  I skipped breakfast save for a glass of juice to wash down my vitamin and allergy pill.  I spent time finishing yesterday’s blog post and thinking about what I absolutely had to get done in next four days.

I was working at the dining room table instead of in the living room so I got to watch a Red squirrel dart back and forth across the deck all morning.  It was gathering walnuts from the tree northeast of our house and taking them somewhere west of our upper deck.  It would run (hop) across the deck with a giant walnut in its mouth and then return by way of the deck railing.  While it was gathering another walnut I moved to our library where I had a good view of our lower deck.  It came down the stairs from the upper deck and disappeared behind the grill.  It may be storing them under the deck or under the cover on the grill, in which case we will have to move them.

The main pieces of the desk set in place but not yet assembled or secured, and without the temporary plywood top or permanent Corian countertop.

The main pieces of the desk set in place but not yet assembled or secured, and without the temporary plywood top or permanent Corian countertop.

Once I was in the bus I continued pondering how to get the desk installed so that everything would line up.  Built-in furniture is just that, and I had not spent a lot of time in advance figuring out how I was going to fasten pieces together and secure them to the coach.  I retrieved the piece of 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood from the garage to use as a spacer at the right end and just slid it in place temporarily.  I decided I would use mending plates attached to the back and underside of the left and right bases and pedestals to align the center cover.  I also decided to use a length of angle against the wall to support and align the pedestals and cover.  Along the same lines I decided to use smaller angle brackets to attach the vertical front panel of the built-in sofa to the two plenum/support boxes and the air return shelf, and to attach the plenum boxes and shelf to the HVAC/wiring chase.

One of the original living room AC light fixtures. These were no doubt high-end fixtures but no longer worked in our remodeled interior.

One of the original living room AC light fixtures. These were no doubt high-end fixtures but no longer worked in our remodeled interior.

Feeling like I should get something tangible accomplished I decided to re-install the AC light fixture and the three DC reading lights under the overhead cabinets above the desk.  Linda and I agreed last night that we needed to replace the three 120V AC light fixtures in the front of the coach so I turned my attention to that issue.  I removed the fixture on the driver’s side by the kitchen end of the sofa alcove and removed the mounting ring.  I also measured the size of the base and the overall size of the fixture and wrote them down.  Ideally I will find a fixture that has a similar size base but with most of the light fixture above the center point.  One of the problems with the current fixtures is that they hang down far enough that a person sitting on the sofa would bump them with their head and probably break them as they are made of glass rods.

I headed towards The Home Depot in Howell and stopped at McDonald’s first for French fries and a soda beverage.  I looked at all of their wall sconce light fixtures.  They had two different ones that I thought might work but deferred a purchase until I had checked at Lowe’s.  THD had 72″ piano (continuous) hinges, however, so I bought one.  I also looked at PEX plumbing parts as Butch mentioned last night that I could use them to plumb the fan-coil heat exchangers.

Lowe’s had a wall sconce that was a little more to my liking.  I needed three but they only had one in stock, which I bought.  The Associate checked inventory at other stores and indicated that there were two more in stock in New Hudson.  He wrote down the Model number and the phone number for the store and said I could call and they would hold the items for me.  I picked up a couple of 75W GE Reveal light bulbs, the mending plates, angle brackets, and two different pieces of aluminum angle while I was there.  I looked for pieces of felt but all they had were very thick furniture pads which was not what I needed.

The new living room light fixture. The color, style, and fit are a better match to the remodeled interior.

The new living room light fixture. The color, style, and fit are a better match to the remodeled interior.

I was going to stop at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to check on heater hose, fittings, and band clamps but decided to skip that stop in favor of getting home and installing the new wall sconce light fixture.  It installed without too much difficulty and I liked the look.  The fixture, however, was rated for a maximum 60W bulb.

I closed up the house and bus and drove to the Lowe’s in New Hudson.  They did indeed have two more of the wall sconce light fixtures that I needed so I bought them.  I also picked up three 60W (equivalent, 8.5W actual) 800 lumens dimmable LED warm white light bulbs.  Linda texted me while I was at the store to let me know she was leaving the bakery and heading home.

I stopped at Michael’s Arts and Crafts in Brighton and bought a 36″ x 36″ piece of walnut brown felt.  I plan to use the felt underneath all of the pieces of the desk and sofa that contact the floor, and possibly in some other areas as well, to keep the wood from marring the tile.

When I got home I called Elkhart Campground to make a reservation for the GLCC rally next week.  I also called A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart, Indiana to check on our sofa cushions.  Terry said they were almost done and we could pick them up on Monday.  I then sent several text messages to Jarel with photos attached of the desk and sofa in place on the bus and indicated I had some questions and would call him later.

I was getting ready to install the other two light fixtures when Linda got home.  The timing was good as she got to see the first one and approve it before I installed the other two.  We discussed the covering up of the mirror strips in the corner and decided we would leave them for now.  We can cover them up later if desired.  Linda went in the house to fix dinner.  I got the second sconce installed and went inside.

I had a few minutes until dinner was ready and used it to send an e-mail to Jarel.  Dinner was couscous on power greens and small slices of bread from a baguette Linda bought the other day.  I also had the leftover corn on the cob.

After dinner I called Jarel.  We had a long chat and it was 8 PM by the time we finished.  Linda headed to bed and I went back to the bus to install the third/final light fixture.  I also installed four small frosted bulbs in the light fixture under the overhead cabinets above the desk, replacing the clear bulbs that were there.  This light fixture is part of the same collection as the ones I removed from the living room walls but its design and location do interfere with anything.  We might replace it someday, if we find something we like better for use over the desk that is the right size and shape, but for now it will remain in place.  I locked up the bus, closed up the garage, and headed to my office.

I dealt with some BCM-related e-mail and then off-loaded today’s photos from the Sony a-100 DSLR.  I went through all of the photos from September, selected about a dozen, and processed them into 300×200 pixel size images so I could share them with friends and family via e-mail.  I have written extensive blog posts everyday but last posted to the website in mid-July.  I don’t like being that far behind but getting the posts uploaded is just not as important as other things I have to do at this time.

I was heading to bed when I decided to replace the two light bulbs in our home kitchen that were burned out.  I had the two 75W GE Reveal bulbs that I could not use in the bus, so I installed them in the kitchen downlights, and that really brightened things up.

I got to bed just before midnight.  It had been a beautiful day, weather wise, and a cool night was in store portending good sleep.  But first I had to capture the details of today’s work for this post.

 

2015/09/07 (M) Grouted

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Linda got up at 6:45 AM to get a shower before Madeline woke up.  She peeked in the bedroom at 7:30 and there was no Madeline to be seen!  She pushed the door open a little farther and felt some resistance.  She looked behind the door and there was Ms. M, playing hide and seek with Grandma Linda.  🙂  Madeline was not fully awake, however, and sat with Linda on the living room sofa and read stories for a while.

All of this was retold to me as I was up late last night working on yesterday’s blog post and did not get up this morning until 8 AM, just in time for breakfast.  Breakfast was gluten-free toaster waffles with real maple syrup and mixed berries on the side (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries); simple but delicious.

