I had some vague ideas of what might be causing our “bump” in the side wall. It was located behind the refrigerator, at the countertop level, on the side of the countertop closest to the wood stove. We had always been curious about the backwards sloping of the countertop over that cabinet, and when we had asked the previous owner he had told us it had always been there. Now it was time for us to begin snooping around what might be causing this mystery.
This little guy, who we loved as a little cabinet, was designed to act as the refrigerator vent shaft as well, hence it’s slightly awkward depth. Right at the bottom corner of this cabinet closest to the stove is where the bulge was appearing. At this point Laura and I were theorizing that at some point the ceiling had sunk a little, causing pressure on this small cabinet, which therefore put pressure into the back of the countertop. This pushed the countertop outward up against the wall. The plan was to cut open the portion of the “vent shaft” below the cabinet to see if it would relieve the pressure.
So I made my first cut just through the outer paneling and worked towards opening up the front to make sure I wouldn’t be cutting through anything. Once I removed the front, everything looked all clear. I went ahead and made my cuts, and Zap! I hit a small bundle of the electrical cords anyway, despite all of my efforts. 🤦
I had cut 3 out of 6 wires running up to the upper cabinets. I won’t go into super detail- but this mistake led to me buying a multi-meter and wasting a lot of time chasing the issue. I would be able to fix some of the problem, and after checking the fuses I was able to find I would still be lacking inside 12v power to the lights and vent hood fan. While I was up there I did remove the old coaxial cable connections for the television.
But that is another portion of this story. The important part for the tale right now is; removing this did not fix the bulge issue… 😔
We had wanted to remove the laminate flooring from inside the rig anyway with the intention of bedlining the floors later. So I figured I would take this chance to remove the flooring to make sure it hadn’t bulged due to moisture over time, pressing tightly up against the wood stove or the refrigerator cabinet. At the entry step itself I wanted to remove the flooring and investigate the step, hoping to also solve the issue of the corner of the entry door hanging out from the camper.
Well, the laminate flooring had plenty of gapping- and wasn’t pressed tight whatsoever. This too, was not the source of “Da Bump”.
So next I was going to investigate behind the wood stove to see if there was any extreme warping caused by the heat or if the metal backerboard was pressing outward for some reason.
So out came the Kimberly Wood Stove (Kalcifer).
Kalcifer came out like a breeze! The wood stove was not to heavy at all.
Next it was time to open up the backerboard.
After taking it all out I found that nothing was currently pushing the wall out, meaning that previous water damage in the wall along with a previous pressing situation had permanently warped the wall in that location. 😢 I had to resolve to doing what I could when I rebuilt the wall to try and help remedy the issue…
With the bump fully investigated, I did a bit of cleaning where I had a bit of mold growth in the water heater cabinet and in the adjoining sink cabinet. Don’t forget that at this time we were right in the middle of the quarantine. So guess what I couldn’t find at the store for the life of me; hydrogen peroxide. We got creative though; and found we were able to obtain a decent strength mouthwash that used hydrogen peroxide as it’s main ingredient! So with that I gave those areas a few rounds of heavy cleaning, all the while enjoying a very strong and refreshing scent of mint as I scrubbed! 😂
As we cleaned under the cabinets we came across some interesting items; but this one took the cake!
We weren’t quite sure what to do with this newly found treasure, so we ended up gifting this to our daughter’s boyfriend. His reaction was great. He stared at it in wide wonder and said “I’ve needed this my whole life; I just didn’t know it till right now…” 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
On that note, I will leave it there. I will be back as soon as I can with the next part of our journey and I hope all of you are having a great summer so far!
Geoff Murphy 6/12/2020