The Final Countdown

 Time flies when you're having fun. Or in our case, working your ass off every day. 

I have SO MUCH to tell you. 😁 

Because this is where we finish.   

I started back to work on the camper on the 11th, which happens to be the day before my 40th birthday. I loaded my Amazon boxes into two reusable shopping bags and readied myself to work on the scattered tasks I had packaged up. 

First would be the disguise I would use to cover the fact that we had to split a board and add a 7" section on the kitchen slide ceiling trim.

I chose this because it really added to the decor of the RV, it's heavy weight, and LUCKY, my favorite part. Or maybe my favorite is it reminds me of Texas, and oh does my heart miss Texas! 🤠

Next was to recover the upper door trim piece for the entrance door. I had found some 'vegan leather' which was essentially a brown piece of fabric that had wrinkle lines faded into it. Almost like crushed velvet without the fuzz feel. I found a neat little metal decoration that brought together the country feel, and would help me attach the piece to the wall. 

Looks pretty good hanging up!

Now on to the kitchen backsplash. The company that sold me the samples told me they were unable to break the packs of big pieces they sold in sets of five to sell me one larger piece, and if I needed more samples, although they didn't endorse them to be used as wall tiling, they would be able to sell me more. So I purchased 9 more for a total of 12 to ensure I had enough to finish what I needed to do. I cut the pieces to fit and taped them in place with painter's tape to make sure they matched correctly before the final adhesion. 

They looked great!

After that was all done, I worked on putting the iron decorations at the top of the sliding doors now that the staining was finished. 

Unfortunately I didn't order enough to do all three doors, not sure why I was adding incorrectly, but I only ordered 8 instead of 12. At least I got two doors done. 

I think they look pretty darn good. The next thing I worked on was putting hinges and doorknobs on the closet and bathroom doors. Smokey was my supervisor. He's older and has one bum eye now, but he does well with keeping us in line and following us around the yard to check on what we're doing.

While I was busy working inside the camper, DH was working on other priorities. My dad had found a tractor online that he felt was a good deal, so he and DH went and picked it up from southern Alabama. 

It's a 1965 Ford, beautiful paint and patina, but it needed a motor rebuild. Both DH and my dad are avid mechanics, so this wouldn't be a big deal.

The next few days I was at work, but DH worked inside the camper reinstalling doors and putting in lights. 

He did a fantastic job, until he got carried away and started putting lights where I didn't want them to go. 🙄

Once I was off work again, the first thing I wanted to take care of was washing, detailing, clay bar-ing, and hand waxing my car. I also wanted to do a headlight restoration as well. That took up 90% of my first day off of the week, but I was sure glad to do it and my 'hot rod' shone like a new penny when I was finally done. 

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Sunday was finally wallpaper day. Mom came over to help me because I have never done wallpaper a day in my life. I can paint, tile, somewhat do flooring, trim work, some plumbing, electrical, you name it; but I've never wallpapered. I tried cutting it and taping it into place to see how it looked, but that was kind of a goof up on my part because we didn't need to do that. 

Mom came over, popped the wallpaper paste open, and went to town plastering it on the walls and smoothing paper down. 

It wasn't too long before we had the whole living room slide done. I was mainly the 'go-fer', but I tried to be helpful. Once we were done, I turned on the lights, hung up the paddle I had found on marketplace, and got a good picture of the finished work. 

The next weekend, Pootie helped me hang wallpaper in the tiny toilet room and in the bedroom slide. She was nervous at first but once I showed her she couldn't mess it up, she had a good time with it. I cut it with the razor blade and edged it once she had it set, but we made a good team. 

Sunday I fiddled with hanging up some lights in the bedroom, then finished up the hole in the living room wall where the leak had been. We initially filled the hole with spray foam, then puttied it in with wood putty. I sanded it down, then refilled it, sanded it down again, then did two coats of paint over it. You can't really tell there was a hole there unless you really look hard.

Once that was completed, I worked on hanging the microwave/convection oven up. I was proud of myself for finding this on marketplace, but now that it was time to hang it up, I was a bit skeptical that the wall and the shelf I bought would support it. Judging by how I had to heft it when I lifted it up, it probably weighed close to 25lbs. (after checking the website, the microwave weighs 35.9lbs!)

I was able to screw a heavy duty set of anchors into the wall of the slide, and the left side anchors hit pay dirt when they drilled into the aluminum frame. I tried to set the microwave on the rack, however it sagged badly on the right side and I was afraid to let the full weight pull on the brackets. I removed the microwave, set it down, and thought about how to fix it. 

The first thing that came to mind was putting a screw through the front of the bracket to brace it, however that wouldn't work because the refrigerator was on the other side of the thin piece of wood next to the potential drill hole. 