After breakfast Linda took Madeline to the Brighton Mill Pond Imagination Station Playscape.  They needed to return a book to the lending library and Linda wanted to make sure Ms. M had an active morning so she would be tired enough to lie down for her nap at 1 PM.

Bruce grouting the tiles in the hallway by the new bus refrigerator.

Bruce grouting the tiles in the hallway by the new bus refrigerator.

I got back to work on the grout immediately after breakfast.  My goal was to be done by noon as it needed to cure, undisturbed, for 24 hours before we could clean it and resume working inside the bus.  I picked up where I left off last night with the area in front of the refrigerator where the kitchen blends into the hallway.  I was now out into the front half of the bus which is much more open than the hallway, bathroom, and bedroom.  Also, most of the tiles in this area are full 16 inch squares so I thought I might be able to work faster.  That was optimistic to say the least.

It was forecast to be hot today with a high near 90 degrees F and elevated relative humidity.  I turned on the front and middle air-conditioners initially but eventually had to turn off the middle unit when I got to the point where I would no longer be able to reach it.  I was a bit surprised that the front A-C alone kept the coach comfortable but we are approaching the autumnal Equinox so the transit of the sun is enough lower in the southern sky that the coach is in shade for most of the day.

It felt like I was moving right along but by noon it was obvious that this was going to be an all-day task so I stopped to have lunch.  Linda served vegan hotdogs with pickle relish and onions and set out a large bunch of grapes.  After lunch I resumed the grouting while Linda and Madeline watched a video.  Madeline laid down for her nap right on schedule.  Linda then took a few minutes to help me move the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers so I could grout the area where they had been sitting on the floor.  Linda cleaned up the kitchen and then had some well-deserved and needed quiet time.

I had a call from Butch around 1:30 PM.  I was in the middle of applying grout and said I would call him back later.  They left on Saturday for the southwest U.S. and were planning to spend this evening at a Walmart near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  By 5:25 PM I had one small set of inter tile spaces to grout when Linda and Madeline came out to tell me that dinner was ready.  I had just finished a section so I had already cleaned my tools.  I put the lid back on the grout container and went inside to eat.

Dinner was mock chicken tenders (vegan), green beans, kale chips, sliced plums, and grapes.  There was a little left over “gravy” (vegan) from last night so I had that on my chicken.  Madeline helped make the kale chips and really liked them.  As soon as I was done eating I excused myself from the table and went back to the bus.

I finished grouting the last four grout spaces and then cleaned up the tools and put them away.  I also cleaned up the cockpit area of the bus which is where everything ended up as I worked my way out of the living area.  I turned off the front A-C and locked the bus.  While I did that Linda cleaned up the kitchen and then gathered up all of Madeline’s things.

When I was done with my chores I cleaned up and changed clothes.  The three of us then loaded all of Madeline’s things into Linda’s car which has had the car seat in it all weekend.  We closed up the house and headed for Ann Arbor.  Linda drove so that I could return Butch’s phone call.

Butch had a possible issue with his house battery bank and wanted to discuss it.  He bought eight AGM batteries last winter in Quartzsite, Arizona and finally installed them over the summer.  They are 12V DC batteries and he has them in a series-parallel configuration to make a 24V DC battery pack with a 12V DC center tap.  A 24V Magnum 4024 inverter/charger is connected to the +24V and DC ground and a Vanner Equalizer is connected to those same points and to the 12V center tap, which is where 12V DC loads, like the water pump, draw their power.  In addition, Butch wired three LED display voltmeters to the battery pack; one for the lower 12V bank, one for the upper 12V bank, and one for the overall 24V bank.

His issue/concern was that the upper and lower 12V banks were not reading the same voltage.  They were different by one volt, which is a lot, and the upper bank had the lower voltage, which I agreed was an odd situation.  Without the Vanner Equalizer 12V loads would draw their energy from the lower 12 V bank and as the charge in that bank got depleted the voltage would drop.  The Vanner Equalizer’s purpose in the system is to draw charge from the upper battery bank to make up for this depletion and keep the voltage the same, or equalized, on both banks.  I presumed that all three voltmeters were accurate and that the Vanner was connected correctly, all of which would be easy enough to check.

After talking about all of this his plan was to temporarily disable the Vanner by removing its connection to battery ground and see what affect that had.  He also thought the Vanner might have a circuit breaker and would check to see if it had tripped.  I could not confirm or deny whether this would work.  I have looked for information on how the Vanner does what it does and not found much although I have found circuit diagrams for other battery equalizers.  My presumption is that it is a small inverter/charger, taking DC power from the upper 12V bank, creating some sort of AC waveform, and applying it to one side of a 1:1 transformer.  The other side of the transformer sees the same AC waveform, converts it back to 12V DC, and applies it to the lower battery.  The transformer is the key as it isolates the two banks relative to ground.  I wrapped up the call a few minutes before we got to our destination.

We arrived at Brendan and Shawna’s house at 7:45 PM. They had pulled up just minutes before us and were unloading their car.  They had not dropped Jorge at his home yet so we got to visit with him too.  Madeline had me read her a book about what happens if you give a cat a cupcake.  We stayed until 8:15 PM and offered to drive Jorge home as Brendan and Shawna had to get Madeline to bed and then eat something for dinner.  Madeline got out the cupcakes she helped make and offered those for their evening meal.  Tomorrow is a work day for her parents and she has to go to her new school.  Jorge is also starting a new job as the wine department manager at the new Plum Market on the northeast side of Ann Arbor, so everyone needed their rest this evening.

We were going to stop at Meijer’s supermarket on the way home but encountered rain before we got to the Brighton exit.  We stopped at the Shell station instead, filled up the gas tank, and bought two large decaf coffees at the Dunkin Donuts co-located with the station.  Back at the house we each had a vegan cupcake and then sat quietly in the living room working on our iPads while enjoying our brew and the company of our cats.  By 10 PM Linda was sleepy and went to bed.  I was also tired but stayed up longer to finish this post.  Scattered thunderstorms were forecast over a several hour period starting at 11:30 PM.  That is when I turned off the light but they had not yet started.  We could use a good soaking rain so I hope we get one overnight.

 

2015/09/06 (N) Grouting

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We got up quietly at 7:30 AM as Madeline was still sound asleep.  Linda did not want to let her sleep too long and get off schedule so I got the “all clear” to grind the coffee beans just before 8 AM.  I made the Costa Rican half-caff because I am trying to use it up so we can replace it with something we like better.  Madeline emerged with Grandma Linda a few minutes later.  After stretching they decided to sit quietly on the living room sofa and read stories while everyone woke up and the adults enjoyed our coffee.

Sometime between 9:30 and 10 AM we left for the Howell Farmers Market.  We walked from one end to the other, with Madeline in her stroller, scoping out this week’s bounty. We then walked back through and Linda bought a few things including hard stem garlic which we had never seen before.  We stopped and chatted with our favorite vendor, Marjorie.

