Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! We spent our last days of 2013 visiting family and getting things ready to head back down the road.
We were able to spend an afternoon with our son and daughter in law. They had just returned after spending the holidays with her family in Pennsylvania so we were able to celebrate a slightly delayed Christmas with them. :-)

We decided earlier this week that Friday would be our departure day hoping to avoid a "possible" nasty winter storm that is supposed to hit early next week. Unfortunately we woke up this morning to this

We have about 2" on the ground and the temps are supposed to drop into single digits tonight. They are saying no more snow for a couple of days so we should have a window where we can safely leave as long as the rig isn't frozen to the driveway. :-o

With our departure looming there was one more project I wanted to get done and that was replacing the rear TV with a new flat screen. The install wasn't too difficult and I am going to finish out the interior cabinet so we can use it for additional storage.
Here is the original "boat anchor" TV

and the new "lightweight" flat screen

Our plan right now is to head to Florida for some warmth and sunshine. We are still looking for a couple of part time jobs to help slow the flow out of our savings account and have a couple of remote possibilities but no firm offers yet. We have a couple of small projects we want to do on our retirement home down there but then we'll be free to land just about anywhere. The work we have planned shouldn't take but a couple of days so even if we land a job elsewhere we can still get things done.

We have also decided to take the Harley south with us. We were torn and had almost decided to leave it here in Indiana and pick it up next spring. The kicker was the fact that if only one of us gets a job or we get jobs at separate locations it would be nice to have two modes of transportation. Well that and Rudee got tired of finding me out in the cargo trailer sitting on the bike going "Vrooom, Vroooom" with a sad look in my eyes. :-)

We are both looking forward to a great 2014. We are hoping the challenges we experienced in 2013 are behind us, we need the break! :-) I'll keep you posted.

not slowing down much

Thursday morning I made a few more calls trying to find the motor I needed to fix the slide outs and jacks. None of the RV dealers here in central Indiana carried them but they all offered to order one for me. :-(
I took my search back to the internet and after trying several search phrases stumbled across a company in Fort Wayne, In. who boasted of having a large warehouse full of hard to find items for hydraulic systems. I knew it would be a long shot but gave them a call anyway. Sure enough they could order one but had none on the shelf. The guy asked me what I needed it for so I explained our situation, full time RVer's visiting family for the holidays and trying to live in a leaning, skinny motor home. I left out the part about not having any underwear, it didn't seem like appropriate "guy" talk. :-)
He told me they actually manufacture hydraulic systems to sell and said he would check the systems they had built to see if any had the motor I needed already installed on them and would call me back. I didn't hold out much hope for him to even call back much less luck out and they actually have the motor but sure enough, about 30 minutes later, he called and said he had not one but two motors! I told him I could be there shortly after noon and he said he would remove it and have it ready to go for me. Now all I had to do was get Rudee out of bed and convince her that driving 3 hours (one way!) was a good idea. :-)
She was a good sport about it though and we were soon headed North, I guess she was as ready to get back to normal living as I was.
The drive was a long one but I finally got my hands on a brand new replacement motor! We made it back to the motor home about 3:30 pm and I got it installed about 10 minutes later. Here is a photo, the new motor is behind all those bundles of wires and relays. I still have another motor being shipped to us and we'll hang onto that one for a spare so we are not in this predicament again.

ahhh, now we're living! I never realized blue jeans were so ...... scratchy. :-)

Friday I decided to tackle another project. One of the advantages of working at Amazon is the 10% employee discount on their products. We took advantage of it by purchasing two new flat screen TV's. Our motor home is a 2002 so the TV's in it are pre-digital, large, heavy monstrosities. We decided to tackle the living room first. The old TV was removed along with the DVD player and the separate VCR.

I moved our Dish Network receiver to sit below the new TV instead of in the cabinet beside it. I also ran the cables for the new Blue Ray Disk player Rudee got me for Christmas which will sit in the right side cabinet where the VCR used to be. Once all that was done I attached the swing arm mount to the side of the steel TV "box" that serves as the framework for our entertainment console above the dash. Next it was time to hook everything up and see if we could get it all to work right. I guess I measured pretty good because the TV fits perfectly and we even get a picture on it! :-)

Looks pretty good up there. We still have to figure something out to fill the space between the bottom of the TV and the satellite box. We are thinking of just covering some cardboard material with black cloth and attaching it to the cabinet but I may look for a "sound bar" that would fit so we can blast away on those Blue Ray movies. :-)
We still have the bedroom TV to replace but I'm hoping it will not be as intimidating as the front one was. I'll keep you posted.

last project complete (for now anyway)

We have been busy the last couple of months updating the interior of the motor home. We are always aware of our budget and want to be as frugal as possible so we always keep our eyes out for a good deal. That is how I found a virtually brand new leather sofa sleeper several months ago. We bought it sight unseen and a friend picked it up for us so it was waiting in Indiana for our return this fall. That was only the beginning. We soon had new coverings on our window valances as well as replaced the recliner with one we found at an RV surplus dealer. We also replaced the old, worn out slideout awnings with new, heavier vinyl. These projects were all completed before we had to leave Indiana for our jobs at Amazon.
Once we got to Kentucky the work on the rig slowed down some but didn't stop. We installed our new blinds shortly after we arrived here with sets we purchased at Lowes. We also wanted to replace the front captains chairs because the leather was cracked and had ground in dirt that we couldn't clean no matter what we tried. The price of new chairs, even at the surplus places, was a little more then we wanted to spend. I found these at Camping World so we gave them a try.

While not as "fancy" as new chairs, they look decent and our bank account didn't suffer too much.
The last thing we wanted to change was the nasty looking curtains that cover the windshield. That was what we were looking for at Camping World when we found the seat covers. We found out they have to be special ordered so started looking for alternatives. I found some on line that were two pieces but ours are three pieces because our entry door is at the very front. You have a panel for the drivers side, one for the passenger side and another for the entry door. Plus these were pretty pricey for what you get.
I ended up doing some more research and stumbled across this website http://cheap-rv-living.com/ which had an article where they had gone through the same search as us. Their answer was to purchase heavy duty shower curtain liners for their motor home. This sounded really interesting to me so I started reading some of the other articles and projects they had done. Seems like they felt the same as we did in regards to doing things on a budget. I mean, why spend a fortune when there are alternatives and doing it yourself saves a ton of $$'s over paying someone else. I read several of their web pages until curiosity got the best of me and I had to put a face and name to them. I clicked on their profile link and "Hey, I know her!", it was Robin who is one of our co-workers at Amazon! Talk about a small world moment!
The next day at work Rudee told her the story and we got to ask her a lot of questions in person. :-)
We decided to give the project a try and found some very nice, heavy duty liners at Wal Mart. They are the same shade as our new seat covers so everything matches pretty well.
We used the existing hooks to hang the new curtain and then trimmed them for length. We ended up having to make a run back to Wal Mart to buy another panel, we had originally purchased three and it took all of them and part of a fourth to cover everything.
Here is the old

and the new

So here is how it all breaks down, budget wise:
"new" leather couch: $350
new leather euro recliner: $275
captain chair covers: $56.00
new blinds: $350.00
recovering valances: $22.00
slide out material: $280.00
windshield curtain material: $40.00
for a grand total of $1373.00. That is about half the cost of a new couch alone. Not too bad at all!
We are done remodeling for now but you know, a larger flat screen TV in the living room would be nice ...... I'll keep you posted! LOL