More overhead issues

**First of all, my thoughts & prayers go out to those in the path of tornadoes right now. Such destruction & sad to see lives lost. It seems early for these to be appearing? Am I wrong on that? My heart goes out to everyone effected by this. I just wish they'd go away. Forever. **

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Overhead issues -- sigh

I got my RV back on 3-01-12  -- Thursday. Around 11ish am. I found a gas station in that area for around $3.49 a gallon, so I filled the RV up as I know gas is only going to continue to rise again for awhile. ouch, that hurt. Around $135 worth. Was approached by a homeless man that wanted money & a salesman that wanted money while I was pumping gas. I was glad to get out of that side of town!

I am happy with some of the work they did & not happy with something that I think will be a serious issue in the not too distant future.

Things I'm happy with: the overhead bed area is sound & solid. I no longer fear falling through! They also rebuild an interior wall, which I wasn't expecting, so that was nice. They resecured all the padding around the cockpit area where it sustained some water damage as well. A good thing. They asked me if I wanted to replace it, but I said no, it was fine the way it is & I would clean it up myself.

The magic eraser is up there with one of the best inventions. 

Ever!

And they replaced all the cosmetic plastic stripping all along the roof line, which I was not expecting as well. So that was a really nice perk! I was expecting to do that on my own..eventually. It was old, shrinking, seperating & some must have simply broke off & left the building with Elvis. So wow, they put up new stuff - that makes me happy.

I'll get into what the issue is at the end of this blog.

I also labeled my photos for personal tracking records.

The first thing I did when I got the RV back home was turned on the generator & ran it for a few hours. I really was only thinking I'd run it for an hour on a full load to give it exercise, but it was warm that day & I was able to use my a/c on in full blast mode with the genny running. I needed that as I was preparing the overhead bed area again.

I washed the bunk area & surrounding walls with Mr Clean. (he's my friend too, but he's like a bad husband. I still had to do the manual labor while he just sat around in a bucket of water -- some friends are like that y'know)

Then came the hard work. Restuffing the cushions with the foam inserts! It was more labor intensive than I realized it would be (& to think I thought at one point I thought I could maybe rebuild the overhead myself when now I consider stuffing cushions labor intensive?). When I took the foam out of the cushions to wash the cushions & save them from the overhead flooding, they were covered in plastic! Wow, what a great idea & that really did aid in helping to keep those cushions from being destroyed from the water damages. Whew! So I opted to buy more plastic & recover first. That huge foam mold was NOT easy to do! First of all, it was too windy outside to attempt doing it out there. Space inside of a 22' motor home is limiting. So I put it on the overhead bunk & did my best...or really, did what I had to as it was a balancing act. I managed to get the plastic all taped onto the foam, then by a miracle & gritting of teeth (anyone know of a good dentist?), I got the job done!

Plastico!

Gee, it says frustration free. I didn't see that till now. Perhaps I should put some in my pocket for good luck for future events?

Yes, the cushion has arms. Those arms are what caused me so much work trying to stuff into their sleeves on the covering! They have muscles. They fought me every micro inch along the way.

Plastic taped on in a sad way, but who cares at this point. Now to stuff into cover. Fortunately, those covers washed up nicely & dried in the sun very well. They still look like new :-)

Viola - doners!! Yay! (bad photo, but you get the idea - and look how nice that bunk area looks!)

Ahhh, bed sweet bed! Ahhh, bed sweet bed! Ahhh, bed sweet bed! I can say that 3 times! :-)

And amazingly, I followed each step & didn't make a booboo this time. Anyone that sleeps in the bunk area & has made their bed there knows what I mean. I put a sheet over the cushions. Then put up the memory foam bed on top of the cushions & put a fitted sheet over that, then my flat sheet, then the rest of the bedding. BUT sometimes you make the bed up alllll nice & comfy to notice you forgot to put a sheet somewhere! So this time, it went right. Oh & you only make your bed once a year because it's such a pia otherwise (OK, not really, you make it up twice a year - heehee) 

The curtains aren't hung yet. I am going to make new curtains instead. I still have the curtains that close off that area that I want to rewash before hanging. But all the window curtains will be new. I do not like the cleated curtains or the cleated strip they have to slide over. They did save those for me & asked me where the curtains were so they could assemble all that, but I said  not to worry, I'd take care of that. So I have the curtain strips that I think I'll dispose of, or give away if anyone needs them. I think I'll just go with rods & make new curtains that simply slide over the rods. No more cleats to break that way! I put the reflectix back up over the big window for privacy & a sun barrier.

Unfortunately, with all that work, I thought I'd sleep like a baby. No, that didn't not happen. I tossed & turned all night in a very sleepless night. I was disturbed. Why? I will show you.

What it looked like when I paid for it a week ago on 2-25-2011. Looks pretty good, right? (other than the clean up that I need to do to take off old duck poop along edging. Ok, duct tape debris.

Well here is what it looked like when I picked it up! Oh no. What happened?? Why is the laminate buckling & it is popped at the top section! I mentioned it to one of the guys there. His way of fixing it was to put another layer of caulk over it! Now we all know that this kind of fix it will NOT last long!! So, the owner was gone, I needed to bring Ellie home as I needed my house back. I was so upset that I could not sleep. At all. Just tossed & turned all night long in my new rebuild bunk area. Yesterday was a day of doc appointments & unfortunately, I needed to get the rest of my stuff out of my friends house. Then she decided to bomb the house & kennel for fleas. We're having a flea explosion right now. So that meant that I had to bathe my dogs & get them back into the RV! Which took me hours. But I'm glad to have them back out with me, all nice & clean again. But the RV looks like a mess bomb exploded inside of it now. I'm in too much pain today to do much about it. So I'm sitting here in one section that I cleared for sitting to blog in. I bought rubber roof stuff yesterday to reseal my roof too, but am in too much pain to do that today too. It can wait till tomorrow.

I let myself get way too upset when I picked the RV up in it's current condition. I decided that I will address it on Monday with a phone call & see if I could email him the photos of what I'm talking about. But for now, I just needed to mentally detox & get the RV back in shape. He told me that if there were any issues to give him a call, that they stand by their work. However, how this was missed by me on the 25th is beyond me!! It was there. Staring right out at me & I didn't see it that day!

Do you see the problem? :-(

So I hope they can make good on these problems. I don't know if I'll have to leave the RV or if I can show up & they can reseal it all down while I stay there. I hope the latter. It's a part of town that I don't want to go often too & it's in a part of town that is hell in traffic to get to for me. So I hope I can stay there while it's resealed back down. I hope it's not going to be a difficult fix. :-(((

~As always, be kind to your pets, clean up after them on your travels & respect your neighbor~