When we got home and put the produce away Linda prepared a snack lunch for herself and Madeline.  The two of them then went on an outing to the farm at Kensington Metropark (KMP) while I stayed behind to work on bus projects.  I decided to start by finishing the assembly of the pieces for the built-in sofa.  I attached the center support for the return air shelf as follows:

  • I determined the center of the long edges of the shelf and drew a line between them.
  • I carried these center marks to the other side and then measured 3/8″ to either side.
  • I connected corresponding marks to create a pair of parallel lines 3/4″ apart and centered on the underside of the shelf.
  • I placed the support in position, determined its fore-aft position, and marked the ends.
  • I then marked a piece of scrap wood, cut it into four pieces, and used them to hold the support in place; two long pieces the same length as the support, and two short pieces across the ends.
  • This allowed me to turn the shelf right side up with the center support held in the correct place and then mark and drill countersunk pilot holes for the screws.
  • I removed the support piece, sanded off any rough spots, put Titebond II wood glue on the edge, and replaced it between the temporary blocking.
  • I stood on the shelf to force the pieces together and ran all the screws down tight.
  • I then removed the temporary blocking.

After sleeping on it last night I decided I would attach the plenum/support boxes to the vertical front panel and the wood wire chase on top of the HVAC chase rather than to the adjacent cabinets or to the floor.  That meant I could go ahead and assemble them as complete, single units.  Easier said than done.

Even though I used right angle corner clamps the two halves I built for each box did not want to go together perfectly.  I managed to get one of them assembled but could not complete the other one by myself.  The problem was that I needed both hands to pull the pieces into alignment and two more hands to operate the drill and screw gun.

By now it was 1 PM, which is Madeline’s normal nap time, but they were not back from the Metropark yet so I gathered up all of the tools and materials I needed to grout the floor tiles in the bus.  That included the special Armstrong S-288 Glacier White sanded vinyl grout, a flat blade screwdriver, the 4″x8″ hard edge float, the smaller margin trowel, the 2″ putty knife (wall scraper), the ScotchBrite sponges, the Revel scrubber, two large buckets for rinse water, paper towels, a large cloth towel, and paper bags.

Madeline pets one of the sheep at the Kensington Metropark animal farm.

Madeline pets one of the sheep at the Kensington Metropark animal farm.

Since Linda and Madeline had still not returned I had a few pretzels with hummus.  They finally got home around 1:30 PM and I heard all about the farm and the animals Ms. M got to see and touch.  The 2-day old piglets were apparently a big hit but so was the playroom.  It was a good outing and I wish I could have gone but I got stuff done that needed to be done.

Madeline finally laid down for her nap at 2 PM but Linda could not help me with the tile grouting as she needed to be within earshot of Madeline’s bedroom.  I decided that we could not afford any further delay for this aspect of the interior remodeling project and resolved to do it by myself.  Without Linda to walk me through the steps, have materials ready, and clean the tools, I needed to be very clear about the steps and their timing.  I must have read the directions on the container of grout a dozen times in an attempt to internalize them but they just would not stick with me.  I needed a spray bottle for water so Linda found one for me.

The afternoon was very warm so I turned off the air-conditioning in our home library, closed up the coach, and turned on two of the three air-conditioners, making sure they were on opposite legs of the electrical service.  I staged all of the stuff in the bedroom storage box as I planned to start on the back side of the bed in the driver side corner by the head of the bed and work my way out.

I finally got started at 2:30 PM.  The grouting involved a specific set of steps that got repeated many times as the directions said to only do 6 – 10 sq. ft. at a time.  That range had to do with the time required to apply and strike the grout, setup time (3 – 8 minutes), misting with water, waiting 20-30 seconds, scrubbing, and finally wiping with a square edged cellulose sponge.  I had to divide the U-shaped bedroom floor into six sections and it took me until 5:30 PM to do that much so my average time was 30 minutes per section, each of which was smaller than 6 square feet.

I took a short break, had something to drink, and checked with Linda on the timing of dinner.  We settled on 6:30 PM and I returned to my grouting.  I had to do the bathroom floor in two sections, which got me into the hallway and joined up with the work from the bedroom.  I went in to clean up for dinner and was greeted by the smell of something baking.  Madeline wanted to make cupcakes so Linda assembled the ingredients and walked her through the steps, letting her do as much of the work as possible.  For not even being three years old yet she is very interested in cooking, but only if it is something she will get to eat! 🙂

Dinner was vegan cheeseburgers, corn-on-the-cob (from the Farmers Market), left over black beans and edamame, and sliced pears.  I worked in the bus from 7 to 8 PM and finished the hallway as far as the bend that transitions into the kitchen.  I cleaned all of the tools and sealed the grout container using Cling-Wrap pressed down onto the surface of the grout to keep air away from it, and locked up the bus.

I washed up and turned on the Yaesu FTM-400 2m/70cm radio in the ham shack while Linda helped Madeline take a bath.  Steve, N8AR, was serving as net control for the weekly SLAARC information net and had already started the net but not yet called for check-ins so I got to participate in the entire net.  We had a small group this evening, most likely due to it being a holiday weekend, but it was still a good net.

I came upstairs to have dessert with Linda and Madeline; chocolate cupcakes (vegan) with sprinkles.  Yum.  I then returned to my office to re-read an article I wrote about replacing the speedometer in the bus and editing it to indicate where the pictures should be placed.  I dealt with several BCM related e-mails and then came upstairs.

Madeline was in her pajamas and sitting in her portable bed while Linda read a story.  She decided that she wanted me to read a couple stories too, so I did.  We got her tucked in with her stuffed animals arranged at the four corners of her bed, turned on the night light, and left her to fall asleep.

I opened the bottle of Apricot wine that Brendan and Shawna picked up from Leelenau Cellars and we each had a small glass.  I worked on this post while Linda cleaned up the kitchen.  It had been a long and very tiring day for both of us but a very satisfying and productive day as well.  We don’t mind that kind of tired.

 

2015/09/05 (S) Building the Built-in

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We set the alarm for 7 AM as we had to return the 100 pound floor roller to The Home Depot by 8:08 AM.  We got the roller out of the bus, reattached the transport wheels, and loaded it into the back of my car.  We positioned it so that Linda could hold on to the handle while I drove.  One-hundred pounds that is designed to roll is not something you want loose in your car.  We got to the store at 7:40 AM but the associate was busy renting a ditch digging machine to someone.  We had to wait 15 minutes but that was OK.  After returning the roller we drove back to the house so Linda could get her car and our iPads and then drove separately to Panera in Brighton.

Linda had her usual Everything bagel and I had my usual Cinnamon Swirl & Raisin bagel, both sliced and toasted with nothing on them.  Two large coffees rounded out the order.  The coffee was hot and did not have grounds in it (for a change).  For some reason we got an extra Everything bagel that we did not order so which we split it.

Linda left at 9 AM to drive to Ann Arbor to pick up grand-daughter Madeline who will be with us until sometime on Monday.  Her mom and dad are attending a wedding on Sunday in Madison, Wisconsin so they are driving over today and driving back on Monday.  I stayed at Panera getting my money’s worth of coffee while finishing yesterday’s blog post and starting on today’s missive.

I left Panera at 9:45 and stopped for gasoline at the Shell station on the way home.  $2.29/gallon.  I would love to see $2/gallon gasoline again.  Better yet, I would love to see $2/gallon diesel fuel.  Linda planned to stop at the grocery store on the way back but I wanted to start a load of laundry and be home when Linda got back to the house with Madeline.

