A small update

After a few weeks of working in thousand degree workshop over at Line-X of Plano, the beast got a facelift.

Maybe because of the time spent in New Mexico, but I decided to go for a Desert Tan color. This is the spray on truck bed-liner by Line-X. I'm hoping this will accomplish a few things. Namely: to be cooler in the sun, waterproof the roof for a long time, make the whole vehicle scratch resistant and easy to clean, and finally to add a bit of insulation to the entire vehicle. Oh, and also to blend into the sand dunes and deserts of the U.S.

In the next few days I'll be redoing the solar on top as well, building new railing systems and rewiring some of it. Trying to put as few as possible new holes in my roof covering with the new configuration.

All for now!  Thoughts?

Bamboozled

A quick sneak peak at what we've been up to with the Beast.

Ripped out the carpet and foam.

Built my own saw table

My table allowed me to slide boards in and out and remain secure,
so I could use the circular saw with good precision.

Roughed in flooring, still needs glue and trim.

Dinette area. Wire still needs managing.

Solar Preparations

With the temperatures cooperating for the first time in 6 months, I crawled on top of the Beast with 10 sheets of Styrofoam that are cut very close to the sizes of the 10 solar panels I bought.  They were also conveniently in the solar panel boxes sent to cushion them for shipping.

Until now I only had a rough idea of where I was putting the 10 panels, I was pretty sure there was space, I just wasn't sure what all would be on the chopping block to make room for them.

So I have my before picture of the very cluttered roof:

Cluttered Dirty Rooftop

After placing my solar mock-ups around, I ended up with this series of looks..

7 Panels, bye bye to the HD Antenna and the wind cover for the fan.

As I suspected, the Solar Dish is a goner. Middle 2 panels.

Final Panel in the back corner.

Moving Along

As our latest progress has been slow, we are definitely still moving but the pace is almost unnoticeable. The faucets are still half installed since Lee hurt his back in a hockey game (no penalties for the assaulter either, shame on refs!). He is hopping around but sounds like me when he tries to get up from the bed. So the progress inside the RV has been MIA but we have done some shopping for the things we are going to be taking for the road.

We purchased a new Oxygenics shower head, still have to get another part for it to make using it a bit more water conservative and user friendlier. We are excited about it and we believe it will make a big difference to have a well functioning shower. We got the brushed nickel one, which is a little bit more expensive but will be more durable in the long run. I believe the price tag on it was just short of $45 and we think the shipping was free from Amazon. I also want to get a long hose for the shower head, since that will be the only place where I can wash the dogs and they generally don't care for standing in a shower, never understood why ;o)

The next thing we bought was a wire fence. We actually bought 3 sets of play pens but you can connect them together to form a fence. This is so the dogs can move around a little bit without having to be leashed all the time. The plan is to use them outside the RV like actual fence. We still need to get something to block the dogs from being able to go under the RV so we need to also buy fencing that is not as high, chicken wire would do if everything else fails. The fence is needed for the youngsters, Nelli is a good girl and stays by our side where ever we go but the two little Greyhounds can't be trusted. Louie would probably be fine and follow us but Pixie would just take off and keep going until she would end up being a dinner for a coyote. This is a Greyhound thing, they are goofy and can not be trusted with open doors or gates. Now they have room to go in an out of the RV without being leashed. Yay! I am sure it will get tiring to set it up and pull down and store while we are on the road but it definitely will be better than the alternative. The fence (that's what I call it, since that is how we are going to be using it) happened to be on 40% sale at Petco when I searched for it. I kept comparing and looking at different options but these seemed good quality and cheaper with the sale price than anywhere else. So I decided to go to see if we had them in our local store... until I realized that it was almost midnight, and it was the last day of the sale. So I had about 3 minutes to finish my order or pay about $150 more after the sale. I did not want to have to pay more, so I panicked and ordered them and ended up paying with the taxes and free shipping $188.32. It was pricey but could have been much worse. The normal price for one set was $99.99, we ordered three of them. Sale price was $57.99 per unit and the sales tax was about $15. Deal, I think! Now we just really hope they will work for us the way we visioned.

