New season

Over the winter we had to say good bye to our beautiful Maya who loved to travel in the Galavans.

She will always be missed.

 We Picked up the Galavan on Saturday from it winter storage Jerome and Oscar drove it home and Karin and Frankie followed. While it was there our good friend Dave fixed some issues, the hydraulics, furnace, and water heater, and installed two new vent fans for us.

The fans will help us keep the Galavan cool for the dogs and exhaust the bathroom a lot better and quieter.

We also need to introduce the newest Galavan dog Frances or Frankie for short.

She is a Beagle Dachshund cross who in these photos is 9 weeks old, She seem to like the Galavan hopefully she is as good of a traveler as Maya was and Oscar is.

We still have many renovations to finish this year and hopefully many trips so stay tuned for updates.

Main cabin almost done.

Oh Boy it has been a busy week.
I managed to get the drivers side painted, to do that I had to remove the couch on doing so I found that the supports for the back were just that white strapping that they use on boxes and it had disintegrated. I replaced it with nylon rope but forgot to take pictures but I did get some pretty good cuts to my hands.
On Saturday I finished up some small jobs and cleaned up all of my tools and started to put things where they will belong as we had to do our first long trip. (driving from the dealer home does not count)
We got up early Sunday and I turned The Galavan around I took out a clearance light on the side as I am really not use to being in such a high and loooong vehicle.

We head out to Kirkfeild to our friend Dave's house as he got us a great deal on a fridge.

Our first precious passenger ;)

Hooking the IPad up to the stereo much nicer than trying to find stations as you drive

every thing battened down for the trip.

On The Road Again...

After an uneventful trip to Kirkfeild we arrived at Dave's house and he and Terry got to work removing the old fridge.

Karin and the old Fridge

The Ugly hole.

 I really have to thank Dave and Terry as they worked very hard getting the new fridge to fit, they tried putting in place and tweaking the existing hole about 7-8 times before they got it to fit well.

Success!!!

Dave hooked up the gas and tested it everything is OK now

 Thanks so much Dave

We left Dave's and headed home when we were almost home I tried the 400 hwy as the traffic was not too bad and I wanted to see how The Galavan would do. I got it up to 120 Km and it was fine, actually better than expected, I would not want to drive like that for any extended time but it was nice to know  could if I needed to.

After a quick bite of lunch it was back to work. Karin finished the curtains and I bent up some sheet metal to fill the gap as the new fridge is a little shorter.

I will be adding a spice rack just above the fridge to fill the void in the front.

So the next couple of days will be busy I need to finish the dinette and get it installed, take The Galavan for an oil change and get ready for our first weekend trip next weekend.

Working on the main cabin

With the Bathroom done I have started on the main cabin.
Here is what it looked like, Lots of fluffy valances and velour cabinet ends and inserts.

I started by stripping out the valances and cabinet ends.

New plywood ends on the cabinets.

Old cabinet ends and beautiful wall paper.

I got a little carried away removing things to make it easier to paint.

We are going to cut down the dinette benches to give us a bit more room in the kitchen and really most of the time it will be just Karin and I, if we need more seating we have a fold-up stool.
Painting is done on the passenger side.

All the cream coloured vents got a fresh coat of white to match the ceiling.

Cleaned the carpet as that project will have to wait till next years budget.

great fade marks

Installed the TV above the door with all the wires hidden behind the cork panel.

I still have to paint the doors for the cabinets and rebuild the insides so all the wires are hidden again so I guess that is it for today.

And the Reno's contuniue.

I have made some more progress with the reno's on the Galavan in between painting and laying a new floor in the room Coady is using and my job search.

The bathroom is almost finished I just have some trim and paint touch ups to do.

I painted the counter top and cabinet door still needs to be installed.

Removed the carpet and new floor.

New towel rack a novel concept in a bathroom

I noticed that one of the stairs was "soft" under further investigation I found that the hinge that held the back was destroyed, as the stair is the access for the storage compartment under the stair it does need a hinge. I rebuilt the stairs with side supports so the back hinge is not supporting so much weight.

the offending hinge

Why they use carpeting in RV's is beyond me.

 Here are the new stairs.

The Cork underlay will be covered with the same flooring as the bathroom.

I also installed the batteries and inverter so we have power when not plugged in.

unfortunately in testing the system i have found out that we need a new fridge :(

There was also a multitude of other small maintenance issues that have been fixed along the way.

Starting renos on the "new" Motor Home

Well Spring is finally here in the Great white north, so time to start working on the motor home.

The first room to tackle is the bath room.
I need to appoligise first for a lack of before photos of the bathroom I thought I had some.

I started by removing all the cabinetry and toilet from the bathroom.

And the switches and plugs and light fixtures.

Everything got a coat of Zinsser 123 primer which covers the vinyl wall paper very well as trying to remove it is imposable. The walls were painted with a beautiful blue and the trim is getting a shade of white paint.

I also started to paint the front part of the main cabin, the walls will be this green and the cabinets will be the same white as the trim in the bathroom.

You can see one of the cabinets has been painted already.

While working on the bathroom I found water in between the skylight domes above the shower, so up to the roof. I pulled off the outside dome as the caulking was in bad shape and came off easily. I was lucky as the two domes were just put together with what looked like double sided tape so a little work with a puddy knife and they were apart. I also removed the inner dome from the EPDM roof which was harder put some work with the puddy knife and my fingers separated the two. I cleaned both domes and applied Eternabond gasket to the bottom of both and reinstalled with a covering eternabond tape so we should be good for awhile to come hopefully.