Big Bertha Comes Home

Work at the hospital had taken me away from focusing much on FPO for a while, I didn't have long weekends and when I did, the temperatures had dropped so much it wouldn't be feasible to stay in a tent comfortably. Granted, I loved the cooler weather during the day, but I knew that there would be a 20°F drop in temperature overnight and it would be close to freezing. 

As soon as we purchased FPO, we thought it would be prudent to start looking into a camper or RV to set up as a camp. In September, a friend of DH's named Daryl mentioned that he might be interested in selling the fifth-wheel camper he was currently living in. His home was badly damaged in Hurricane Michael in October of 2018 and he was nearly finished with the remodel. DH mentioned it to me, and I asked what he was wanting for the camper. DH wasn't sure, but thought it was going to be a good deal. 

In early October, DH contacted Daryl. They negotiated back and forth, and DH purchased the camper for a few thousand dollars with the understanding that the camper needed work and the friend would be moving stuff out of it for a few more weeks. I was skeptical, but the photos I had pulled up online of the exact same camper showed people purchasing them for closer to $10,000, so it was worth a go. 

We had title in hand as of October 4th. 

I expected we would pick up the camper around the third week of October, maybe even as far out as Halloween. DH called Daryl around the 20th of October and Daryl said although he had tried to start moving things into his home, there was a lot of stuff in the camper. He and his wife had lived in the fifth wheel for nearly 4 years in their front yard and I knew from experience the accumulation of stuff over that amount of time is sometimes overwhelming to move. 

Early November rolled around, and we waited patiently. Well DH did, I was anxious to get my hands on it and start working on the repairs and updates so I'm sure I was a pain in the ass to DH, fussing when I heard anything remotely to do with the camper or FPO. DH kept in contact with Daryl, he wanted us to come over and get the camper on the weekend of November 13th. I was stoked.

November 12th Daryl called us and explained that he still hadn't been able to clear the camper out of all their belongings. He worked rigorous and extensive hours when his employer's needs demanded it, plus it had rained on his only day off in the last two weeks. Frustrated of course, we understood the situation he was in and agreed to wait to hear from him. He was and had been very good at keeping in touch with DH to let him know where the process was at. 

The call came Friday after Thanksgiving. 

~I feel another sidebar coming on~

Let me lead this segment of the story with saying I have one of the best workplaces on the planet, I am valued and loved and looked out for; my charge nurse takes her nurslings needs into account and ensured I had the day before and Thanksgiving Day off of work. She knows I have been entrusted by my family to make my great-grandmother's recipes and organize the meal for Thanksgiving, so she makes sure I'm able to do so. I am so very grateful to be able to work somewhere that my hard work is recognized, and my unspoken needs are tended to. It is truly a blessing. 

Excuse the smudges!

That being said, it takes two days to cook for Thanksgiving. I make everything from scratch, so prepping cornbread and boiling and peeling 5 dozen eggs plus cooking chicken and making stock takes at least 8 hours. Not to mention the two other casseroles, the cakes, and deviled eggs that have to be made. The day of Thanksgiving, I bake all 4 casseroles, make the filling for the deviled eggs, and frost the cake. Then there's Thanksgiving at Papa G and YaiYai's house first, after that we go to Gram's for the rest of the evening. Friday is a day of hectic shopping for most, but normally we just relax at the house and have Thanksgiving 2.0. 

Sinful Green Bean Casserole

Granny Rubye's Broccoli Casseole

Prep for broccoli casserole

Paula Deen's Deviled Eggs

Great Grandmother Fleming's Cornbread Dressing

Now as an additional sidenote, I didn't know EVERYONE doesn't do this. We make so much food at Thanksgiving for each side of the family, there's enough to feed everyone (I'm talking 20+ large-appetite people) for lunch and dinner on Turkey Day, then again on Friday for lunch. We've just always done that; the family gathers again around noon on Friday at the original host's house and eat all the leftovers we can hold, then all the fancy serving dishes are rinsed down and sent home with the original owners.

The first time I realized that wasn't a 'thing' was when we went to DH's family's house for Thanksgiving in Tampa. We ate a good meal, visited for the afternoon, snacked along for the evening meal, and each took a plate home. The next day around 10am, I asked them when we were headed out. DH's mother looked at me and asked me to where, I answered back to their house for leftovers. DH's mother looked at me confused and said we've already had Thanksgiving, there's no going back over there again. 

I was quite embarrassed. 

However, we were home this Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to leftover fried turkey with some jellied cranberry sauce and some of that dressing I spent half the damn week fussing over and fixing. Instead, as I sipped my Reign trying to wake up DH walked into the house and told me the news. 

The camper was ready to be picked up.

It was go time, and as bittersweet as it was, the leftovers would have to wait. DH gathered transmission fluid for the hydraulic slide and some tools from his garage out back, I packed PB Blaster to feel useful. We jumped in DH's truck and headed toward Daryl's house. DH found a fifth-wheel adapter hitch for his gooseneck hitch on Marketplace and bought it a few months ago in anticipation for moving the camper. We installed it in mid-November when we thought we would be coming to get the camper, so it was already secured and waiting. 

