Twisp of Fate

We are leaving next week on the “maiden voyage” to southern Oregon for a family wedding and camping along the way.  I thought I would show our progress to date on the Airstream upgrades and refurbishments.  The windows are mostly cleaned up, the screens are back in with new “fuzzy bug seal” around the slots where the window opening arms penetrate.  The new Marmoleum floor is beautiful, as are the new drapes and re-upholstered cushions.

This picture pretty much shows all the new furnishings.  The drapes were a bit of a chore to install, as she makes them a tight fit top to bottom in anticipation of some future stretching.  That’s the old arm of the sofa on the left – Rick had in it there to take measurements.  He is going to re-do them with cherry ply and solid cherry arms.  The top lifts off to reveal some plastic storage trays underneath.

front lounge/bed

I spent several hours out there a couple of days ago, cleaning up the kitchen.  The stovetop was rusty and dirty.  You know there has been a problem when you find D-Con and seed pods under the burners.  Now it as cleaned up as I could get it, and sanitary!  Rick will need to pull out this cabinet to re-do the tambour doors next year.  For now we will just have to use it as it is.  That’s one of my handwoven rag rugs on the floor – corduroy and gray denim from jeans.

kitchen – clean but not re-done

The twin bunks:

The bathroom:

Looking back towards the kitchen and front lounge from the bathroom door:

We also got the water hook-up and gray water drain figured out, and the hot water heater going, so I could use the kitchen sink for my cleaning – instead of hauling buckets from the house.  We are so new at all of these modern conveniences in a trailer that we have to figure every thing out.  Yesterday I turned on the 40-year-old refrigerator (on electricity. still have to test out the propane mode).  By golly, it works great!  Holds a steady temperature in the correct range, and makes ice cubes that stay frozen.  It came with 3 cute little ice cube trays, the aluminum kind with a lever you pull to pop out the ice.

But, we managed to SHUT OURSELVES OUT of the trailer last night.  The screen door had been missing its slide bolt, and Rick got one that worked from Builders’ Hardware last week.  So the last couple of days we have left the main door open but the screen door closed and secured shut during the day.  Last night he closed the main door before coming in from the shop for the night.  Well it turns out that the 2 doors clicked together but the screen door was still bolted from the inside.  So we couldn’t get the door open!  He tried taking the hinges off, but there is one screw that won’t come out, probably for security reasons.  Fortunately we had left the window beside the door open – but you can only remove the screen from the inside of the trailer.  So we had to cut a large enough opening around the edge of the screen so he could reach in and un-bolt the screen door.  Sheesh.