Sick and Tired

If I never paint another cabinet in my life, it will be too soon. 

I say this lovingly, but with an air of aggravation. It seems like every time I get off work and chores get done and its FINALLY time to work on the camper, the damned cabinets have multiplied and the thought of painting looms over me. This wall this color, this wall that color, this has to be done first, touch up this ceiling and this wall, touch up this green cabinet. I'm just honestly over it at this point. So, I've tried to sprinkle in breaks from painting itself by doing other things that need to be fixed.

The flooring person DID wind up coming back (while I was at work thank God, because I'd have flipped my shit) and re-trimming the slide out again. It looks much better now, but it still needs to be finalized and have the pieces nailed down and edged. 

I made myself busy tearing the shitty trim work off of the stairs and cutting the black stair trim I bought to fit. DH told me he wasn't feeling well that morning, so he went inside to rest.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of trim I would need, and I lacked one strip when I was done. I went online and reordered the same trim again that night, but it wouldn't be here for a few days.

Also, because of the torrential surprise rainstorm the other night, the cabinets I had left outside got soaked. This wasn't a big deal for MOST of them, as they are real wood, but one drawer face under the stovetop, hidden behind cabinet doors, was pressboard and immediately puffed up like a poolside Pampers. I carefully pried the pressboard off the front of the drawer, pulled the staples out, then found a piece of scrap slide trim to put on the front instead. Easy peasy.

I worked on sanding off the rest of the cabinet doors that afternoon.

The next day (Sunday), I woke to a sick husband who had slept in the chair the night before. I swabbed him, and of course he popped positive for covid almost immediately after applying the drops to the test. Excellent. 

I made myself scarce from the house and started reassembling the glass-face cabinet doors with silicone caulk. I got to the last door face, and I broke the damned glass trying to finagle it into place. All this time being worked on and scraped and moved from place to place and stored, and it broke at the 11th hour. 

I would have to order a new piece, so I set that project to the side and continued to assemble the rest of the painted cabinets with new hardware and pulls. 

I started with the dry lube next. I pulled out assembled drawers and cleaned and lubricated the slides, then did the same for the pull-out shelving in the tall kitchen cabinet. Cleaned up that mess. 

Measured the trim boards and made sure they were cut to the right length. The ones that weren't, I moved to another area to be used on the shorter slide. 

I bit the bullet and opened the lightest color paint for the main walls. It had separated a little with an oily layer on top, so I used the sticks and stirred it well until it looked uniform. I had already taped off the boxes on the walls that didn't need paint on them as well as removed the electrical fuse panel door and taped the edges. 

I put three coats on the entrance wall before the paint took and didn't have patchy appearance, but I kept getting chunks of something in the paint. It almost looked like pieces of dried paint, but this container, roller, and paint tray were brand new. I had to wonder if it was settled pigments that made the paint thinner and require more coats. I'll have to get it shaken again at the hardware store before trying more painting with it. 

I painted one coat above the living area slide after washing the slide top and the window above the slide. I moved on to the back wall and did a full coat there too but was unable to move past that point because the mattress was in the way. 🙄

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Monday was MLK Jr Day, but the hospital closes for no one, so I was at work while the kids and DH were at home. I called home to check on DH and he said he was still feeling horrible, but now Buggins was complaining of a bad sore throat. I got in touch with a nurse practitioner friend of mine at an urgent care center and got them squeezed in to be seen. DH was of course positive, Buggins tested positive, but Pootie was negative. NP said it would only be a matter of time before Pootie had it too, so she wrote me excuses for both of them for the week and sent medication to the pharmacy for them. 

Tuesday I had to work and was on call, I got to work at 7:45am and was able to leave at about 12:30am Wednesday morning. 

Wednesday I slept in until 9am, then had designated that day for studying (I'm still in the BSN program at the local community college) and housework. Pootie said she felt bad, so I swabbed her, and a faint positive showed up on the test after about 5 minutes. I got busy and washed all the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, did dishes, cleaned out the fridge, put away groceries, cleaned the bathrooms, washed the cat litter box and refilled it, sorted mail, planned meals, and watched videos for class in anticipation for working on the RV the next day.

Today, I slept in late. Geff woke me up at 10am and I dragged myself out of the bed and powered down an energy drink. Tuesday night seemed to have caught up with me. I made chocolate chip biscuits with icing for breakfast, then put on work clothes and moseyed outside. 

DH and Buggins were feeling better, thankfully, so he was able to go pick up the piece of glass he ordered for me from the local glass place. I worked on assembling the glass-faced cabinets with hardware and handles now that they were dried and placed them in the cabinets they corresponded with. I was only able to hang two of them due to still painting the walls and having tape on the cabinets. 

Before and after!

The trim for the stairs came in, so my next job was placing the last two strips and caulking the vertical edges of the steps. 

Once that was done, it was off to finish taping the labels on the electrical panel door so I could spray paint it black. While that dried, I heard the UPS driver arrive, so I headed inside. 

The new water heater had arrived! 

The old one was rusted out and was leaking badly, so we scoured Amazon for reviews and one that would be big enough and found this one. It's a 'plug and play' model, really meant for under a sink, however with as little as we'll be using it out there, this should be fine. It's a 6-gallon 120V plug-in model made by Camplux. The reviews specifically stated someone that lived in their camper used one for their water heater and it worked fantastic. 

DH unwrapped it and got the parts from the hardware store to assemble the pop-off valve and water lines. 

It was time for my little robot maid to clean, and it aggravated DH to no end trying to eat his hoses and bumping into him before I finally told it to go home and sent it back to the charger. 

The final product installed. I told DH that was a lot of water lines!

I went to the electrical panel and the spray paint was dried. I pulled the tape off of the front logo, but when I went to pull the tape off the rear circuit breaker sticker, it peeled the information off of it! I'm so sad! I left the painter's tape on it, because you can kind of see the information still through the tape for the amps and where it goes, but I am certainly going to need a new sticker now. 🙁 

I wound my day up by touching up the ceiling paint around the cabinets and painting the slide ceilings. The cabinets need one more coat of ceiling paint around the edges, but it looks good. One more bite of the elephant done. I feel so overwhelmed at times!

So that's been my last 9 days or so! I haven't felt sick yet, a little runny nose and a few small headaches, but I got the industrial Covid vaccine as a Covid ICU healthcare worker in January of 2021 and got VIOLENTLY ill with it, so I'm not sure if I'm actually still susceptible to it or any of the variants.

😵

I’ll leave you with the only therapy I get for now, washing and driving my baby.