When we pulled up to Daryl's house, the camper was out front, but it appeared that nothing had been unhooked as far as water and sewer lines. We piled out of the truck and DH went to knock on the door. Daryl appeared, bewildered, and asked if we were already there to pick the camper up. DH was confused and told Daryl of course, he had called and said he was ready for us to come get it. 

Daryl looked worried, then shook his head yes and stammered out a yeah! I breathed a sigh of relief, and I got my first look at the inside of the camper. 

It's a 2006 Forest River Cedar Creek RV, 34' long and 9' wide with three large slides making it about 14' wide when they were fully extended. The outside needed a good scrub and had a few signs of water damage. The underpinning by the hitch had a suspicious sag with some hanging trim pieces, but nothing nefarious seemed to be showing. Daryl knew I had not seen the inside of the camper, so he opened the door and attempted to latch it open, but the latch crumbled as he tried. He laughed and said that would definitely have to be replaced. The screen on the screen door was tattered and torn, and it looked like there were pieces cut from a corrugated plastic sign to cover the solid middle and bottom panels of the screen door and secured with silicone caulk. 

I looked inside to see beige RV everything, yellowed beige linoleum flooring inside the door on the entrance floor, beige wallpapered wood panel walls, and the brownish pink hue of kitchen countertop made a U shape starting at the entrance wall. I climbed the steel outdoor stairs into the darkened RV. 

The kitchen and living area had two of the large slides, so the roominess made sense when I really thought about it. The kitchen countertop made a J-hook jutting into the living area. I picked the sink cover up off of the sink and realized it was a solid mold double bowl sink and countertop combo. The faucet was standard RV issue and had some corrosion and rust from years of use. There were overhead cabinets above the countertop, making a clear separation line between the entrance, the kitchen, and the living area. The wood was solid, it was stained light pine, and all the cabinet hardware throughout was gold. 

The inside had a telling scent of musty mildew and stale dog carpet. It wasn't overpowering by any means, but it was a constant in the air. There were various pieces of furniture still inside the living area; a tweed looking pullout couch, a small dusty pink rocker-recliner, and a pine table with a slide out leaf. The ceiling was at least 9' tall by the stairs to the upper master bedroom. I was surprised at how roomy it was inside. 

There was no oven, but the RV did have a clean 3-burner stovetop. A small countertop microwave sat next to the range and the telltale screw hole signs of a former over-the-range microwave were present on the slide out wall. Daryl saw me looking at the arrangement and he said the other most important thing to have would be an air fryer because there was no oven. He said his air fryer was kept on the countertop and pointed to the top edge of the "J", but I just nodded silently because I already had some ideas on how to fix that issue AND preserve countertop space. 

Daryl encouraged me to go look upstairs but warned me to step on the edge of the stairs because the second stair had pulled loose and would fall through if any weight was placed on it. I was also instructed that the hidden door did not function well as it had jumped off track and needed some screws for repair. 

The deadly second stair

I did as I was told going up the stairs past the crooked semi-exposed door and found myself in a galley style bathroom for lack of a better term. To the left were two doors with gold scroll lever handles, the first was the toilet room, the second was a small closet with a stand of drawers and a hookup for a washer/dryer combo. 

Closet for washer/dryer combo

To the right was a corner shower with scalloped privacy glass encased in gold trim and forward of that was a small sink and vanity mirror with a gold vanity light fixture above it. I opened the shower as Daryl said they had cut the water off to the camper after DH had noticed a leak a few months ago and had not been able to clean the shower. It was definitely a well-used shower but would clean up just fine. The shower knobs and shower head were cheap RV grade fixtures that had yellowed and had mildew in the caulking around the base. An easy fix. 

The skylight over the shower was yellowed from sunlight and the outer bubble had irreparable UV damage, so the lighting in the bathroom was dim and off-color. Daryl told us there was a leak around the skylight, but it was okay because it just leaked into the shower. I didn't see any obvious signs of water damage around the skylight itself, so hopefully that wouldn't add to the growing repair bill. 

Continuing forward was the master bedroom. A queen bed took up majority of the room in the bedroom, with an attached chest of drawers at the foot-facing wall of the room. The most forward was the large double closet with sliding mirror doors trimmed in gold. 

I walked towards the mirrored doors and heard an ominous crack of the flooring above where I suspected the sagging underpinning was. I stepped back gently and reached out to open the closet doors. 

I was immediately hit with a sour mildew smell and saw the shelf in the closet was badly warped, the pressboard was bloated with prior water damage. I stepped gingerly onto the creaking plywood floor and reached as far forward as I could to the back wall of the closet, but it felt absolutely solid. 

Strange.

I took a deep breath and stepped back onto solid flooring. This was going to be a massive undertaking, but nothing we hadn't handled before. Just a different type of housing. 

I looked up and saw the roof looked to be intact without staining. Over the queen bed was a bit of dimpling in the roof wallpaper liner that looked to be either humidity or water damage, but there wasn't any staining around it. I didn't notice any staining or sagging in the bathroom area or closets. 

