Is it November already?

Ok, so I haven’t updated in a while, a long while, a really long while. What can I say? Not much to report. But here’s what I have:

The house (Renovation)

Still working at it, the living, dining, and family rooms are totally complete.

All the doors are finished except the front door which I’ll do this weekend. Then I can tear down the paint booth and get a big chunk of my garage back! All the baseboards are installed and painted so no more crawling around on the floors at least for a while.

I also got all of the electrical outlets changed out and most of the wall switches. Still a couple to go but they’re easy. It sure looks a WHOLE lot nicer having all that beige, bone, ivory, etc. gone. Now it’s all about wall colors contrasting against super white baseboards, doors, door casings, and wall plates. Really makes the wall color and the wood flooring pop.

I still have a fairly long punch list of things to go back and touch up, fix, install, etc. Probably the biggest is to finish the hall bathroom. It still doesn’t have a vanity top, sink, or shower doors. So that’s right at the top of the list.

The kitchen is next. Ugh, the kitchen is next. Somehow I’m really not looking forward to tackling this one. It will be the largest mess yet and will cost the most money. I won’t officially start it until late March as I need to save up so that I can do all the purchasing in one shot. I can’t have the kitchen dragging on for weeks and months. I want to get it started and get it done in one shot. I’m going to take 3 weeks of vacation to devote full time to getting it knocked out. I’ll actually start with some of the smaller parts during the Christmas break. But the big demo and such won’t be until later on.

I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas for cabinets, countertops, and floor tile. I think I’m pretty sure that I want to go with white cabinets and I’ve just recently started looking at those wood grain tiles for flooring. I like the look as it’s different from the traditional tile look and mimics wood flooring pretty well. Have to research it some more.

The countertops are a whole thing all on their own. First decision is material, should it be granite, marble, soapstone, etc? There’s a very long list and the pros & cons versus price will make you go nutty. Then you get to pick out colors. Again, the options go on forever. Aaaagh!! I’m leaning towards exterior grade plywood. It’s cheap, easy to replace, and has lots of character. What do you think? Yes?

Once the kitchen is finished, the interior renovation of the house will be complete. At that point I’ll shift gears and start work on the exterior. Painting, landscaping, pool, etc. are ALL on the list. That will all begin right about the start of spring. It’s funny how the timing worked out like that! It’s almost like I planned it that way! Wait, I did!

The house (emptying)

The family room got a good going over and there’s not much left in that room. The few things that are left will stay until right before the house goes on the market.

Emptying the kitchen in earnest is next. One reason is that the demo isn’t far off and I must have those cabinets totally empty. The other is that I will be setting up a ‘kitchen’ in the dining room and space will be at an extreme premium.

My plan is that I’ll buy an el-cheapo 6 or 8 foot laminate countertop and a couple of lower cabinets to set the counter on. Very much like my workbench setup in the garage. In fact, the setup in the garage will get pitched (it’s seen better days) right before the garage demo and this setup will replace it afterwards.

I’ll clean off the cheap plastic shelving unit in the garage and bring it in to be my pantry/storage (pots/pans/dishes/etc.). I’ll buy one or two of those portable infra-red burners as my stove and a new toaster oven (the old one is dying fast) along with the microwave oven for baking.

I’ll buy two or three of those big moving blankets and plywood to put down on the brand new dining room floor to protect it. I’ll be replacing the sink in the garage (it’s looking pretty bad) and that will be my ‘kitchen’ sink. Should be pretty slick, right? Well we’ll see. I see a lot of takeout pizza in my future.

I think starting with my next update I’m going to put up pictures of stuff that is available to take if you want it. I’m tired of garage sales, the people at Goodwill just roll their eyes when they see me anymore, and the garbage truck is getting a hernia. So I’m thinking that maybe some of you guys might want some of this first rate junk. I’d rather give it away than throw it away.