I thought maybe using the countertop would be better, so I asked DH to cut me a piece of leftover trim wood and brace it up under the microwave shelf, that way it looks like it's supposed to be there AND we get the benefit of having support under that heavy thing. 

It didn't turn out too bad! DH says 'this kitchen looks pretty high end now.' 😂

DH took the piece of trim wood and split it to make three smaller pieces, then used two of those to finish out the trim around the entrance/exit door. 

When he was finished with that, I hung up the main picture that started it all. 

I got trigger-happy with the drill, so I found the magazine rack/toilet paper holder combo for the bathroom and hung that up in the toilet room.

Once I was done, I got the green paint out and did a few touchups here and there, then did the white, then the light camel color. Lastly, I realized the ceiling in the bedroom slide didn't get painted, but I'd have to work on that tomorrow because it was way too dark. 

The next day, when I wandered outside, I was not happy to find the new can of green paint did not match the original can of green paint. Alas, I find this out AFTER I've used it to touch up so now I have dalmatian spots all over the camper. 

The old paint can lid was destroyed from sitting outside, and out of ALL the things I didn't take a picture of, that was one of them. 😤

I knew I would have to go back to Ace to get a new can of paint, so I set up my work for the day-sanding cabinet doors and drawers. 

I got those all sanded down, then scooped DH up to go with me to pick up supplies. I brought the original paint can with me as well as an un-touched-up cabinet door to have color matched. 

We picked up a gallon of color matched green paint, some cheap brushes for stain, and a few other odds and ends for the projects of the day, then headed over to the RV store to find the hatch door catches because DH broke a dry-rotted one. 

We got back home and I started working on staining the pieces I had sanded. With the proper brush, the stain went on much lighter and to be honest, looked a lot like what they had looked like before I had sanded them. 🙄

First coat vs second coat!

I let those start drying and found stands for the cabinet doors. Once those were coated, I moved along to help DH replace the screen on the front door of the camper. I washed the screen door with Dawn dish soap and a scrub brush to get rid of the built up dust on it from use.

The previous one had a rip in it from normal use, but I would really like to be able to open the door without having the mosquitoes come in from outside, so we bummed some leftover screening and the channel tool from my dad. It took us about 15 minutes to cut the screen, stretch it, and roll it back into place. 

I put the final coat of stain on the drawers and doors, finishing up just as it started to sprinkle. We moved the cabinet doors quickly into the shop and I smoothed out the water droplets that had landed on the wet stain. 

Now that those were done, it was time to CLEAN the entire RV from top to bottom so we could move in. I filled a gallon ice cream bucket with water, a bit of lemon Fabuloso, a microfiber cloth, a scrub brush, and a toothbrush and headed back to the camper. 

I asked DH to turn the water on to the camper so I would have water to rinse with, however when he turned the water on, the water line going to the bathroom sink faucet started leaking, so he had to work on that. 

Meanwhile, I went to scrubbing paint splatters off the floor, starting with the front bedroom closet. I wiped cabinets, countertops, every roller on every drawer, outlets, under the bathroom sink, around the toilet, the toilet itself, took the toilet seat off and washed it at the hose outside along with the bucket and rag/brushes, refilled my water and cleaner and came back to scrub the base of the shower outside with the rag and the toothbrush until all the dust and grime was gone. The paint at the bathroom and closet doors was an SOB to get up, mainly because instead of simply paint drops, it was paint that had gotten stepped in and tracked so it was thinner and adhered better to the wood flooring. 

After scrubbing my literal fingertip skin off of my right hand, I sprayed Mop and Glow on the floor, then wiped over it with a clean, damp mop. It looks fantastic.

Doesn't even look like the same RV. To refresh your memory, these are the before photos.

It can't be all beauty though, and the perfectly cropped photos for social media are only part of it. Here's the view looking out from upstairs at the mess I still have to take care of. 

That being said, I was back at work today. I decided to spend some time online looking for curtains, but I always feel like Jim Carrey's Grinch looking at patterns and colors and thinking about how they would look with my scheme.

I was shocked to find Shein has curtains, so I piffered around on there for a bit....until I saw it. 

The perfect fit.

I have leather accents, deer, hunting dogs, ducks, Texas horseshoes, stars, weathered wood borders and trim, and apparently the color palette I chose is similar to one called 'Peacock Copper.' 

I wanted something country but not cheesy, timeless, backwoods but not bumpkin, classy but casual, something that would make you think of fields and wildlife. 

Sunflowers.

It was perfect. The brown with the sunflowers and green just nailed it, it made sense. I found a pattern I loved and ordered enough to do the whole RV. 

So now you're caught up to where I am. A lot has happened and changed in 22 days since I last blogged. I will try to do better about keeping up with the goings on, but I will say we will be completely done and moved our things in by next week. I have a four day weekend and will be spending most of that cleaning flooring, wiping down counters, moving construction supplies out, and moving furniture IN. 

It's all coming together! 💗