I walked back downstairs per the prior directions and checked the living room. There was a dusty ceiling fan above the kitchen cabinets that seemed exceedingly close to the top support brace, and miscellaneous items strewn throughout the camper that I noted. A collapsible dog bowl here, a portable heater there. The back corner was missing a piece of the wood paneling wall and appeared to have some water damage, however Daryl brushed it off as 'just having a dog.' I shrugged and walked back outside with DH. 

The outside was nothing special to look at, years of grime from sitting out in the weather clung to its once off-white exterior. The graphics were badly sun damaged, the slide roller covers on top of all three slides were torn and flapping in the wind, and I wondered if the slides had been pulled in during the last 4 years or if they would even work at all. 

DH began going through the cargo compartments with Daryl, with Daryl letting us know he had not really gone through the items the previous owner had stored in the cargo holds but the previous owners had been avid RV'ers and essentially lived on the road. The hold appeared to be packed full of stuff, but a lot of it was meticulously separated and labeled in Rubbermaid 3-drawer bins and baskets. 

There was a semi-rusted brown mini fridge in the cargo hold as well, and the cargo hold itself had some water damage and standing water on both hold door frame floors. 

The underside of the death stair

The propane gas hold had rust damage, but the fittings themselves seemed to be intact. 

The front hold had what appeared to be chairs in it, as well as the hydraulic pump to open and close the slides. This was leaking hydraulic fluid badly and had a makeshift catch can underneath it to contain the dripping liquid.

Daryl and DH made themselves busy removing hoses and lines from the side of the camper. The hose fitting for the water inlet was nearly soldered shut with corrosion, so the hose had to be cut for us to remove the fitting later. The door panel on the water heater was not secured, so it was removed and put into the cargo hold. DH disconnected the black water drain (for those that aren't familiar, this is the sewage pipe) only to realize it was split along the top and spilled foul brown liquid about a 2ft stretch along the yard. They gagged in disgust and held their noses, but it didn't bother me. I told Daryl it made me feel better that at least I didn't have to wipe that up. 

Once the pipes were all disconnected, we began to try to retract the slides. It took a bit of finagling with the hydraulic pump and the addition of some transmission fluid, but the slides broke free and retracted relatively easily. The kitchen slide had to be extended and retracted again as it pulled in crooked but lined up within an inch of closing evenly on the second try. Transmission fluid puked out of the hydraulic pump, and I was just glad we got them pulled in without too much ado. 

Next were the jacks and leveling systems. The hitch was first, Daryl removed the tripod stabilizer from the lip of the fifth wheel hitch and put it in the back of DH's truck. DH moved on to the back end of the camper and began to retract the bilateral jack stabilizers and pick up the hunter safety orange stabilizer leveling pads off the ground. DH used the electric jacks on the front of the RV to lift the hitch higher, enabling me to back the truck up underneath it and line it up (yes folks, she does it all!). I felt the heavy clank and tug as the pin connected with the coupling and seated properly as DH secured it into place. I put the truck in park and got out to watch the back end of the Ram Truck sink slowly as the full weight of the RV was grudgingly lowered onto it. Once the electric jacks were disengaged from the ground, we were able to pull the lock pins and secure them up into the jacks for transport. DH plugged in the trailer running lights and ensured they were working properly.

The next step was pulling it from its long-standing post in front of Daryl's house. DH put the Ram in drive and began to ease forward, only to find the RV's drum brakes were locked from sitting so long. DH put the Ram in 4-Low and gave the RV a firm tug a time or two, and the brakes jarred loose, allowing the wheels to roll freely again. 

It was time. Time to bring our new treasure home, and time for Daryl to say goodbye to a longtime friend and burden. He wasn't taking it hard at all it seemed, smiling and taking photos of the essential eyesore leaving his front yard, we even got a celebratory dance and wave as we made a wide U-turn out of his yard to head back to our house. 

We were about halfway home when I realized we might not have room to turn this humongous thing around in front of the house and get it into the driveway, much less into the backyard. DH is an expert trailer backer but threading a needle as fine as the one he was about to was going to need all the skills he could muster. 

Our roadway in front of the house is barely 18ft wide and our driveway is about 9ft wide. The way DH had to maneuver the trailer into the backyard resembled the 'curves ahead' road sign on the side of the highway, S shaped at best with three mailboxes, a fence, a sago palm, and two steep ditches to navigate prior to the next S curve that involved a looming 9ft eave of the corner of our house, a popcorn tree, and a $1500 14ft wide PVC privacy fence dual gate. 

So like, no pressure, right? I mean it's only a 23ft long truck towing a 34ft long trailer with only one pivot point at about 20ft. Our yard is about 130ft in depth. Even with the overlap of the truck and trailer, that's still 50+ft to maneuver in extremely tight corners. Thank God our neighbor across the street Clay used to work at an RV park and can assist to back a trailer because it took all three of us on each side to communicate the turn radius and clearances. 

It was done. She was in our yard, signed, sealed, delivered, its ours!

That was enough excitement for one day, so we decided to wait to start cleaning it out and scouring over the outside of it until the next day.