Installed the cabinets in their permanent position recently. 

Also got the doors hung and roughly adjusted as well as topped with 3/4" Baltic Birch. 

Formica will be soon to follow. 

Lighting here is pretty poor, but Cassie thinks she's got the colors "finalized". The floor will be the color on the floor right, and the walls will be the color on the wall left. 

Made a little progress in the bathroom too. Water valves placed and walls covered. 

Shower enclosure is 3/4 complete. I'm having Steve build one additional cabinet to occupy a narrow space at the head of the tub for storage.  Tile selection really hasn't begun yet but will probably be a simple, timeless white rectangle. 

Fitting this shower mixer inside a 1 3/4" wall opening was a challenge. It took some janky redneck engineering to keep the hallway as wide as possible. 

It hurt me to cut another hole in the roof for the bathroom's fart fan. I was trying to find a way to make one penetration for both the bathroom and kitchen vent, but it wasn't possible or recommended by the folks I spoke with about it. Immediately to the left of this vent I will soon be cutting the last hole for the kitchen hood vent. In such a small space, proper exhaust of heat and humidity is critical. 

I've had the pleasure of working on a few projects with my Pop recently. We planted these 5 100 gallon Chinquapin Oaks for a client of his a few weeks ago. 

And with the help of my buddy Ben, we finally got some new plastic on Pop's old greenhouse. It's been on his list for a few years. Hopefully this will bring us all a bit of regular food and start some new young trees for our spartan's final resting place!

Colors

Cassie's been working on color combinations and here's where we're at. Pay no mind to the greens to the sides. The cabinets will get several clear coats (this is one) and that's what the board in the middle represents. We're probably only a few workdays away from priming most of the interior. I have some sanding to finish on the trim before we clean the place up and prep. 

Took an afternoon off from projecting to do some climbing. Here's Louise on her ascent. 

And Mae's running the munter. 

Catching up.......Summer's over?

A few deliveries (and cash withdrawals) hit us right before our summer beach trip.  Our mini-split air conditioner and our cabinets.  Much of the information that I wanted prior to wiring and plumbing this unit was not readily available online. So I had to get the thing in my hands even though it won't be fully connected for a few months. 

The photo on the top is what we'd hoped to end up with according to our plan for a 20" range. Once the cabinets were in place there was little debate about removing a cabinet to gain a 30" range. So the photo on the bottom is what the placement will be once the under cabinet flooring is complete. We lost a good deal of storage, but gained a ton of flexibility for appliance options. And or skillets can go side by side. 

After that, we went to the beach in our other trailer! We stayed at Fort Pickens National park outside Pensacola, FL  for 6 days with our good friends. It was a great decompression time right before school started.

After returning, I was eager to get our new A/C mocked up. 

And mock up turned into.....

Completion! Turning the thing on should be as simple as a few wiring connections and a few compression fittings for coolant. It was nice to finally get to seal up this wall and say that I am DONE with wallboards.

There's been a lot of uncertainty about finish flooring the last several months. We finally decided to use  1/2" baltic birch cabinet grade plywood over the existing 1/2" subfloor.  It comes in 5'x5' sheets, and so we toyed with several length and width options, settling on 15" wide, 60" long planks. They are glued down and nailed around the perimeter with a 1/32" - 1/8" gap between planks.  I got this section complete last night to prepare for cabinet installation soon. The benefit of covering up our new flooring with cabinets is that we get to try out several finishes before it's hidden away forever. We did a few samples of whitewash at different ratios as well as whatever stains I had left over from other projects. No to whitewash. No to any leftover stains.  Looks like it's time for Cassie to get some   PAINT TESTERS!!

Finish Work

Finish work has begun! We decided to go very simple and square with our window trim. Which is handy because I am not a finish carpenter and don't own the tools to even pretend that I am!

These are the kitchen windows and are the only ones with a sill. Cassie likes to have a place to set an avocado to ripen, and I like a place to set my beer. Cabinets are about two weeks out. Even a cabinetmaker deserves a vacation! The spray foam insulation and cabinets are the two jobs I have hired out and it's pretty hard not to be a nag! 

I slapped up a little rigid foam insulation in order to limit the sound transfer through the partition walls. 

Cassie and I went back and forth about tubs. We both like claw foot tubs, but they are a poor match for the trailer.  Most of the options other than cast iron really kind of felt flimsy to us. A used cast iron tub usually has chips and scratches and a new one is not cheap.  Lucky for us, this one was sitting on the porch of a woman's house down the street while the house is being renovated. I dropped a note off in the mailbox, and 18 hours later brought this one home for $100! All of the blemishes visible in this photo are just dirt and old caulk, it's in very good shape. I'm going to wrap it up well in old carpet before carrying it into the bathroom so I don't screw up the finish myself. 

This is a doll table factory. 

"You should never be too busy working to teach your children how to work."

I do my best to repeat this phrase in  my head whenever my kids are "helping" out in the trailer. As they grow older, I want them to remember this time as something we spent together and not a place where Daddy disappeared to. 

Boxing in...

Getting close to done with this task. One section of wall and one partition wall left.

Let the Coffee Flow!

This is 15 sheets of 15/32" plywood ripped onto 6" widths and then sanded and stacked. I hope this is the last time around for this task because it just seems to melt my brain! If my math is worth a hoot, then this should be enough to cover the last bit of wall and ceiling space in the back of the trailer. 

These are the new goal deadlines.....

I think these sheets of paper are the only thing that have kept this project moving. I try to set  realistic goals but have met very few of them! The first two items on the July list should be complete by tomorrow night if the coffee flows long enough. 

