So the first day home we woke up exhilarated about our new adventure- singing one of our favorite songs “Johanna” by Mishka. (Honestly, only because it rhymed with Ohana 🎶😆) Here is a pic from that morning:
I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. On the ride down, with the whipping rain, some water had landed on the bed up top. We figured that the rain had managed to blow up under the front skylight a bit and dripped back down. Naturally I wanted to be safe though, so I started by getting out my ladder and my caulking gun. This wasn’t the way I wanted to have to eternally maintain her- but due to it not being the right season, it was getting to cold to paint Gaco. So I used Lexel, checked the roof and went around the seams of the camper applying where there might have been a concern.
One feature that she had that the previous owner was really proud of was a metal screaming skull with a tophat mounted on the front bumper. 💀 (You can see it in the pic above, it is the bump over the hood) He had told us a story where someone had stolen his original, and he had to custom re-order another one. So this was the second generation of the screaming skull with extra re-enforcement as to encourage it away from growing legs again. Laura and I, though respecting his tastes, decided it wasn’t for us. So after I had finished my caulking job I went to remove it, but I couldn’t get the post bolt that ran through it to give because it was too corroded. I ended up having to cut through the post to get it off. When I did, water came gushing out the bottom mounting hole of the bumper. I let it drain, and when it was done I used Lexel to seal it up from the top. We decided we would save it for him and next time we headed North we would stop by and return it. 😄 Here is a pic of the skull:
It was a beautiful day- and we spent it mostly dreaming about our steps on our new project. 🤔 This was the first ToyHome we had gotten in the fall- so this was the first time we were going to have to wait to Gaco. For now it was going to have to be mostly inside work on her once the snow hit. I could work towards getting her upgraded to LED through and through. Laura wanted to create new curtains for the windows, though insulated they came with a very historic fade of a homesteader’s potholder. We may even be able to build new cushions for the beds! No rather what, it was going to be a slow process due to lack O’ funds… we had extended ourselves even further to get here so money was going to be in short supply for awhile. 😟
That night though- we fired up the wood stove to enjoy our first fire!!! We invited RJ over to come by and check our The Ohana.
The Kimberly Wood Stove fired up beautifully! After a few, once the fire got to burning hotter the smoke coming from the stack became no longer visible.
As we sat inside chatting, dreaming, and staring at the fire while enjoying it’s warmth we started talking about re-building the front bed cushions.
The owner before us had just laid a large 3/4″ piece of painted plywood to cover the whole bed space. On top of that he just had a queen sized RV camper mattress. We agreed we wanted to change this to match Serenity’s front bed layout- which contained, a center cushion attached to a board that was much easier to move for front cab access.
It’s when we lifted the piece of plywood my stomach filled with dread…
Nasty black mold. We stood looking at it for only a minute or so and immediately we could start to feel it attack our eyes and mouth… 😱 This was going to be a problem. We put the plywood down and decided to head back inside for the night, it was going to have to wait until tomorrow.
Geoff Murphy 3/22/2020