Saturday, January 2, 2016

The wheels on the Gertrude go round and round....

So our wheels have been turning a bit here lately. Less than I'd honestly prefer, but a bit. We spent November near San Antonio, TX, Christmas around Waco, TX, and now we're back in NE Texas for a bit. We still haven't left the state in Gertrude3, but it IS a big state. hehe

We have done more decluttering and organizing in our travels as well. We have even done some pretty major remodeling.




Remodeling: We took out the old wood flooring and found that a portion of our subfloor was mush from years of water damage (a leak that was fixed with a couple new rubber washers). So we took out the damaged subfloor, cut off the bottoms of supporting board that we nearly all black from water damage, replaced the OSB with plywood and fixed the supporting boards. We also removed damaged panels from outside the bathroom and replaced them. We installed new vinyl panels inside the bathroom and installed a new "super pooper" in our "throne room" as well.  The above pictures show the flooring and new stained panels and the new bathroom.





Decrapifying: We removed all the tools from our tool compartment underneath and installed a drawer system to house them all. We kept one nicer toolbox, that hold certain telecom related tools and my Dremel and attachments. This is now homed in a different compartment. We ditched the tent with the broken pole (elastic was broken and missing in one of the poles year ago). We cleared out some other items that were rather bulky and rarely, if ever, used. We went through our chairs and such (kept our best 4 chairs) and installed another shelving system in that compartment to better organize that area. We purchased a hitch-mount bike rack for the car and moved the bike to their new home on the back of the car. We can now hang our large lounging chair on the ladder rack. We shed a laundry basket and several cleaning supplies that we haven't used and likely would never use. We went through our extra spices and reduced those, as well. The above pictures are of the shelving unit for the tools and the drawers. The bottom picture is what we used for the chair compartment, we cut some of the pvc pipe and made it better suit our size needs, then used two shelves to divide the area as needed. We also used one of the shelves under the tool storage drawers to raise it a couple of inches so we could easier access the bottom drawers of the tool storage area.



We have found that we are really enjoying sizing things down so that our storage areas are used more efficiently. Every home has its projects to work on, whether it is a stationary sticks & bricks home, or a home with wheels on it. So we aren't bothered by the things we have had to tackle. I haven't been able to get around to doing much more painting on the outside, but that requires certain weather conditions to work in my favor. I take a lot of pride in the things we have done throughout our new home on wheels. There is a wonderful sense of joy that comes with knowing that you and your family did the work to make it what it is currently. All four of us (we worked while my son was home on leave) put in the blood, sweat, and tears to do the remodeling work that needed to be done. We finished it in a matter of 3-4 days. It was no small task, but we pulled together and worked some 14-16 hour days to make it happen. Our Gertrude may a have some age to her, but over time, she'll be better than new. I'm excited to see the improvements that are yet to come for her.

Safe travels, friends!