Buttoning Up Next Year’s Dreams

It was happening! We were really doing improvements we had talked about not doing until next year, and feeling very blessed with these opportunities we were moving forward.

Now that we had installed the PD4045, we needed to rearrange the bench a bit more to make all of our plans work.

**Now That The 110v Boxes Are Out Of The Way…**

With the water pump and coach battery in their new location, we could now use that access door area to become our new (and larger) cable access hatch.

Speaking of that door- I finished up giving it the Gaco treatement.

Another little dream we had been talking about since the year before- having a phone charging area in our sleeping quarters. By this time we had already taken measurements, researched and evaluated, and ordered the parts to build it. Now was the time to hopefully put it all together!

First thing we did was install a mesh net pouch to hold our phones while we were in bed.

Then I drilled out and installed 4 quick charging USB ports. Both ports would turn on and illuminate with a touch power button. One of the ports would actually give us our coach battery power reading while we were in bed! 😁

Afterwards I also installed a 110 outlet that contained 2 quick charge USB ports for when we were running off of shore power.

During all of this I also installed a dual USB flush mount port where our old bedroom sconce light had been. The plan was to get a light-weight usb powered reading light we could plug in here if we wanted reading light. 📚

A bit later it was all powered up! From the looks of it Laura thought all in all everything was pretty shiny!

We moved on to the other side of our couch, where we installed another mesh pouch and charging port to hold and power up our tablets as we needed.

Last but not least for interior power modifications, we went over the kitchen counter to replace one of the old 110 outlets with one that contained USB quick chargers as well.

Once we installed the outlet, I impulsively decided to tackle an issue that had been driving me nuts- our sagging upper cabinet bottom. Not only would it look a lot better, it would support the cabinet bottom more solidly and quit sprinkling our counter with debris from years of stuff left in the bottom of the cabinet.

The hope had been to carefully remove the old bullnose from the metal track it was snapped into. Well, it didn’t happen that way. 😳 Even with a light amount of pressure and finesse the 30 year old plastic instantly snapped when we tried to move it.

With that old pieces of wood, noodle pieces, and quite a small lost treasure trove of the previous owner’s fruit loops sprinkled out everywhere from inside of it. So as much as we had wanted we would have quite a mess to clean up.

After clearing the track of filth, I used some thin streaker head screws in lieu of the nails they had used before and sucked the cabinet right up back into place: SOLID. Once the cabinet was happily in it’s original position we went the other direction and made sure the cabinet bottom was secured into the track as well.

Now it would just come down to figuring out what and how to build a new bullnose for it.

After all that progress we had a whole lot of mess all over the inside of our little home. So we moved all the cushions outside for easy cleaning.

Cherry & Josie thought this was a perfect idea, and decided the new monument in our backyard had been built just for them.

Guess we can’t blame them though for taking advantage of it, while I vacuumed out the inside of the camper Laura decided the dogs made lounging look very luxurious.

Our next upgrade was on our awning. When we are parked on an optimum flat grade of elevation our awning works perfectly as intended. But if there enough of a downward grade the very edge of the camper door rubs on the bottom of the awning. So, the plan was to build some easy to put on awning leg extensions.

**Some Left Over Aluminum Conduit From Serenity’s Rack**

So now we had some easy to install leg extensions that quickly broke down to fit in nicely with the rest of the awning hardware. Problem solved!

The next goal was to make our newly freed up electrical cable access door more easily- cable friendly. We measured, drilled out the door, and installed a cable access port. It wasn’t long until we had the edges of the new port sealed in.

For now we would let the sealant seal up, an we would give it the full Gaco treatment later.

First I went ahead and installed the proper hardware on the solar generator door. Even with my previous attempts to keep the lock from spinning, I had failed to fabricate the necessary hardware to do the job. So I had ordered the proper plates and installed them. The lock now wouldn’t spin.

The plan was to build extension cords and run them through and underneath the vehicle to accomplish the following functions:

1) When the vehicle was plugged into shore power we could plug in the proper cable and it would also charge the solar generator.

2) When we wanted to run our shore power functions using the solar generator- we just had to plug in the cable and we would be running off of the Safari.

A little testing later and we were good to go!!!

Once the cables were ran, we decided to order the inverter that would accomplish the 3rd step of our power process; more on that shortly. During my research of the inverter, I had gotten the dimensions and planned to build a shelf to hold it up above the access cable space. We would use the open door space below the shelf to store the cables, and easily be able to plug in the cable into the inverter above. So I built that shelf and put a screws in to hold it in place until it arrived.

When we had run the usb charging port wiring above the couch in place- I had spliced and ran cables to install a camper powered closet light so Laura could see her clothing properly. Well, that light had arrived in the mail so it was time to install it. 🔆

Enough time had passed that the inverter had arrived. (Actually it came pretty quick- in just 3 days. That’s warp speed for Alaska) So with that it was time to install and test the last leg of our power circle. This would allow us to charge the Safari Solar Generator while we were driving. Yeah, we know that we could run other things off of it too, but the primary function would be to charge the backup generator. A cool feature of this inverter is it comes with a wireless remote too. So while we are driving we can turn it on or off as well as check the current battery level of the coach battery. 🔋

Once our access cable hatch door was Gaco treated, we decided it was time to hit the road for a night to go and test it all out in action!

We had wanted to visit the Soldotna Weekly Fair & Concert in the park by the river, so we made a plan to check it out in full flair as well as spend the night up there.

We pleasantly strolled through, checked out the scene, and enjoyed some free live music. Pretty sweet that Soldotna does this every week!

That night I went ahead and ran my laptop as well as ran the whole camper on house power for our evening. The Safari ME did a great job giving us the power we needed for our purposes. The next day we were able to charge the Safari right back up as we drove around the area running errands.

When we returned home we were back at our next projects. Laura had ordered more wallpaper for the inside of the cabinets. Even with applying a spray adhesive the wall paper was still failing around the edges. We decided to use some small finishing staples around the edging, and they did the trick beautifully!

When we had traveled up to Home Depot, we shopped out ideas of what to do the cabinet bullnose with. We chose a steel roofing edge, which I cut to length and took a buffing wheel to to give it a nice brushed finish. It ended up doing the job nicely, with not too sharp of an edge in case someone bumps into it.

And with that we are caught up to the end of July, so just a month behind of real time again. Here’s a little foreshadowing of what we will be up to next time…