Holiday Break

I hope everyone had a great holiday.  I was so busy during the break, but I did manage to relax a fair bit.  Christmas day was spent with my family and the rest of the week I was in and out of the garage.  We've had unseasonably warm weather!  I did get some gift cards and of course, spent them all on getting the remainder of the decorating work done in the Apache.  I don't know how people apply countertop vinyl without actively going insane.  I must have pulled up and adhered the paper over the galley countertop about 4 times before it is to where I'm just giving up on it and leaving it as it is:  not perfect and definitely with some minor imperfections that will bother no one but me.  

I cannot destroy this air bubble for the life of me
Yes, I poked it with a pin first

I DID manage to get this wrinkle out and cover that exposed part at the top of the sink

I also realized that once you remove T-trim it is impossible to get it back to its original dimensions, so the trim around the swing counter is about 1/2 inch shorter.  Does this bother me?  No.  Okay, a little, but mostly no.  Not enough to drop fifty bucks on new T-trim to cover an area that won't come into contact with anything.  

See what I'm talking about?

Otherwise, things are moving along quite well.  I spray painted the table support because I'm just not a fan of the original stainless when the whole thing is set up because it looks too cold, but it's still drying so that'll have to wait.

I cut a hole in the rug that goes under the table so that the table support can go through, mostly because I wanted a long rug there. I initially purchased a smaller rug but it just got lost when the table was set up.  Now that there's a hole in it though, I have to figure out a way to keep the rest of it from unraveling.  I have a solution which will be implemented this week.  Four more months until camping season!

It Ain't Over 'til it's Oversprayed

As much as I love the light and airy look from the last post, with its white cabinets, rug, and off white cushions, we get dirty when we're camping.  If we just sat around for a week and took a leisurely stroll on paved campground roadways I'd be slathering some white paint on every surface of the Apache.  When I say we get dirty, I mean it.  We wander off on 4-hour hikes and more often than not, Garrett is laying on a bed of mulched forest floor (or mud) taking macro photos of fungi.  I have a penchant for taking breaks on fallen trees and mossy rocks.  Sometimes we're canoeing through a bog and we've got those small flecks of "swamp things" on our clothes from getting inadvertently wet.  Sometimes it's as simple as soot from the fire getting on our clothes.  Do I want to transfer that to pristine white cabinetry?  Heck no.  

My canoe bow in the Barnum Bog, Paul Smith's VIC, New York

I mentioned before that the cabinets have the appearance of wood, but are metal.  Over the past few weekends, I've been painting the cabinets without removing them first.  Actually, I've been spray painting everything that is brown, with the exception of the couch under-storage area, which no one will really see anyway.  

I've been using Rustoleum's Universal All-Surface spray paint in Gloss Black for

the cabinets, and for the furnace, which needs a more specialized paint, Rustoleum's Ultra High Heat paint in Black.  I used the same Ultra High Heat in White for the stove lid. 

I taped off, put some paper on the floor in the dining area, and I taped the old grey curtains together and used them as a drop cloth since they were the best way to cover the entire floor without having to cut my usual drop cloth.  The weirdly-shaped items that needed to be covered were protected with aluminum foil.  I could only paint for about 15 minutes at a time, taking the rest of the day off.  The roof of the Apache is taller than the track of my garage door, so ventilation was not as good as I would have liked.  I did manage to open the door a couple of feet, and I left the entry door to the garage open as well.  

Despite laying down the drop cloth, The first time I painted I did not anticipate that the tiny paint particles would make everything sticky.  So as I worked backward, I was unaware that part of the drop cloth stuck to my shoe!  The result?  Areas of flooring where those tiny particles settled.  The fix?  A light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper buffed the noticeable discoloration away!  There was one corner that really got hit with a blast of paint, but that also sanded off tolerably well.  Here are the befores:

That's gonna leave a mark

 

That's not a shadow; it's overspray

Once the weather climbs back into the 40s, I'll finish sanding the floor.  For now though, back to seemingly neverending snowfall and prepping for the holidays.

It's Been a While

Three and a half years have flown by.  I was completely unable to keep up with the blog and home projects for the simple fact that all I did was work, sleep, and take care of the girls.  That said, things have settled into a good rhythm.  The house is pretty much the same as I left the blog a few years ago, which is quite comfortable on my end.  The eldest child is halfway through university, the middle child is in high school, and the youngest is trudging through her last year of middle school.

As they do, some of the young trees in the orchard died over their first winter, and one was senselessly massacred by deer when I didn't notice that the cage around it had popped open on one end.  At least they had a good snack on the apricot tree.  We lost the apricot, plum, and mulberry trees, as well as the Northern Spy and Calville apple trees.  We've planted a Yellow Transparent apple tree which is thriving.  On this spring's agenda is to replace the Calville, Spy, the mulberries and the apricot.  I have a herd of 4-5 deer at any given evening in my yard, so the battle rages on.  They eat everything that isn't covered or caged!

I had a few great gardening years, but between this year and last year, we totaled two tomatoes.  Two.  I've tried everything but nothing can really remedy really wet summers.

I grew up foraging with my mother and aunts and the past two years I've really honed in on wild mushrooms and fungi in general.  We've done a lot of camping and hiking:  we've enjoyed the Great Smoky Mountains and the Adirondacks, and so many small forests!  I've come across more rattlesnakes than I'd like, more bears than I'm comfortable with, and more narrow hiking paths than you can shake a stick at, but I wouldn't trade any of it!  

Our camping adventures really made me realize that while I love the great outdoors, I hate sleeping in cold puddles when there's a downpour.   In the Smokies, there was such a deluge that my 14-year-old tent's rainfly sprung its first leak--or should I say leaks?  We couldn't escape dripping water and it was that night that I pledged to save enough money to buy a camper.  

So, that's exactly what I did a couple of months ago.  We had admired an Apache pop up camper that was in the site next to us while we were in Tennessee.  It had zero canvas and I had never seen another like it.  We lusted after an Oliver travel trailer, but those start at a price that is way, WAY out of my budget.  A used pop up was in the budget, but I didn't want the headache of having to make sure the canvas ends were dried out completely before storing it for any length of time, and the "for sale" listings were littered with pop-ups that had to have their canvases replaced or patched.  I wanted something solid, so we started looking for an Apache, only to find that they're not made anymore.  They had a heyday in the 1970s, but did I really want a 40-something-year-old trailer?  As fate would have it, I did.

I had a notification on Craigslist that a 1975 Apache Royal was about an hour away.  I messaged the seller and scooped it up the next day.  While the previous owner did a lot of work on the mechanical aspects of the camper, very little was done to the interior.  The details on that will have to wait just a little bit longer, but here is what it looks like from the outside.

1975 Apache Royal

It looks complicated to put up, but it's not!