I was SO grateful for all the positive feedback on last weeks series post! I’ll be honest, I expected a bit of flack about the mice, but not a single person said anything. Trust me, I know, mice are dirty and I was pretty unhappy when we discovered they had been there, but I’m SO thankful to have had my supportive people nearby and willingly support the mouse poop removal! Woot! Our trailer is officially mouse-free!!
The day after my last post, we had already done a bunch more work, and holding it all in has been something of a nightmare, haha! Not the nightmare I’ll talk more about later, but a difficulty, nonetheless. So I held it all together and here I am now, sharing with you!!
The first thing we tackled was removing the cabinets in the room that will be the kids room. We had hoped to complete that the week before but at the time, we were hoping to salvage them and wanted to take our time and be extra nice to them. Unfortunately, they needed to be completely disassembled, so we won’t be reusing them. Ah well, we tried!
At least we have that wall free now!
Next, we ripped up the flooring. 😳 THAT was our nightmare.
We lifted a few pieces pretty seamlessly, and figured it would be a pretty simple job. How hard is removing click laminate anyway? Turns out, when the people who installed it glued just about every piece down with PL Premium, its VERY hard. I would hammer a skinny little pry bar under it to separate the glue from the floor, lift the pry bar, and it would just break a little chunk off of the board. It. Was. Miserable.
So what should’ve been a half hour turnaround took a LOT longer. But, we got it there! Our diligent little kids carried the boards out and stacked them in a pile while we ripped those boards up, flaking little chunks into everyone’s hair. It was a mess, but it was good! Victory! We did it!
Thanks for nothing, Gayle Wood. Da. 🤷♀️
I figured we were close to done gutting the camper at this point, and I moved onto the stereo system. By “stereo system,” I mean we have a radio and tape deck, lol! First of all, I didn’t love the weird blue upholstery that it was mounted in, but I was also curious if we could somehow many it Bluetooth capable. Because of those things, we decided to pull it out and see what we could change/adapt. Aaaaand we found more mouse poop. *sigh* Sooooo Brady got on that for us again. Or did Solly? 🤔
We ended up cutting out the blue “wall” and Cher cleaned the back walls for us. (Thank you both for doing so much dirty work!)
As weather permitted, Brady continued to seal the outside of the camper.
He FINISHED it!!! 💪
We did a bunch of burning…
And what we couldn’t burn, we took the dump!
Hopefully just the one big dump run!!
The day of the dump run, we went to Saskatoon for a BIG materials shop!!! We had received a quote for our flooring, wall panels, and MDF, so we were VERY excited to go pick it all up!! We were disappointed the learn the flooring we had been given SUCH a good price on was not in stock :/ And the employees weren’t especially willing to try and help us order more. Merp. But! Brady was able to acquire his big stack of MDF, as well aaaaaaaas beadboard for the walls!! 😍
Its SO pretty!!!
Believe it or not, beadboard was cheaper than regular RV wall panels! So I don’t even have to feel guilty about having it look pretty in there!
We pulled the futon mattress apart and tried to save what we could. The foams were stained, so we threw them out, but we washed the nice couch cover, as well as the mattress cover, in hopes that we could just replace the foam and move along. Unfortunately, the covers fell apart in the wash – zippers completely ripped off. Merp. So I guess no futon for us! We’ll have to find something else! We’ve got time!
Speaking of mattresses, though, we found a solution to the kids beds! At least for now, while they’re little. We purchased a stack of those tri-fold camper mattresses, and they line up perfectly in our plans for their room! YAY! They were also cheaper at Costco than at Walmart, so, take note of that!
Brady redid some of the plumbing underneath the camper this week, too! A pip had ripped off completely, and had been lovingly 😳 taped back on 😳 So he fixed that up good and proper!
Brady drove into the city on Thursday morning to run a few RV errands. Firstly, our camper came with a hefty hitch adapter, but since we’re parking it permanently somewhere, we don’t require the adapter. Brady managed to sell it for a nice chunk of money to someone who really wanted it! YAY! On the same errand run, he picked up a new AC unit, as our camper unit’s fan still ran, but it didn’t cool beyond that. He had done some research in advance, and picked up a really nice looking one from an autowrecker.
That same day, Thursday, Brady went to install the AC unit but realized he was short a gasket. Thankfully, we have an RV dealer about 15 minutes away, and he ran there to see if what he needed was priced reasonably well. Turns out, every little part he was needing was priced WAY better than he had anticipated, and he came home with a small haul of necessities!
Seals, covers, etc. He was SO stoked about his haul, and about getting the AC unit installed!
Aaaaand then it didn’t work. He checked and rechecked his wiring, and it was all correct. He researched how to test it, but then couldn’t find his multimeter. Saying it was frustrating was a bit of an understatement. 😬
We troubleshot a little bit after the kids went to bed, but to no avail. We’ll figure it out. It was a nice date, though! Can’t complain!
Today, Friday, Brady went into Saskatoon to pick up a couple more big ticket items!! First was our glass, to replace the windows that were broken.
Installing them is proving more difficult than anticipated, so hopefully I’ll touch more on that next week.
And second was our flooring. That’s a gruelling story. The long and the short of it was that our contact at Coop who gives us great deals has left. We knew he was leaving, and he gave us our quote in advance, but the flooring was discontinued and they didn’t carry even half of what we needed. Brady ended up on the phone with another employee who worked hard for him. She tracked down a box here and a box there, at different Coop locations and at her supplier locations. When she found enough, she called. And today was the day he could pick it up! YES!
I’ve been saying that the weeks we accomplish flooring and walls will be by far the most exciting weeks! No one will care after those updates, hahaha! But I guess with that, there will be cabinets, bedrooms, and decor. So maybe there is still stuff to see…..
Week two…
We’re still having fun, in case anyone is wondering! No regrets!!!