This is just one of the three play pens that we purchased, we had to get the
48" tall ones to prevent these greyhounds from hopping over it,
 now we just hope they won't.
Pixie seems to think she is held captive against her will: "Help!"

We also were able to put a check mark in front of the Zero Gravity chairs on our to buy list. I am so excited, I love those chairs, I feel like getting rid of our couches and just chill out on our chairs all day long. I was a little bit skeptic if they would be as good as reviews were or if I got the right ones since it sounded that the radius they moved was not very much. The radius is more than needed. Me happy! I received my chairs just a couple days after ordering them from the Overstock, fast, I am telling you! The chairs were around $90 for a pair, depending on color, we wanted the tan ones so they will not be absorbing too much heat in the sun and two chairs were $91.99. I also got off 10% in coupon savings for being their customer for the first time, that took away $9.20 and shipping was free. So I got my two chairs for $82.79. I thought that was a great deal.

I also purchased couple sets of king size sheets for our RV. One of the sets was 1600 TC and the other one was 1800 TC, both Egyptian cotton. The shipping was $2 and the sets themselves cost $29 a piece. I ordered them from www.nomorerack.com. I have never seen so high thread count sheets for that cheap. Can't believe my luck. I hope the quality is as good as I would assume for that kind of thread count. That's it for now for shopping.

We have tossed around the options of different flooring. We really would like to go with hardwood, but since we have these crazy critters that do all kinds of crazy stuff 24/7, we are starting to lean towards the vinyl flooring. They make really nice wood looking planks that are 100% water proof and looks like also idiot proof on installation, which will hopefully benefit us. So far we are waiting on Lee's back feeling better and his work to be over with, then we are going to switch the gear and go full speed ahead with everything.

                                 

Silence of the Lambs

Yes, we have been sheepishly quiet, there has not been much to report lately but we are hoping that this will be changing soon. The exciting news is that the last time we took our rig out for a holiday with the family; one of the critters managed to pee in it without us noticing (the ugly carpet hides stuff well, I guess it is good and bad... in this case, very bad) and we were sure there is some sort of leak in a black tank, that's how bad it smelled. Appears that we will be changing the flooring sooner than later, while it has been standing without any use for weeks, it has started to stink. No good! So bye bye carpet, we are not sad to see you go! But we are sad to have to do the work to get it changed.

I think it is one of these two who peed on the carpet... 

We had some resilient cold fronts here that seemed to make the winter last longer than usual, and we hadn't really winter proofed anything in the RV and it seems that we have sprung some leaks in there. Both faucets, the one in the kitchen and the one in bathroom are leaking and we were so glad we had to buy new ones to replace them.  You will not believe the rig was made in 2002, it looks like from the Dynasty, everything is black and white and on top of that (like a cherry on the ice cream) the fine golden faucets and other hardware in the bathroom. Scary if you ask me. But at least the most obvious eyesores will be now replaced.

Today we did some shopping, the new water fixtures, some plumber's tape and a Payday candy bar to keep us alive until our Monday tradition (Indian buffet with our good friend). The faucets are stinking expensive, and we suffered $200 plus taxes. We also filled up the propane tank in our Beastie and did our first dump ever. It was exciting. I was just expecting a scene from the movie RV rolling in front of our eyes but our excitement was short lived and nothing happened. It wasn't even as stinky as I thought it would be. I think it was stinkier inside the rig. We also bought a new black water tank hose with some gloves and that brought us to spend another $140 and then some at the RV place. We were eyeballing the LED light bulbs, new shower head and new latches, but didn't want to spend more today, partially cause we didn't find exactly what we wanted and $350 in one day is enough, gotta do some working in between shopping sprees. We will be back to upgrade the light bulbs, shower head and the latches on our cabinets.