And then he said: "let there be hot water!"

If you remember, the original water heater for the camper apparently crapped out and the previous owners bought a new one.  Turns out the bought the wrong kind and it wouldn't fit undewr the bed (where the water heater was supposed to go).  So thier genious fix?

YUP!  Strap it to the bumper!

Our answer? HELL NO!

Fixing this perplexed me for quite some time and then I had an idea once Brittnie ripped out the air heater.  She concured, and we have been waiting ever since.

The idea.  Move the water heater inside, under the fridge.  That way it doesn't look like a white trash fix to a white trash trailer.

Behold the propsed spot!

It's got the room and the piping near by.

After layers of PVC glue on my hands, a cut on my finger, three trips to homedepot and a bit of a high from fumes...we have a water heater.

The only concern I have is that the water heater is between the kitchen sink and the water inlet and behind the water inlet, bathroom sink and shower.  I think it'll work though. 

Although I must admit (and I finally did to the wife after I did it) that was my first time doing plumbing lines.  We'll see if I'm not a huge retard and we get hot water out of this thing!

I did check it before I took it off the bumper.  The water was hot and fairly quick.

Brittnie also spent 2 hours with CLR, a toothbrush and steel wool cleaning the fittings and inside.  There was about a cup of sand, lime and calcium built up.  Glad that shit's outta there!

Soft Spots Are The Devil

So the floor of the camper was pretty good.  There we're however a couple soft spots that had to be addressed.  We decided out of ease, to replace the whole floor.

Soft spots are very bad, but actually quite easy to fix.  The whole floor is basically studs closer together using the steel frame of the undercarriage as support.  The same principal applies when replacing walls.  Cut out the bad.  Replace it.  Cover it.  Bingo!

The difference for us, is that MOST of the floor is quite good and the thickness plywood used for the floor doesn't exist anymore.  We didn't want multiple layer flooring.  That's gay and irritating.  So I fixed the bad spots, re studded a little higher and laid down the new floor.  With a little bit a shimming, it's the most stable feeling floor I have ever felt outside of a house.

As soon as all the painting is done, the floor tiles go on and she'll be even closer to being home.

Let's get it on....the paint that is

Same excuse as always: we're being lazy.

However, we are more motivated than ever, but the weather isn't cooperating.  We finally found a two day window to clean, scrub, dry, prep and paint the primer on the Camper.  This was hard as anything under 50degrees could cause a less than perfect paint job, and at night here, it's dropping to the mid-30s.

Luckily though, we managed to get the primer on!

It may look like shit brown now, but we found a GREAT sand color and we are using cammo black for the trim.  Only problem, the next 10 days, the temperature will be entirely too low to paint.  Worst case scenario, we wait until Texas to paint it.  Although, I'd rather not!

Quite a change from this if you ask me...

Out With the Old, In With the Much, Much Better

So again, we're kind of dragging ass on the camper.  It's freaking cold though.  Another excuse I get to use right now is that we are pretty sure some punk bastard stole our Amazon box on Halloween.  This box had our coax cable which I need to run through the ceiling before we put plywood back on.  We got tricked!

GAH!

So, as far as what HAS arrived, I thought I'd post some pictures before it goes in!

Old tub...

New tub!

In the next picture, you'll see most of the large items we pulled from the camper and are replacing

Cool story with the new fridge.  We went to Home Depot to buy a cheap-ish mini-fridge with freezer for $230.  It's stainless steel but is darker than the brushed look.  We really didn't care since the brushed look was $260.

Lucky for us, they grabbed the wrong one!

You can see the old water pump in the previous picture, and here is our new one

We decided to replace ALL the lights in the camper, as well as ALL the water fixtures.

I'm pretty stoked about the kitchen faucet.  It's hard to find a pull out kitchen faucet for a camper!

We finally got our TV mount.  This had to be very specific because of the location we are putting it.  It has to be seen from the main part of the camper, but be able to swivel to the bed to watch movies, snuggled up on a rainy day

BUT, we don't have the TV yet :(


Besides getting 1-2 boxes a day (and we still have half a dozen packages on the way), we've been making slow progress with the renovation.  This is because we are mainly working on small things while the walls are down.

Took out the air conditioner.  We wont need that for quite some time.  Quick, cheap red-neck fix is plexiglass!

Britt has been making great progress with the worst water damaged area.  Our bedroom!

I finally got off my ass and finished out the outside fixtures to our water system.  All I needed to do was install the drain.

We love craigslist.  We found the perfect slab of counter top to cut up and use in the 4 places we need counter top.  We priced out the kitchen one brand new at Home Depot...$80.  That doesn't include the bathroom, cat stand and kitchen extension.

This old kitchen isldand top cost us $45 and SHOULD be big enough to cover all we need it to!

Britt and I searched extensively for what we wanted for the flooring.  We finally found it, and it was cheap as crap! 88cents a sqft!

We also wondered what to do with the kitchen backsplash.  Do we spend $500 like everyone else, or try something odd and unique?  You guessed it.

This pic shows our flooring (left) and our backsplash (right)

Yea.  We're putting up vinyl floor tile as our backsplash.

Guess we'll see how that turns out!