RV Door Seals being Replaced on our 21 year old Travel Trailer

RV Door Seals being Replaced on our 21 year old Travel Trailer

If you have read the post before this one, I'll just give a little snippet to what's going on. We get two days off a week and we use one of those days to have fun, (we just drive around and sight see - we don't go out to eat in exchange for using that $$ towards gas) and the other day to work on our RV. We always plan the night before of what is in the budget and what we can get done.

And now that brings us to day #2 HONEY DO Day. Simple day today. We are replacing the 20+ year door foam seal with some much needed new one. We went with the MD Foam Window Seal from The Home Depot (Parker City, Utah) and it was less than $5 a package and it took 1 1/2 packages per door for a total of $20. Doesn't sound terribly expensive but when you have a thousand other little fixes (and not counting the major fix I am so embarrassed to show you YET).

MD Foam Window Seal

Mark has to scrap, and clean the old foam off first. It wasn't too bad and it didn't take too long to get that part of the work done. He just uses a basic scrapper to get the job done. 

Don't Grow Up, It's a TRAP is what his hat says. 

Uggg look at our bedroom floor. And not just the garbage but that awful rug. That's one of our major projects we have to get done, are the floors. 

So folks have been asking us what other items are on our project list. Oh boy, do you really want to know?

• The entire front 1/2 of the RV needs to be painted and wallpapered 
• All window frames need to be painted black (they are white now)
• Curtain rods and curtains need to go up
• The kitchen needs a new skylight 
• All lights need to be updated with LED Fixtures
• We need a new TV wall bracket for front room TV
• The entertainment area needs to be painted
• Bedroom floor needs replacement
• Bathroom floor needs replacement
• Kitchen floor REALLY needs replacement 
• Living Room Rug needs to be taken out and burned to death (YUCK) but floor needs to be replaced
• Bench Backing needs to be replaced and eventually the bunch cushion needs to be replaced or upholstered (We got quoted $400 to $900 OUCH).
• Bedroom Ceiling needs to be replaced
• Kitchen counter (just 1/2 needs to be ripped out and rebuilt) 
• The wall by kitchen needs to be replaced 
• Would love a new stove (but now I'm getting greedy)
• Would love Solar but that's really dreaming at this point). 
• We need a new awning (the one on now is damaged BADLY). 

At this point your saying, just buy another RV. No, we actually love this one and it has a story behind it and it does have great potential, just not a lot of funds supporting it. And it's home and paid off. We just need to be more grateful and be ok with things and do the best that we can. 

So, this was the simple project we opted to do on our day off. We do work on the RV after hours and in between day breaks (like taking the decals off the RV on the outside - yup... We are going to paint the outside of the RV and get our logo brand up on the RV. It will make it easier for our subscribers to recognize us while we are traveling.  We can't do the major painting while we are workamping but we can get prepped. It's going to be extreme. I want a fun home for all to enjoy upon seeing it. Fingers Crossed. 

RV Wife Demands Mirror to be Fixed ASAP as Part of Honey Do List

RV Wife Demands Mirror to be Fixed ASAP as Part of Honey Do List

Oh yes, how Gorilla Heavy Duty Construction Adhesive saves the day and gets Mark back on my good side. Our 2001 Keystone Travel Trailer has a mile long of items that need to be updated or replaced. And I could cry because this morning, I woke up to a new leak in the rv. So one item fixed just for another to jump on the list. 

Our 21 year old travel trailer - glues and adhesives placed everywhere needs to come out and new goop needs to go on. On this special occasion we will be doing the mirror that had fallen off and shockingly did not break. RV Blessing was that we are not going to add 7 years of bad luck to the timeframe from the last mirror broken. So happy to not have more time sentences added on. 

Missing Mirror - while getting the mirror back in place,
I need to clean and reorganize the area. 

Mark here, needs to scrape off the 21 year old adhesive first,
now that can get tricky, gentle and slow or otherwise the mirror will break. 

Now it's time to get the tools ready for the projects and get to fixing and reapplying our mirror which also acts as a barrier to keeping things from falling out.  

Gorilla Heavy Duty Construction Adhesive - 9 oz cartridge white

The gorilla glue was given to us from a former friend,
but you can buy this at most places for under $9

Scrapping the old adhesive did take some time. Like we said slow and steady to ensure that the mirror wouldn't break. Then the goop went on.

Mamma here is getting excited. BUT, I was warned not to go in 
medicine cabinet for at least 24 hrs to allow it to bond. 

I so made fun of Mark from bringing these along - I mean really we need 
to have room for stuff. I am now a fan of tools even though I have no idea 
how to use most of them.

Overall a super easy project to do and something we won't have to worry about for a very long time.

And to boot, I get to make a red line through on the honey do list. This wife is a HAPPY CAMPER!!

Mark had built the shelves, which I love, love, love.
And I did my part and cleaned and reorganized.

LOL.. The cow here has a name...
PADDY - sick humor (I Know)

If you are new to RVing and happen to purchase an older RV like we did. Please add the Gorilla brand to your inventory. It's top of the line and it works. Watch along as we tackle the millions of other things we have to rip apart and replace. Here is a video Mark did in his own words about the bathroom mirror project:

RV Window Ugliness

 Yesterday, I LOST it... As I may have mentioned a couple of blog articles ago, we have an RV Maintenance list longer than my leg with a budget the length of my arm. Baby step reminders are in order here. While Mark was out and about, working in the RV Park, that we are at for this summer workamping, the Holiday Hills RV Park in Coalville, Utah. I took full advantage of his departure of the day. I went and ripped these ugly buggers OUT. 

Before and please excuse the mess!!

So the above picture is the UGLY I was talking about. Not our color scheme and it's over 20+ years old, which comes with smell, wear and tear and just plain UGLY. Oh, lets really dive into it. See the blinds next to the open window? Sun damage warped blinds, (no fault to the previous owners at all, it's just time worked against these buggers, as well as the heat damage from constant sun bleeking on them).

Wow, more light coming in now?

I could feel my heart racing as I was beating the clock. I wanted to see if Mark, when he arrived home, would notice right away the differences. I've got to say, two different screws were used to install them and some of them were damaged and most difficult to remove, (plus, I stole hubs tools lol).  But golly joe, I started making progress as you can see from the picture. 

Now we can can compare before and after now!

There is a tinge of excitement going on - however running the old, yucky, UGLY material out the door was a funny challenge. Strings hanging everywhere and just awkwardly stumbling down the stairs like a child who is afraid of getting caught doing something naughty. But it's all gone. And now, I have to wait to get the paint (black for the window frames) and peelable wallpaper for the walls and definitely touch ups on the frames of the slide-out. So much to do, with so little budget to go towards this yet. But the DEMO was FREE!! 

Ellie here LOVES it, she can take to her perch and window watch
without the distractions of the blings and its ever nasty string everywhere

So the deed is done and now that it's been 24 hours, I am screaming inside to wallpaper or paint. I already have in mind the window treatment I am going with. Creative and easy to change out whenever I want to change them, (and I will). But sitting here typing this out,  looking to the right and I see WHAT? A dirty window... Yup, now I need to log off so that I can wash all the inside windows. All that ugliness was hiding dirty windows. Can I ever win? Well, off to "window" dream shop. I'm hoping Mark will be pumping extra propane here at the park to pay for my upcoming improvements. Slow and Steady wins the race. 

Who ever said owning a second hand RV was going to be easy? Actually, it hasn't been too bad. We know what we have to do but we just need to pace and steady it out.