I got the laundry sorted and the first load started and then spent a little time at my desk.  I had to reset a password for someone on the SLAARC website and I logged in I was reminded that WordPress 4.3 was now available.  There were seven other updates available as well; three plug-ins and four themes.  I don’t use any of those themes and should probably delete them, but for now I just updated WP and then updated everything else.  I then logged in to our personal website, the FMCA-GLCC website, and the FMCA Freethinkers website and did the same updates.

While I was in our personal website I cleared out the 104 spam comments that had accumulated since my last house cleaning.  In the Freethinkers website I activated all of the plug-ins except Wordfence.  I have problems with this website and tech support at iPower says it is the Wordfence plug-in that is at fault.  They ask for permission to deactivate it and I give them permission but ask that they only disable that one plug-in.  Instead they disable ALL of them; every time.  I would really like to move this website to QTH.com and I may just do that as an add-on domain to our account.  Unfortunately our e-mail reflectors are set up on through the iPower account and I doubt that the club will want to pay for two different web hosting services.

It was a nicer day than we have had for most of the week, cooler with clearer skies and a nice breeze, so I opened up the windows in the motorcoach and turned on all three ceiling exhaust fans to air out the interior and get rid of the lingering smell from the floor tile adhesive.  (Yes, that is one, long sentence, but since I have added this one, it is now a proper paragraph rather than a single sentence paragraph.)

Linda and Madeline stopped at the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor, which is not far from our son and daughter-in-law’s house, and got to our house at 11 AM.  Madeline and I helped Grandma Linda unload the groceries and put them away.  I moved a few things from the front hallway into the library where Linda put most of the bus drawers last night (three of them are in our bedroom).  Madeline wanted her inflatable porta-bed set up so Linda took care of that.  Once her bedroom was arranged we got out her toy box and started playing with things.  She also had a couple of bags of things she brought with her and got a small soccer ball out of one of them.  We had a great time throwing and rolling it around the living room.  It is always wonderful to see the pure joy of a young child at play doing something as simple as this.

By 12:30 PM Madeline was ready for lunch so Linda made a PB&J sandwich and washed some green grapes.  She washed some black organic grapes for us and I had a few pretzels dipped I Sabra Roasted Red Pepper Hummus.  It’s my favorite hummus from them, or pretty much anyone else.

After Madeline laid down for her afternoon nap at 1 PM Linda and I both got busy with chores.  As much as I would like to have taken today off, at least from hands and knees work, we only had eight days left to get some significant tasks accomplished on the bus.  In terms of a critical path view of the overall project the critical task is grouting the floor tile that we finished installing at 9 PM last night.  Not only will it take some time to do but once it is done it cannot be walked on for 24 hours.  As much as it needed to be done, however, I needed a day of not being on my hands and knees.  If I get it done on Sunday I can resume work inside the coach on Monday.

While Linda made a batch of granola I worked on assembling some of the pieces for the built-in sofa.  My plan was to fully assemble the two plenum boxes that will support the ends of the plywood seat, and I intended to do that by gluing and screwing the four pieces together for each.  In order to do that I needed screws of the appropriate type (#6 SR) and length (1-1/4″) so I went to Lowe’s to get them.  While I was there I looked at continuous hinges and angle brackets but did not buy any.  I need a 72″ hinge but all they had were 48″, 30″, and 12″.  I may be able to use two 30″ and one 12″ but I need to check the actual dimension.  I also needed a #6 drill but with an integral countersink but Lowe’s did not seem to have what I needed so I went to The Home Depot and found something there.

I think this marking scribe belonged to my mother’s father.

I think this marking scribe belonged to my mother’s father and is at least 100 years old.

Back home I was getting all of my tools and supplies ready when I realized that I would not be able to attach the plenum/support boxes to the adjacent cabinets if they were fully assembled.  This was an example of incomplete design; either I have forgotten how I planned to anchor these boxes, changed my thinking about this in the time since I did the design work, or never figured out this detail in the first place.

Ideally I could anchor them in a way that does not destroy the cabinets or the floor.  One way to accomplish that would be to attach them to the HVAC plenum at the back and the vertical front support board using angle brackets, and to the top of the wiring chase above the HVAC plenum via the two filler strips on either side of the seat.  If I do that I can fully assemble the two plenum/support boxes before installing them.

For now I only assembled half-boxes with one side piece attached to the bottom piece and the other side piece attached to the top piece.  I built one of them for the left end and the other one for the right end. What this leaves open as an option is screwing the side/bottom assembly to its adjacent cabinet and then screwing the other assembly to the first one without using any glue.  The dry assembly would allow everything to be disassembled later if needed.

Madeline was up by this time and helped Grandma Linda put the new seed block in the bird feeder.  They then walked around to the front of the garage to see what Grandpa Bruce was doing.  I showed them my tools and the pieces of wood and explained how everything was going to work and fit together.

Two pieces of one of the plenum boxes held at right angles for gluing and screwing.

Two pieces of one of the plenum boxes held at right angles for gluing and screwing.

I aligned the pieces being joined, which are all 3/4″ cabinet grade 13 ply plywood, using two corner clamps.  I then scribed a line 3/8″ from the edge of the piece that was sitting on the edge of the other piece.  I marked screw locations every two inches with the spacing centered along the line.  I drilled pilot holes with countersinking to ensure the screw heads would be below the surface of the wood.  I disassembled the two pieces, leaving the piece that the screws would go in first in the clamps, and sanded off any rough edges.  I ran screws part way into each hole so the tips protruded just enough to put the two pieces back into alignment when they were rejoined.  I applied Titebond II wood glue to the edge piece spread it out, and wiped off my finger with a wet cloth.  I inserted the edge piece back into the clamps, used the screws to make sure it was aligned, tightened the clamps, and ran the screws most of the way down.  I then loosened the clamps holding the edge piece and drew it up tight by running the screws all the way down.  I used a wet towel to wipe off the excess glue that was squeezed from the joint and set it aside to dry.  I took a lot of pictures too.

The center portion of the storage space under the seat will have an elevated platform with closed ends to create a plenum for the OTR HVAC return air.  I assembled the two end pieces to the ends of the platform using the same method I used for the plenum/support boxes.  There is also a support piece for the middle of the platform but I cannot use the clamps to hold it in position relative to the platform so I will have to do something else.  I was thinking that I did not feel like tackling that task when Linda and Madeline came back to the garage to let me know it was almost time for dinner.  Saved by the food bell, I closed up the garage and went inside to eat.

Linda set out some carrot slivers, diced peaches, and home grown cherry tomatoes.  She cooked some mock chicken patties and heated up some vegan gravy to go with them as a main course.  For sides she heated black beans, edamame, and vegan Mac-n-cheese.  We all enjoyed our meal.

Madeline really enjoys the swings at the Brighton Mill Pond Imagination Station Playscape.

Madeline really enjoys the swings at the Brighton Mill Pond Imagination Station Playscape.

