Coming Together
22 January 2019 | Washington, NC
Heather
We continue to work on fitting out the interior of our overland RV. I was saying to Jon that this feels like so much more work than fitting out Evergreen to go cruising for all of our cruises combined and he reminded me that we didn't build our boat, we just added a bunch of gear! We're building this thing ourselves. Oh YEAH, that would be the reason. It has its ups & downs. I feel antsy to get moving again to see & experience new things. But we now have a beautifully designed, strong bed platform in place, the surround for the washing machine, the base for the headboard cabinet and the maple facing done. The bed has 22 varnished slats for air circulation under the mattress. I still have to paint the frame. The area under the bed is the gear storage area for things like bikes, dive gear & backpacking stuff. The only other thing we have to put back there other than that is the hot water heater, which is 6 gallons so shouldn't take up too much space. Jon is working on building the shelf for that now. The pantry is pretty much done except for a couple more coats of varnish; the door for it Jon will make later and the fridge will be mounted there as well. It is the main storage spot for food and looks like it will be adequate. The outside framework for the kitchen counter is done, we are just waiting for the stove & countertop to arrive. See below. Because the walls of the RV are fiberglass composite, everything has to be bonded to it with adhesive which requires several steps to prepare the surface and careful planning to position the mounts accordingly. Plus Jon is trying to make everything very tight and reinforced for strength, so there are a lot of cuts and fittings for each thing we bond. The whole RV box feels much more solid as the main bulkheads have gone in as well as the reinforcement with the cabinetry. The interior is filling up! But it still feels big inside to us.
We've had a real time with shipping lately. We were excited to receive the stove but then it arrived so damaged in shipping that it was unusable and went right back in the box to be shipped back. Its no wonder as it was ridiculously packaged. We've since ordered another one and hope it was handled more gently. Then a package of sink mounting clips arrived from Amazon that was just the empty envelope- no clips inside and nothing else for that matter. Then the solid surface countertop arrived, again poorly packaged, but it had a 14 in crack for the full thickness of the material along with chips on each corner so another whole piece is coming again- hope this one gets here in one piece- literally! Then another box came with the A/C surround in it but the box was open on one end. Even my watch repair went to the wrong address despite lots of communication about where to send it. I'm hoping this is just a bad patch!
All of this detailed woodwork has made me start really studying and appreciating even more than I already do the incredible workmanship that is in our boat. The woodwork is beautiful and so skillfully done. Not many things are made like this anymore. I still haven't managed to gain that kind of skill with varnish either. We're working on replacing the sail track on the boat and getting organized to make a new dodger. The marina we're at has a great workspace for us to do it.
In our spare time Jon is still working some on our cruising website VentureFarther.com. It now has 2,270 members, is self-supporting with subscriptions and grows by the day with a worldwide reach. Someone entered a marker today for Sri Lanka. 71 countries are represented which is pretty cool. And the satellite charts are valuable for poorly charted areas. Jon needs a lot more time to program & me to enter markers...... but not much place to fit that in these days.
I've kind of lost my photo storage because the terms of Flickr changed. I haven't made a decision on whether to subscribe to anything else yet because we have a site for the RV world trip set aside- VermonsterRV.com-, it just needs to be built out. So I guess less pics for now.
We've gotten to know this area of Eastern N. Carolina a little more. It has a quietness that we like and people are friendly. The landscape doesn't knock our socks off like other places but at the same time it isn't too built up and the river is pretty. There are hawks that fly over the cornfield next to the workshop all day and once again its quiet back there and we can do our own thing. The workshop is 3 miles from downtown Greenville, a college town and we went in there yesterday to walk on a greenway path (we took the morning off from working on the truck!) that runs through the city. It was really nice.
We have definitely noticed that this area has a custom of driving around with no lights on until well after dusk. Its not by accident, its a thing. For some reason we' will surely never understand. But we do know that if we ever decide that we want a brick trailer, there would be plenty of opportunity to get one here.