Level with the Earth

Yesterday I had the partition wall between the kitchen and bathroom mocked up, and today a built the wall. One of the challenges with this project is that nothing is square, and nothing is level. That's why this picture is so funny to me. I screwed a brace into the frame just to hold things steady while I screwed the studs to the sill. I wasn't trying to make it level, it just ended up that way. And I didn't set the level on to the brace to check for level, but just happened to set it there after using it as a straight edge. So if you stood back a few feet and looked at the brace, it would look crooked as hell because the trailer sits about 3 1/2 inches lower on one side than the other. But it was perfectly level with the world......

This is the back side of the completed partition wall where the tub will sit. 

This is the front of the wall, where the range and cabinets will fit. 

I also finished covering the front wall in what will become our bedroom. This has turned out to be a pretty productive use of vacation time, but tomorrow I'll take the day off and pick some blueberries and peaches before swimming in the San Marcos river!

I added a few low voltage LED's to the old marking lights. 

At night, the single emitter mounted inside the old housings adds a nice touch to the trailer. Now I need to find a very specific license plate: 1961 Texas Trailer. Finder's fee paid!

Summertime......

It's worth mentioning that we have begun the search for a place to park this heap.  It would be great to find our paradise in  the next few months. It would be even greater if we could find a bank that would give us a loan on raw land. We've got a day set aside to go sit down with a few banks and see what we can work out. I'm feeling like I am approaching the hump with this project. Sure, there is tons of work left to do, but the major tasks are behind us in large part, and it's motivating to look back a little ways and celebrate our accomplishments. 

This is the channel where the line set for the Mini-Split air conditioner will go. I toyed with the idea of using a 2-zone system in order to feed air from both ends of the long and narrow structure. I don't know why I was surprised to find out that it would cost twice as much and take up twice as much space.  I decided instead to place the single zone unit in the center of the structure nearest the common living space. The bedroom doors will be open the vast majority of the time anyhow, and we'll just need to use some fans to keep the air circulating.  

As the cabinets are being made by my buddy Steve, I've made it a priority to get the partition wall that they will back up to erected.  This meant that I had to slap a few planks up on the ceiling in order to have something to attach the wall to. This is the wall mocked up, and I should be able to complete the job tomorrow. 

I dug this out of an old shed at my Dad's place.  It was mine when I was a kid, and I plan to restore it to it's former hell raising condition. I figure that it's a good summer project to do with my daughters and all the free time I've got! 

This is where I consider my next steps.  

So, It's been a while. I've been busy, folks! After all the roof patching and tar work, I had to wait a minimum of 30 days before coating the roof. I had a hard time choosing a product because all white roof coatings are better than all silver roof coatings. In many cases, 30% more efficient at reflecting heat. But who wants a white roof on a silver trailer? I had to bend my logical mind and chose this silver coating. It was a messy job, and a real challenge to not drip this muck down the side of the trailer. 

Originally I had planned to cover the ceiling first, so I got busy making furring strips that you can see sandwiched around the roof rafters. After thinking a little further down the line, I decided that the odds of needing to access the underside of the roof are greater than needing to access the inside of the walls. So I started ripping 15/32 plywood into 6" strips for wallboard. We plan on whitewashing much of it. 

Naturally, as soon as I was getting something accomplished, my table saw motor went out. I took it to a  repair shop after my troubleshooting accomplished nothing.  It was totaled, so I bought a new motor that's worth 3x what I paid for my table saw on craigslist! I figured it was still better than buying another used saw that may have it's own problems. 

This is naturally the next post. I made a really dumb mistake. 

Fortunately, I had good gloves on and had just switched the motor off. So I stopped the blade's momentum with my finger while leaning over the table to pick something up. Don't do that.  Most table saw injuries don't end this well, so I am grateful that I still have a finger.  The injury does make simple work a lot harder though. 

I completed a wall just to be sure that this is how we want to proceed. We're liking it, so I took the time to sit down and re-align my priorities for the next few months. I find that I feel a lot better about progress when there is something to cross out as completed. 

These are the new goals and deadlines. Under this sheet of paper, there are several other deadlines that were not met! It keeps me pushing though…...

Will she float?

Insulation on the underside of the trailer. No more air infiltration!

I asked for 1.5" of closed cell foam, and in many areas I got up to 3".  I guess it has something to do with the application technique, but I like to think that it has something to do with the dozen doughnuts I brought the applicators. 

I bet this bad boy would float a lot further than your average trailer house!

Getting to this point is a big milestone for us. Covering the ceiling comes next in conjunction with overhead lighting. I'll then be able to erect interior partition walls and cover the exterior walls. How long will that take? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Trim is now complete on the exterior. It's nothing fancy, and I think that the color of the cedar will really blend well with the aluminum once it grays a little. 

It's late in the evening here the night before the spray rig shows up to insulate. I had to clear out the workspace for the applicator, which was a good thing for me to do anyway.  I had accumulated quite an arsenal of tools and materials inside the trailer. 

The bummer is that all of that stuff had so go somewhere else. So for the time being, my garage is now a dump. 

This is the trailer that contains the spray equipment. They arrived this morning and it's a real challenge for me to let the applicators work without me looking over their shoulder. Until now, I've never had anyone work for me. I feel self conscious! I don't know what to do while they are here, but I'm not comfortable leaving either! They are about half way done with the job at this moment. I'm starting to twitch and blink erratically!  I am going in the yard to dig a hole straight down until they leave.