Our son let Linda know that Madeline had not been sleeping through the night recently and had developed a sensitivity to noises.  Linda figured Madeline might sleep better if she engaged in some vigorous play after dinner and suggested that we go to the Brighton Mill Pond Imagination Station Playscape.  Ms. M liked the idea but wanted to make sure I was coming too.  I found a reasonably good parking spot and pushed her over in the stroller because she does not like to walk for the sake of walking.  But once we got to the playscape she was in “go mode.”  As the sun set and the light faded we strollered her over to Jack’s for a scoop of vanilla ice cream with sprinklers.  We then strollered her back to the car and drove home.

Linda had promised Madeline that she could watch a video before she went to bed.  She had selected an episode of Daniel Tiger, an animated children’s program based on the Daniel Striped Tiger character from the old Mr. Rogers TV program.  We had Shawna’s iPad with access to her Netflix account but the program was downloading slower than molasses poured on a cold day.  We had problems with video, then audio, but eventually got it to work after I turned off the Wi-Fi transceiver on my smartphone.  Linda got Madeline ready for bed while fiddled with the technology.

After the video Grandma Linda carried Ms. M around to look at all her favorite artwork, a bedtime ritual that goes back to the first time she ever stayed at our house overnight.

 

2015/09/01 (T) Tiling Kate

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We both slept until 8 AM this morning and even then got up slowly and reluctantly.  We probably need a day off to rest, relax, and catch up on some not-so-physical tasks, but now is not the time.  There is too much to do and time is slipping by.  The fact that hot weather, muggy weather is forecast for the rest of the week probably had some effect on our enthusiasm for getting back to work.  We should probably get up at 6 AM and quit working by early afternoon, but I am not on a sleep schedule that accommodates those hours.

We had our usual homemade granola with blueberries, split a banana, and had OJ/GFJ to wash down our vitamins.  I made Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee, but not as much as usual.  We enjoyed our coffee in the living room with our cats and finally got back to work at 10 AM.

Dry fit of Armstrong Alterna floor tiles.  The starting point was where the kitchen was where the kitchen transitions into the hallway.

Dry fit of Armstrong Alterna floor tiles.  The starting point was where the kitchen was where the kitchen transitions into the hallway.

Today was one of the milestone days we have been working towards all summer; we (finally) started laying out (dry fitting) the new floor tiles.  I had done two layouts on 1/4″ grid paper back in early June; one with the sides of the tiles parallel and perpendicular to the centerline of the bus floor, the other with the sides turned 45 degrees.  We both liked the turned layout better so I used it to estimate the number of tiles we needed and placed the order back in mid-June.  They took a few weeks to arrive but they have been sitting flat in their boxes since early July waiting to be installed.

My original drawing has tiles lined up with opposite corners on the centerline of the floor, although it looks good on paper there was no way I could draw it at a scale that allowed me to accurately account for the 1/8″ grout spacing.  The drawing was just a “proof of concept” and a starting point for the actual layout.

We laid tiles out according to the plan from a starting point in front of the refrigerator that would allow one of the grout lines to go down the center of the hallway in front of the pantry.  Unfortunately that did not allow the tiles to reach the front edge of the floor by the cockpit or work out well for the toe kick space under the kitchen base cabinets or hallway running back to the bathroom and bedroom.

A famous problem in mathematics is finding convex polygons that can “tile the plane.” What this means is that the polygon can fit together with itself perfectly so that there are no gaps.  Some of Escher’s artwork was based on the use of such polygons and that is the context in which most people would be familiar with this concept.  Among “regular” polygons, which are equilateral and equiangular, triangles, squares, and pentagons can tile the plane.  So can right triangles and parallelograms, which includes the rhombus.  Beyond that it gets a bit tricky and someone just recently discovered a previously unknown irregular pentagon using a computer program to systematically examine a very large number of possibilities.

What does that have to do with our bus remodeling project?  Not much, really, beyond the obvious fact that the new vinyl floor tiles for our motorcoach are squares with an edge length of 16 inches.  Floor tiles are almost universally square in shape because they are easy to manufacture and can be laid out on a floor in several different ways. Finding a way that fits a particular space in a balanced way is the tricky part, however, and more so in this case because the tiles need to form a continuous pattern of grout lines (if possible) while working their way down the hall and into the bathroom and bedroom.

We shifted the string of tiles running down the centerline towards the kitchen cabinets on the driver’s side of the bus so the corners just reached the recessed base.  We then shifted them towards the rear of the coach to get reasonable size pieces at the front edge by the cockpit.  We filled in some tiles to either side of the main fore-aft string to make sure they would make it to the edges with reasonable size pieces.  When it was clear that this positioning was going to provide a balanced installation in the kitchen and living room we started working our way down the hallway and into the bathroom.

The tiles continued to fall into place and fit well in the bathroom but did not flow into the bedroom quite the way we wanted.  We may have to offset a grout line as we transition from the hallway to the bedroom but were otherwise satisfied with our dry fitting.  We returned to the front of the coach and placed every full tile that we could.  We then started trimming tiles to fill in smaller pieces.  We limited ourselves to pieces that had one or two straight cuts and no notches or tabs.

It was 4:30 PM by the time we got to the door of the bathroom and bedroom threshold, where a critical decision would need to be made regarding the offsetting of a grout line.  We have learned that the end of the work day is not a good time to make critical decisions.  With company coming in a couple of hours we quit working and got cleaned up.

I sat in the living room and worked on this post.  Kate sent a text message at 5:30 PM that she was leaving Wayne RESA and heading our way.  We figured she would get here at 6:30 and that is when she arrived.  She brought a dip that she made from cannelloni beans, garlic, and lemon juice, some baby carrots, and some pretzel chips.  We enjoyed the appetizers with some Bell’s Oberon beer while we chatted about work, travel, and family.  Kate travels every chance she gets, usually with her S.O. Brian but sometimes by herself.  Europe is a favorite destination but she frequently visits family members all across the U.S.A. and sometimes overseas.

After catching up a bit we gave Kate a tour of the bus interior.  She liked the new floor tiles and our choice of seat fabric but was suitably impressed with the pull-out pantry which pleased us.  I turned off the three residential air-conditioners as we exited the bus.  Linda then got busy preparing dinner while I showed Kate the pieces of the custom desk and built-in sofa.  I turned on the A-C in the library (where the desk and sofa pieces are stored) to cool it off and lower the humidity.  It had been off all day since we were running the main house A-C plus the three A-C units in the coach.

Dinner was ready at 8:30 PM, a simple but tasty meal of burgers and fries with a second round of Bell’s Oberon beer.  (Linda bought a real beef patty and got a slice of real cheddar cheese for Kate.)  We had fresh strawberries and Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert and then continued to chat about photography, cameras, travel, and the low power Radio station, AM 1700, that Brian runs in Ypsilanti.  A local blogger does a weekly interview show that Brian then podcasts.  The most recent one was an interview with a professor from U of M Ann Arbor who wrote a book that was recently made into a movie (Diary of a Young Girl).  The podcast was “liked” by Sarah Vowel, who is sometimes featured on “This American Life.”  Very cool.

