Creating New Storage

On the whole, our RV makes very efficient use of the available space with shelves and drawers wherever a small bit of space can be found. One spot there was wasted space was in the cabinet behind the dining room table. There were no shelves in that space, so I had to pile things one on top of another. We also bought a small metal shelving unit that gave me two shelves in one area. It wasn't very stable and wasn't as deep as the space, so things could fall off.

When we were at the factory last summer, they gave us brackets to hold adjustable shelves, as well as some shelving material. We bought a compact jig saw to use in cutting the shelves. Here is John inserting the blade and beginning to make the cuts.

Isn't that nice wood? Unfortunately, it seems I flunked measuring class and the resulting shelf was too small--in both directions! We were off to Home Depot for a piece of plywood.

We both measured this time and the resulting shelf fit.

The factory also gave us the wood to make a lip on the front of the shelf. John attached the lip to a small square dowel, then spread some glue and put it on the front of the shelf. The space under the table is really awkward to work in.

He added clamps to hold everything together till the glue dried.

Here is the finished shelf. It will really make that space more convenient to use. And, like I said in the last blog, it isn't a mistake unless you can't fix it.

See Us Now

Finally, we have it all together--our two homes, that is.

This is why we bought this house. We have a full-hookup RV pad right next to the house. We now have a guest house. And we can easily move things back and forth between the two. Two weeks ago, the last of the concrete in our yard was poured. We had to wait a week to park our truck here. And today, two weeks out, we were told we could park our RV here. At 8:15 this morning, we had our truck hooked up to the RV, then drove around the block and parked it here. We are very happy.

We have been doing a few things other than equipping the house and looking at the concrete. We have visited with blogger friends Jim and Gayle and Art and Connie. We attended a pancake breakfast as guests of Bob and Marcia, who had come to see our new house several days earlier. We do weight training and walking. In addition to church services on Sunday, we attended the spaghetti dinner at Epiphany, as well. And we have both endured through colds.

Two Saturdays in a row, I have been to the wood shop here in Canyon Vistas, learning how to turn a piece of wood on the lathe. I really enjoy working with wood and one of the residents is in the wood shop to help people learn this skill on Saturday mornings. Here is what I have made so far, a small vase. It is made of mesquite wood.

Using the lathe is something like using a potter's wheel to shape clay. As the wood spins, I use a metal tool to start removing wood. As I do, the square piece of wood turns into a round object. How wonderful! I hope to make some bowls and some pens.
John has been carving and writing a book about his ancestors.

We certainly enjoy our life here in the Arizona winter.

Wrapping Up

We only have two more weeks here in Mesa before we head out for the summer. We will have been parked in one place for almost 6 months, the longest we have every spent in one place in the RV, and we are beginning to get hitch itch. We will spend the month of April traveling around northern Arizona and New Mexico, seeking higher elevations to get our bodies adjusted to altitude. For 5 months this summer we will be volunteering at 9,000 ft.

In 6 months, we take more and more items out of storage in the RV, we buy new things, we move stuff around. Now it is time to find the place where everything belongs. We had the rig washed and we washed the truck. John is going to flush the hot water heater. And we had to finish up all our various craft projects. Here are the last three things we made.



The "Love" and the pig were woodshop intarsia projects we each made. For the necklace, I made the beads in pottery shop, then strung the necklace. That was fun. John has some partially created carving projects he will continue to work on over the summer.

We have one more week to tie up loose ends here, then our grandchildren Kylie and John will bring their parents Eric and Liz to Phoenix for Spring Break. We are looking forward to seeing them. We will also be busy with Holy Week services of Palm Sunday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Then we will be "On the Road Again."

Inside Updates

In the past couple of weeks, we have made some changes/improvements inside our RV home. When we visited the new IKEA store in Denver, we saw some comforters that were light weight. We had a striped comforter that worked for us when it was cold, but as the weather warmed up it was in the way. We might need it by early morning, but earlier in the night it was a huge lump in the middle of the bed. So we replaced it with a 365-day set of two comforters from IKEA. They are plain white.



We have the light-weight one on now. We can scrunch it into the middle of the bed early on, then cover up when the temps get down in the 60s. When we were in New Mexico and the nighttime temps got down into the low 40s or 30s, the heavier one was great. The photo shows the lighter one on the bed and the heavier one rolled up in the carrying case. Both fit in there at the same time if you work at it. They will snap together so you can use them both at once. We probably won't need that unless we run out of propane some night next year on our trip to Alaska.

We didn't think the plain white was very attractive, and it would probably get dirty pretty quick with all we put on the bed at times. So we went looking for a king-size sheet to use as a bed spread. I don't know what people do who keep the fancy spreads that come in RVs. Where do they put them at night? But a sheet is light enough to leave in place or small enough to fold up in a corner of the bedroom. Pretty fancy for an $18 set from Ross, don't you think?



We must be awfully hard on chairs. After all, the recliners are the only place we have to sit in the RV, except for the folding chairs at the table. We got rid of the couch. We put this trailer in storage about one month after we bought it. Before leaving the following January, we bought some recliners from American Furniture Warehouse. The only photo I can find is this one--note the footstool is upside down in the chair and both cats are on it. Most of the time, because of the affection our elderly cats had for the chairs, they were covered with a sheet or with plastic.



We used those chairs until November 2009, when we bought some really nice Lane Furniture recliners.



These chairs were comfortable, luxurious, and largely cat-proof. But by this summer, we realized that the constant use quickly wore down the stuffing in the seats and our backs were hurting. So much for expensive chairs.

This week we bought two more recliners, these from Copenhagen Imports in Tempe. They are less expensive, so if they only last a couple of years, we won't feel as bad. And they take up a lot less room and weigh less.