Hello All! My apologies for taking a little longer than normal. Now that it is beautiful outside out here in Alaska we have been outside working like crazy. It looks like I am going to have to adjust my workflow so I can keep on writing posts at the same time as making progress. With no further ado, here we go!
Now that we had a place to lay our heads- we were ready for curtain making time! Laura had pulled all of the old curtains awhile back…
The front curtains were a piece of cake- we already knew the process of building black out curtains. So with the curtain slide systems in place we had them up in no time!
Now it was on to all of the other curtains throughout The Ohana. Our trip up North would be a perfect chance to test them out- as well as just having them up for it was going to be a necessity seeing how it was winter time. This process was quite a bit of research, because unlike in Serenity- we didn’t just want these curtains to be blackout, we wanted them to also be insulated! How did we end up doing that? Well, let me explain…
The blackout material was easy, order blackout curtains from Amazon and chop ’em up! We combined that with some of the left over material from Serenity- so we had what we needed there. At the local Salvation Army we had found a brand new set of curtains that had a look that Laura dug for the inside of the RV- So with that we had stumbled upon our inside facing curtain material!
How did we want to insulate them though? Our neighbors down the street had a yard sale awhile back, and we had purchased some blackout and insulated curtain material from them. It was awesome! The product was called Warm Windows, and Jo-Ann’s in the next town had discontinued their partnership with them- so getting it there was a not go. After putting in the footwork and hours of research though, I found it was available online; but also SUPER expensive for what we needed… 🙁 A large part of this is due to the fact we would have to buy a whole roll of it, which would be WAY overkill for what we needed to do.
Well, in our RV upholstering and fabric trimming journeys we have come to know when to check with the best- our local Nomar! This is where we found what we would need; and figured out how to build our own version of the Warm Windows product…. The product was 3M Thinsulate, which they sold by the yard- so it was much more manageable. This matched up perfectly to the warm windows insulation. In the back they have a giant table that has a fabric cutting machine that works like a CNC machine. We rolled out the Thinsulate and gave them our window measurements- then he plugged them into his computer program. Then the table suctioned down the material and the arm went to work cutting everything to the exact specifications like magic! Nomar is awesome- so if you’re ever in Homer check them out for your indoor and outdoor upholstering needs: https://nomaralaska.com/
Next we wanted the thermal layer they had incorporated into their curtains- and the answer was cheap and simple; a camping space blanket made of Mylar. A few dollars later and using our Thinsulate pieces as templates we were cutting the material to match.
We then used the interior material we had found, and the blackout curtain material and made pockets! The two insulation layers we slid inside and then stitched the ends closed.
We also stitched velcro squares into the corners, so we could utilize the roll up velcro points like we had installed in Serenity. These also helped stitch the insulation layers inside into place to prevent them from shifting and clumping later. With the time it had taken us to build the bed and curtains our month was almost up- and our trip was a few days away.
Over the course of December we were installing a lot of other things too. It was also during this time the temperature dropped DRAMATICALLY! Working outside went from being slightly difficult to an unsuccessful uphill battle. Things didn’t set easily. Things broke apart in the cold. Hands would go frozen and shaky too fast to do a proper job- losing the dexterity to do smaller or more careful work. But I pushed on! During this time I had ordered and installed some ATV mirrors under the rear-view mirrors in hopes they would improve the backing up situation over the original mirrors. I sadly did not take pictures of these- but I will discuss them and give you my feedback in the next post a bit more extensively.
We had pulled and repaired the original screen door; This is what the door came out looking like before we did the work:
We installed the new screen.
Since the handle system and half of the track for it was completely missing- I had to develop a new system. I used some aluminum flat bar for building the lower track and the divider where the camper door handle would have to go through.
I used magnet strip, super gluing it to the door frame and to the portion of the screen that would have to be removed. I had found a bag of brand new smart watch wrist bands at the second hand store- I installed a few mounting screws on either side of the door and stretched the wristbands to fit. They worked great as door handles! (Note: I just went outside and took these pics- so they are taken a bit later)
Using superglue for the screens had me thinking- I could use the same concept to install the missing window screens. The RV was missing about 3/4 of them. The window frames themselves were not magnetic- so I glue magnetic strip around the inner frame of the window frame. I had to heat everything up with a hair dryer as I installed it due to the weather being so incredibly cold outside.
I templated the window screens and went inside the house, cutting them and installing the magnet directly to the screen where it was warm. I bought some stick on window seam seal to put on the inner edge of the screen to prevent bugs from getting through.
All of the work was painstakingly slow and arduous, but once it was done the window screens worked awesome! What an easy solution, that could be easily taken off for maintenance!
So back to where we had started- we had our curtains ready for hanging! At this point we were going outside to work in small bursts due to it being so cold. I can take quite the freezing; but Laura is much more sensitive to the cold. We hurriedly went outside, installing velcro hook squares in place around the windows for our curtains to hang from. The process was horribly slow and painful, through puffs of our breath in the cold and hands losing their ability to work over and over again before having to go inside and warm up. In the end, I was not satisfied with the wall portion of the mounting system. The screw heads caused the velcro on the wall to “dimple up” around the screw- not leaving an ample flat surface for the velcro on the curtains themselves to cling to. This made it so the curtains could fall off quite easily when adjusting them from the down to the up position.
Overall, it wouldn’t work for the long term- but as long we left them in the down position for our trip up North they would work as window insulators; and thus work for now. With a place to sleep and window insulators in place- we were ready to test out Our Ohana on her first winter trip! Here Goes Nothing! 😂
Geoff Murphy 5/6/2020