Kate had to go to work in the morning and left around 10:15 PM.  Linda went straight to bed but I had a couple of things to take care of first.  I had initiated the download of an updated NVidia GeForce driver for my ASUS laptop computer.  I e-mailed several documents to my sister Patty, and then downloaded the final draft of the August/September Bus Conversion Magazine, proofread my two articles, and e-mailed a couple corrections to the publisher.   I installed the driver update and then went to bed.  I wrote for a while and finally turned out the light at midnight and fell asleep.

 

2015/08/31 (M) A Major Sub-Project Done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/29 (S) Up and Down

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When we arrived at the South Lyon Senate Coney Island just before 8 AM there were only five other SLAARC members there but we had 16 by the time the last two people showed up.  Linda (K8LMF) got to sit next to Linda (NF8C) for the first time in quite a while and they had a long chat.  All but one person stayed until 9:45 when we got up to leave and everyone else followed suit.

We were back home by 10:15 AM, changed into our work clothes, and got back to work on the bus remodeling project.  It was a very overcast and cloudy day with a high probability of rain that was forecast to be an all-day event.  That altered our plans a little in that we did not want the pieces of underlayment to get wet and our air-compressor could not be out in the rain as it has an electric motor.

Yesterday we marked and cut the underlayment panels in the driveway, laying them across 2x4s to create space for the circular saw blade.  In order to keep the project moving forward we decided to use the temporary “workbench” in the garage for this work.  Since the workbench was covered with drawer fronts that had to be moved we decided to take a little time to put the new handles on them and reattach them to the drawer boxes.  Sometimes it’s true that “there’s no time like the present” to get something done.

Linda has worked hard on cleaning and waxing the walnut drawer fronts and fixed cabinetry in our motorcoach.  The results so far are amazing and we are feeling like all of our work will be worthwhile as the interior of the coach is going to look very nice when we are done with this project.

We had cut the piece of underlayment for part of the hallway last night but needed to trim it to get it to fit correctly.  I think we took it out of, and back into, the bus at least four times, each trip requiring us to go up and down the seven steps in the entryway/cockpit plus the stool outside the door.  I do not know how many times we went up and down those steps today but it was a quite a few.  To add to our enjoyment and bus conversion physical fitness program we were usually carrying something and it was often heavy and/or large.

The next pieces of underlayment to be cut would fill out most of the living room.  I had planned to cut them a certain way but changed my mind after talking it through with Linda.  We took measurements and I made drawings that were close to scale.  We ended up using the full 48″ width of a 4’x8′ sheet and about 86″ of its length for the piece that fills the alcove where the built-in sofa and storage base will go.  It had two large corner cutouts, one to make it fit with two other installed pieces and the other to go around the base of the media cabinet that doubles as an end table for the forward end of the sofa.  After test fitting it we had to trim a couple inches off of a back corner because of a wire bundle and create a notch for several wires that ran through the floor just in front of the driver’s side HVAC chase.  We waited for a lull in the rain and took it back into the coach.

It fit just right but unfortunately there were defects in the subfloor, such as small gouges and depressed screw heads, that needed to be repaired.  Since we could not use the air-stapler today I did not have a good excuse for not patching the floor correctly so I worked on that while Linda resumed working on the woodwork.  The quart of “ready to use” floor patch was not as ready to use as I would have liked.  The directions said to stir thoroughly and when I opened the container there was a half inch of milky white liquid on top of somewhat drier and stiffer material with the consistency of fine wet sand.  The directions also said the open (working) time was about 15 minutes.

I set the timer on the microwave for 20 minutes, spent five of those trying to stir and mix the floor patch ingredients, and then tried to patch everything that really needed it in the allotted time.  I did not care for this material and wish I had used the Universal Patch and Skimcoat that I used everywhere else.  It was gritty and did not feather out or finish as smoothly as I wanted, but there was nothing to do now but wait for it to dry which would take three hours.

Linda decided to work in the house and eventually fix dinner while I worked in the bedroom (of the bus) trying to remove very old masking tape from the subfloor using a 1.25″ putty knife.  After an hour I had about half of it off but called it quits as my hands were sore.

For dinner Linda cooked a couple of ears of corn-on-the-cob, heated some vegetarian (vegan) baked beans, and cooked two vegan “burgers” topped with vegan cheese.  Mustard, ketchup, pickle relish, and four large leaves of romaine lettuce made for a tasty sandwich.  We each had a glass of the Cupcake Black Forest Decadent Red wine with the meal.  Dessert was fresh sliced strawberries with non-dairy (vegan) peach mango “yogurt.”  It was a tasty summertime meal.

After dinner I tried sanding the floor patches even though the directions said not to sand the dried material.  I used a very old piece of 120 grit sandpaper in my orbital sander and went over the entire area.  I vacuumed the whole area but I could still feel a residual grit on the floor.  I got Linda’s vacuum from the house and tried that.  I then got the Revel wet/dry mop and tried wet moping the area, but it was still gritty.  I was preparing to go over the entire area with the new 80 grit sandpaper but Linda managed to get it clean using the brush attachment on the house vacuum cleaner.

With the area cleaned up we put the piece of underlayment for the sofa nook in place and it fit very nicely but we did not staple it.  We redid our measurements for the passenger side front piece and made some minor adjustments to the dimensions on the drawing.  What I have tried to do wherever possible is to keep at least two factory edges with a common vertex (corner) and use that point and those sides as the basis for my measurements.

It looked like heavy rain was going to hit us from the west but must have tracked north of us.  We continued to get rain, off and on, but nothing heavy every materialized.  Working in the garage we measured and cut the last piece for today.  We made extensive use of the circular saw running it along a saw guide.  By the time we had the sheet cut there was a lull in the rain so we took it to the bus to test fit it.  The fit was close but needed minor trimming in the front outside corner.  By now it was 8:30 PM and we did not want to haul the sheet back out of the bus and into the garage to work on it.  That will be our first task tomorrow followed by stapling the three pieces that we cut today, weather permitting.

We turned in at 10 PM.  There wasn’t anything on TV that interested us, so Linda read for few minutes before falling asleep and I wrote until 11:30.

 

2015/08/28 (F) Bye Bye Fridge

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The DTE Energy appliance recycling program called yesterday and left a message indicating that they would pick up our old refrigerator between 8 AM and noon today so we got up at 7:30 AM to make sure we were ready if they arrived early.  I was cold last night so I put on my sweats when I got up.  For breakfast we had our usual granola with fresh blueberries and split a banana, had a little glass of juice to wash down the vitamins, and then had coffee in the living room.  I turned on the gas fireplace to chase away the morning chill while I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s post and Linda did her morning check-in with the world beyond our immediate boundaries (and concerns).

The DTE Energy pickup truck called at 9 AM to let us know they would be here around 9:30.  We finished our coffee, got dressed, and awaited their arrival.  Ever since a delivery truck almost took out the telephone trunk line over our driveway last August I try to be in the driveway anytime a truck is headed our way.