Fifth Wheel Search

Went to an RV show in Tampa a couple of weekends ago and it was a total bust. I went through the whole thing in like 90 minutes. What a waste of time.

However, I did go by Lazy Days on the way home and it was a major score! They FINALLY got a 293RK in stock! I spent the better part of three or four hours going over it in excruciating detail and took a boatload of pictures. Spending that kind of time with no salespeople or anyone else bugging me was completely awesome! I even spent some time just sitting in it getting a feel of the interior surroundings of what it will be like to live in it. I know that sounds weird, but it actually helped me to get a fairly good idea of what it will be like.

Luckily it was plugged in to full shore power so I got to try out almost all the systems in detail. I even went through the auto-leveling system and leveled the whole unit! Truth be told, it was only one button, but it was still neat.

This would be Jessica's bed should she ever decide to visit. Obviously minus the sheets, pillow, and stuffed animals (Hey! Leave me alone. In my mind she's still that little girl who has a bed full of stuffed animals and always will be)

So this is the outside. The two things I like best about this unit is that there are no slideouts on this side (no banged noggins) and a nice big awning. Most 5'ers have little tiny awnings because of the slideouts. Yes, that whole underneath front area is all storage. Huge.

I’m convinced now more than ever that this is the make/model that I want. I’ll still keep looking and going to RV shows, but I’m pretty set on this unit as my next home. A contender would have to be pretty spectacular to beat this one out for my needs.

Truck

All good stories have to have a dark side to them and here’s this one’s. The truck has served me very well over the years so I shouldn’t complain, but damn. I mean really….. damn.

When it breaks, it really breaks. It decided that it didn’t like the taste of anti-freeze anymore and chose to start vomiting it out in wholesale fashion. Lest you think it was something simple like a hose, or radiator, or water pump, let me kill that hope right now. Oh no, it was painful.

Seems that Ford in all their finite wisdom designed a plastic intake manifold and hot then cold coolant flows through that manifold. Well, after a bunch of years of hot/cold/hot/cold there’s a very good chance that the manifold plastic will warp. Warping tends to create leaks, and those leaks can’t be fixed by a new gasket. No, no, the ENTIRE manifold must be replaced and to do that the ENTIRE top of the engine has to be disassembled.

Anyway, a big bucket of money later and it’s all fixed. But damn.

It did very sharply point out the need for some form of back-up transportation (other than sneakers). Thinking about this a lot and I’ll dive further into this one later on.

In General

So that’s where things are at this particular moment. Still working on the planning of how this whole lifestyle transition is going to work out. I’ve changed it several times and to be honest I still haven’t found a very elegant solution.

After following the Ynab style of budgeting (which I absolutely LOVE) for almost a year now, I simply REFUSE to go into debt anymore. So that’s making it difficult to change my life from a stationary home to a home on wheels. It has become very obvious that I will have to sell the house before I can buy the truck & fifth wheel. Basically, I just want to swap one mode of living for the other. So how to do I do that without taking out a loan or living in the street for a while?

One option is to get an apartment for an extremely short term, but I don’t want the hassle of first/last/security, moving stuff twice, and more cost. That plus the idea of paying rent just doesn’t sit well at all. Unfortunately, this is becoming the best option. I will keep working on this issue.

I’ve also been working on planning for the first few months of travel. I’ve got a rough outline of what the first 3 or 4 months will be. The very rough idea is to head south towards the keys with eventually ending up in Key West. Then I’ll slowly start heading up the west coast of Florida towards the panhandle. At that point I’ll turn left and basically head west following I-10 through Alabama/Mississippi/ Louisiana/Texas.

I’ll actually probably not use I-10 itself very much if at all. I’m thinking of sticking to secondary roads and being open to stopping and looking at most anything that peaks interest. I’m not doing this excursion to make good time, I’m doing it to explore things. If I only make 20 miles in a day, then so be it. I’m in no hurry, especially since there’s no time frame attached to any of this.

Whew! Seems I got a little wordy…