Two guys showed up in an Enterprise truck.  Our new refrigerator for the bus was delivered by two guys in an Enterprise truck.  It must make more sense than buying one.  When they opened the back it already had used appliances in it.  The guy handling the paperwork said they usually pick up 30 appliances a day but were scheduled for 32 today.  I signed the acknowledgments and releases on his cell phone and they then unplugged it, cut off the power cord, stuck a hand truck under it, rolled it onto their lift, raised it up and rolled it in next to another side-by-side fridge that was very similar to ours.  They closed the rear cover and were on their way.  I don’t think they were here more than 15 minutes.  It’s nice to have it out of the garage and to know that it will be recycled.  We will also receive a check for $50 in 4 to 6 weeks which beats having to pay someone to haul it away.

Linda picked up where she left off on Wednesday with the woodwork in the bedroom of the bus while I got the tools and supplies ready that we needed to install the Patriot Lumber SurePly underlayment on the floor.  That included getting out the 15 gallon air-compressor, 60 foot air hose, Butch’s Central Pneumatic air stapler/nailer (that I borrowed on our most recent visit to Indiana), and a package of #18 1/4″ crown 3/4″ long staples

Linda finished wiping off the residual Touch of Beeswax from the bedroom woodwork and then helped me get the 4’x8′ sheet of underlayment out of the bus and over to the driveway.  We put this sheet in the bus yesterday so I could determine where to make needed cuts.  I had marked several places where I needed to make notches or take some material off of part of an edge.  I did not want to do the cutting in the bus, however, because we need to keep the floors clean and avoid airborne dust.  I made the cuts and then we moved the sheet back into the bus.

Bruce positions the second piece of underlayment.

Bruce positions the second piece of underlayment.

Per the instructions, we positioned the sheet of underlayment in the corner across from the kitchen sink with the long dimension running fore and aft across the floor joists.  It fit nicely so I connected the air hose to the air stapler and inserted a set of 3/4″ staples.  The instructions for the pneumatic stapler indicated a working pressure range of 70 – 100 PSI, with the pressure controlling the depth of drive, and suggested adjusting it on some scrap material.  It turned out that I had to set the regulator on the air compressor to 100 PSI to get the right depth of drive.

The instructions for the underlayment were very clear about the order in which the sheet should be stapled so that’s what we did.  Linda stood on the sheet to keep it flat while I stapled and we both wore proper safety glasses, of course.  From the corner I put a staple every two inches along the edge by the HVAC duct.  Working out from the same starting corner I then put one every two inches along the short edge.  Working out from the same starting corner I stapled it along the diagonal to the opposite corner.  Again working from the starting corner I stapled the “field” on either side of the diagonal.  The last staples were 2″ apart along the other short edge and up the other long edge.

A week and a half ago we had this same sheet of underlayment in the bus and I screwed it down temporarily with a dozen screws to see how it felt.  I counted the number of fasteners needed for one full sheet and I think it was 352.  That’s when I decided I would staple them.  After installing the first sheet I think it was the right choice.

Bruce staples the second piece of underlayment.

Bruce staples the second piece of underlayment.

I got a phone call from my sister so we took a break and while I talked to her Linda started preparing lunch.  She made grilled cheese, with mock turkey, onions, and greens on rye, all vegan of course.  We each had a deliciously ripe fresh pear.  Yum.

The next piece of underlayment to go in filled in the space between the first sheet and the base of the kitchen cabinets.  But first we had to remove the painter’s tape we had put on the base to protect it.  It turned out to be cemented on from the floor leveling compound so I had to chisel it loose.  Linda vacuumed up the debris and then I went over the area with 120 grit sandpaper on the oscillating sander.  Things like this are what cause project timelines to stretch out; when we put the painter’s tape on we assumed we would be able just peel it off.

This second piece was less than half the width of a full sheet and involved a tricky angle cut and a notch so I measured carefully, made a drawing (not to scale), and rechecked the dimensions with Linda verifying them.  We cut the piece outside and brought it in.  It was a very good fit so we stapled it down.

A detailed view of the bottom front end of the pantry and refrigerator showing the aluminum angle that keeps the fridge from shifting to the left into the pantry.

A detailed view of the bottom front end of the pantry and refrigerator showing the aluminum angle that keeps the fridge from shifting to the left into the pantry.

The third piece was much more difficult to figure out and will probably prove to be the trickiest piece overall once we are done.  It was essentially a big triangle with two corners cut off and complex notches along the hypotenuse.  I took a lot of measurements with Linda’s help and made a diagram.  When I laid it out on the underlayment things did not quite line up.  I figured out and corrected one problem but had to go back in the coach and make two more measurements.

At the point where it was close, but not close enough, I decided to cut along the hypotenuse, trim off the two corners, and take it back in the bus to mark the locations of two notches.  With the notches marked we took it back outside and I finished cutting it.  We took it back inside and set it in place.  It was as good a fit as could have hoped for so we stapled it.  Although we had worked for most of the day and only gotten three pieces installed our careful work had paid off and we were very satisfied with what we had accomplished.  It was 5 PM, we were tired, and we were getting hungry so we decided to quit while we were ahead.

I took a shower while Linda prepared dinner.  She made a very tasty whole grain rotini pasta dish with garlic, onion, olive oil, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and greens.  Now that, Alton Brown, is “good eats.”  We had nice big wedges of fresh watermelon for dessert.

After dinner we went to Lowe’s to buy three more sheets of underlayment and some wallpaper stripping spray.  By the time we got home it was after 8 PM and we settled into the living room to read and write, much the way our day began, minus the coffee.

 

2015/08/25 (T) Turning The Corner

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It got pleasantly cool overnight and with the bedroom doorwall open it made for nice sleeping conditions.  Between being up a bit late last night and not wanting to get out from under the warm covers we slept in a few minutes longer than usual.  I put on my sweats, which I find very comfortable on a cool (or cold) morning, and made a pot of Costa Rican decaf coffee.  We had our usual granola for breakfast, took a few minutes to enjoy our coffee in the living room without our cats, who were off somewhere and probably up to no good, and then got to work.

In order to install the new seats in September we need to have the desk installed and in order to install the desk we need to have the floor installed and in order to install the floor we need to have the underlayment installed and in order to install the underlayment we need to have several things done.  First and foremost was finishing the patching and leveling of the subfloor, so that was my first task today.  While I pursued that Linda continued working on cleaning and waxing the walnut drawer fronts.  Given the limited work surface in the garage Linda can only work on three to six drawer fronts at a time depending on their size.  When she reached a stopping point with those and started working on the woodwork in the bedroom.

I have spent the last week patching, skimcoating, and sanding the entire area where the old tile was installed which I estimate to be about 80 square feet.  I went over it one more time this morning with 80 grit sandpaper on the orbital sander.  The sander has an integral dust collection bag so it did not get the coach too dusty.  I was satisfied with most of the job but still had some unevenness along the edges by the walls and especially in the toe kick spaces extending out about three inches from the cabinet bases.  That is because I did not get the last skimcoat as smooth as I needed to in those areas and the orbital sander cannot reach them.

 

I figured I would need to do one more application of floor leveling compound but did not want to open the second bag of mix for such a small job.  I decided to go the Lowe’s and buy a small pail of pre-mixed floor patching compound and the 3/4″ #8-32 machine screws we needed to install the new handles.  While I was there I noticed that they had 50 grit hook and loop sandpaper triangles designed to fit our Porter-Cable oscillating saw.  I was aware that we had a sanding pad attachment for the tool but had not considered using it until I saw the 50 grit paper.  I bought a pack and picked up some 120 grit as well.  I would also have bought 80 grit but they were out.  I had to go to The Home Depot for the machine screws as I wanted the same brass ones we had already purchased.

Back at the bus I decided to try sanding out the imperfections rather than filling them in with another round of patching and sanding.  I was, admittedly, tired of this phase of the work and anxious to be done with it so I could move on to next step.  August is slipping away and I am very aware of the date.  I was also not keen on creating more sanding dust inside the coach.

I don’t know why I did not try this tool sooner.  The design of the tool and shape of the sanding pad allowed me to work in the all of the areas the orbital sander could not reach and it worked very well with the 50 grit sandpaper.  The circular air sander can also reach these areas, and was the right tool for grinding down the old thinset and mastic, but the oscillating tool was the right one for this final smoothing.

When I thought I was done I vacuumed the floor and used the Revel Damp Mop to pick up any residual dust.  We then went inside to have lunch while the floor dried.  Linda heated up a can of Amy’s vegetable soup, made roll-up sandwiches, and served fresh black grapes and plums.  It beats fast food hands down.

After lunch I inspected the floor carefully and decided that the patching and leveling was done.  Although it was one task out of many, and there was no fanfare attached to the moment, I was very much aware that we had finally turned the corner.  We still have some minor disassembly to do, but from this point forward most of our tasks will involve putting the interior back together and installing new things.  All things being equal (which they never are) the building work should be more fun than the deconstruction work.

The major exception is the wallpaper.  We still need to remove the old paper, much of which is stained from old water leaks, and install the new paper, which Linda will be ordering tomorrow from Delux Drapery and Shades in Ann Arbor.  The critical pieces are the ones that go behind the desk and the built-in sofa.  Most of the rest of it can be finished later but we would prefer to have it all done by September 12th if possible.  The more stuff that gets installed the more awkward it will be to work on the walls.

With the floor leveling done the next impediment to installing the underlayment was getting the refrigerator out of the living room and into its alcove.  That, however, required three other things to be done.  First I needed to replace the electrical outlet with a recessed one.  Second, we needed to build up the base of the alcove and finally, we needed to install the pantry as we cannot get to the slides to mount them to the side of the alcove with the refrigerator in place.

The electrical outlet only took a few minutes to change.  With Linda’s help I used the template I made last Thursday to cut the base pieces from the 4′ x 8′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood we bought on Tuesday.  The bottom piece was the full width of the refrigerator alcove (34″ wide at the front and 33.75″ wide at the back) and 25.75″ deep.  We set it in place, checked the front setback, and screwed it to the subfloor.  The next piece was the same width as the first but 1/2″ deeper (26.25″).  We set it in place on top of the first piece and made sure the front edges were flush with the back edge extending 1/2″ farther back.  I used longer screws to go all the way through both pieces into the subfloor.

I was not happy with the way my circular saw blade was cutting and a few raindrops gave us an excuse to take a break.  We were working just outside the small garage bay and moved everything into the garage to keep it from getting wet.  I went to Lowe’s and bought a new 7.25″ blade with 60 teeth, which should give a very clean cut through plywood but still work on 2x4s and trim boards.  While I was there I checked their selection of driver bits again.  I was looking for a 3″ long No. 1 SR (square recessed) bit but they did not have any that long.  I found a 2″ bit for $2.48 but then I spotted a pack of seven 2″ long bits for under $4.  It had two #1, three #2 (the most common size), and two #3 bits from the same manufacturer as the single bit.  Can someone explain that pricing structure to me?  Apparently most of the cost is retail packaging.

Linda prepared large, wonderful salads for dinner.  She made her own dressing using balsamic vinegar, walnuts, raisins, garlic, and seasonings, and it was very good.  We finished the Pinot Grigio with the meal and then resumed our work.

I changed the blade on my saw and then we moved the wood and 2×4 supports back out into the driveway.  The new blade made very clean cuts confirming that changing it was long overdue.  The third piece of the alcove base was not as wide as the first two, measuring 28.25″ across the front and 28″ across the back.  (The alcove tapers in 1/4″ from front to rear along the right side.)  The depth was 26.75″ to match the refrigerator base depth, and a half inch deeper than the second piece.  I set it in place, snug to the right side of the alcove and flush with the front edge of the other two pieces, and checked for an even reveal along the left side of 5.75″.  Everything looked good so I screwed it down.

There are several reasons for this design/construction.  First, there is a large bundle of wires and two air lines that run across the floor of the alcove at the rear wall.  Using three layers of plywood allowed the top layer to be high enough for the base of the refrigerator to extend over the wire bundle and have its back about 1″ from the back wall (thus the reason for the recessed electrical outlet).  It will also leave about 1″ of clearance above the fridge, which is enough.  The second reason is that the 5.75″ width at the left, with only two pieces of plywood under it, is where the pull-out pantry will go.  But third, I will install a 24″ long 2″ x 2″ angle (steel or aluminum) on the middle sheet against the left edge of the top sheet to prevent the refrigerator from shifting to the left.  The front edges of the plywood base pieces will be covered (eventually) by a something, probably a piece of 3/4″ thick walnut hardwood, that will stick up above the top surface of the top piece just enough to keep the fridge from rolling out.  That piece, however, will have to be removable so I am still thinking about just how I want to secure the refrigerator case in the alcove.

Linda does her Vanna White impersonation, highlighting how the new pull-out pantry will look when it is installed. The pantry is in its extended position revealing the slides sections that will mount on the cabinet wall. The refrigerator is out so we can work in the alcove.

Linda does her Vanna White impersonation, highlighting how the new pull-out pantry will look when it is installed. The pantry is in its extended position revealing the slides sections that will mount on the cabinet wall. The refrigerator is out so we can work in the alcove.

We still had some light but with the heavy cloud cover it was darker than usual in the coach for this time of day (6:30 PM).  We rigged up a piece of twine to hang the work light and turned on as many interior lights as we could.  We then carried the pull-out pantry from the library (in the house) to the bus.  We brought all of the slides in as well, along with two pieces of 3/4″ plywood and a 4′ length of 2×4.

We set the two pieces of 3/4″ plywood in front of the left edge of the alcove flush with the two bottom base pieces.  We then set the 2×4 on flat (3.5″ side down) spanning the plywood inside and outside the alcove.  We installed the cabinet halves of the nine slides onto the pieces attached to the pantry and then set the unit in place with the bottom resting on the 2×4.  We moved the pantry in and out checking its position and considering where the slides needed to be attached to the alcove wall and exactly how we would do that so the front has an even reveal relative to the vertical front trim of the left alcove wall.

By this point it was after 8 PM, it was getting dark, and we were too tired to start something as critical as attaching the slides to the alcove wall.  We are behind schedule, but had enough sense to not push beyond our limits.  We closed up the bus, relaxed on the couch for a bit with our kitty cats, took some Advil PM, and went to bed at 9 PM.

 

2015/08/24 (M) Skimcoating

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/22 (S) Clean and Level

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/18 (T) Walking Grind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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