Put out an all points bulletin. Missing...

One screwdriver, Phillips head, six inches long, black plastic handle. Missing. Last seen in the vicinity of a large grey bus. Presumed dangerous. No massive reward for recapture.

After having painted the lower portion of the bathroom white and not being ready to put purple paint anywhere, most of the drawers in the kitchen were painted white. All need purple paint on the fronts but with the bathroom with wet walls and wet drawers there really wasn't room to put the toilet in order to paint it. Nor, with the toilet in the bedroom was there room to paint the table top.

As the white paint would likely take a while to dry, the next task was to look at the upper rear light clusters. The plan is to switch the red and amber lenses so they mirror the arrangement on the lower cluster, prior to wiring the uppers in to repeat the lowers. By reusing the lights and repurposing them, it gives traffic further behind more of an indication of turning and braking which, given the appalling driving in South Carolina, the drivers badly need.

I put the stepladder in place and sent up the ladder. Darn it! My interchangeable bit screwdriver wouldn't fit. Time to find my standard screwdriver. Of course, after an hours hunting, it could not be located. It wasn't in my bus nor my car. While hunting in my car, I found my LED sign had been broken - probably by shifting lumber on one of my lumber trips. Not welcome but since it paid for itself and isn't likely to be used again, probably best to pitch it or switch out the display with my old original LED display if that's still findable.

One of the most onerous tasks is washing out brushes and rollers. I tend to automate the process but do wonder whether washing out rollers is ever worth the effort.

After a suitable or even a wholly unsuitable break, I headed out and looked at the paintwork. The drawers and walls were dry enough to continue work so the ready painted drawers were replaced in their respective homes. The three remaining drawers were pulled out and painted. The emergency door which could not be fully painted earlier due to rain had a coat of white on the lower half. The corners of the bathroom that could not be reached with the roller had white paint applied.

Then it was time to paint the bedroom table. The toilet still being in the bedroom was moved to a more suitable location where upon a few minutes were spent sitting on the toilet while painting the tabletop. After that, two sides of the toilet had a coat of white paint. Judging by the way the white paint is now down to quarter of a can, I might have to buy more.

Tomorrow and Wednesday being work days, little is likely to be done though Wednesday being a very short morning means a trip to Lowe's is likely.

As of now, the bathroom countertop needs paint, the toilet needs a lot more paint, the galley needs a second coat of purple paint and the white areas of the galley need another coat. The drawer handles need to be installed, countertops screwed down and a layer of vinyl tiles applied to the countertops. If course the shower base still needs to be installed. Other than that and the few hundred things I have temporarily forgotten, its just electrics and water that need installing. I'm quite pleased with progress!

Sherwin Williams horrible wrong color matching app

Being somewhat lazy, a few weeks ago, I used Sherwin Williams color matching app on my phone. To say the color doesn't even faintly match is very much of an understatement. It's kinda sorta the same blue but ten times darker than it should be. The app was trying to match the color of the paint Carpenter used on the inside. I used daylight and an open door to match the color. The paint was on the inside of the door and the door was swung wide open with sunlight directly illuminating the paint and the app still got it wrong.

The paint is very nice but way off the shade it should be. I'd have been better off using color swatches. Having bought the paint, which is non returnable, I used it. It's not right but it'll do.

So, aside from that, today I worked hard putting white paint on things. The bits missed by my roller inside my closet got painted. The underside and supports of the bedroom table were painted. The inside of the galley door was painted. By then there was so much fresh paint it wasn't really possible to do much more without waiting for paint to dry.

Having been indoors for a while cooling off, painting was resumed. The vertical beam of the table had the other two faces painted an the latest cupboard door was painted on the inside. Having compketed that, the accursed blue paint was put on the front of the front partition.

Returning after yet another break while the blue dried, the bedroom table was installed in its correct position. It's not really level and the column isn't quite vertical but neither are that far off.

It needs a coat of white paint on the top but it looks pretty good. As usual, the screws were problematic to put through the floor but it worked in the end.

In other news, I found I have a lot of tiny black ants scurrying around inside. From reading, its unlikely that they're termites or Carpenter ants. Mind, since the majority of my wood is treated, I'm puzzled as to why they're there. Still, I let a bug bomb off and closed the bus. If they're not all dead by the time I open the bus tomorrow, I'll be surprised. I'm prepared to have to do two or three treatments in order to nail offspring. Worst case scenario, I have to go and spray every crevice with bug spray.

No pictures but a lot of work

Today got off to a late start but start I did. Going to the bus with the intention of doing something simple - putting green paint in the bathroom - I found as usual that I ended up doing something totally different.

Wanting to get the bedroom table done and out of the way, priming was the obvious thing to do. As the cockpit, closet, drawers and toilet needed priming also, I started in the cockpit. The closet was a bit rushed because it was hot leaning in there so there are gaps. I'll fix those anothger day.

The cockpit walls are well primed though perhaps I should also have primed the floor since it is bare plywood. After the cockpit I moved on and primed some of the toilet before printing the beam in the bedroom and the underside of the table.

Needless to say, as it was over 100F in the bus, I did take several breaks. At one point I had to add water to the paint to thin it as it was getting thick in the heat. I continued on and primed most faces of the drawers and the topside of the table. The new cupboard door saw primer too.

By the time the last drawer had received paint, the light was beginning to fade. I popped the brush in a can of water to keep it soft and left, admiring the fact the cockpit now looks a load better.

Tomorrow is a shopping day. I need solely bolts to lock the drawers shut. I might also get more brushes and rollers. I know I have several brushes but it was all I could do today to find just one!

Of one thing I am certain - the way I'm rip-roaring along, the bus will be painted by the end of the week. Meanwhile, some weeks ago, I glued two pieces of PVC plank together. Looking at it today, that joint is now rock solid. I know exactly what I'm going to build my shower base mount out of! Yup - PVC planks glued together and glued to my PVC floor!

Almost momentous achievements?

This is my almost table. Today, after yesterday shaping the plywood, I mounted a beam on the wall and some supporting beams. Getting to the critical point, cutting the 2x4, the circular saw stopped.

Wiggling the saw flex produced brief spurts of saw power. Then I saw a section wrapped with tape. Unwrapping the tape revealed that the cable had at some time been cut in two. One can only presume that the operator at the time considered the cable a bit long, tried to shorten it then had a change of heart. The ends of the wires had clearly been pressed together and had clearly parted.

Whipping out my trusty soldering iron, I sat in a hit bus with a hot soldering iron, repairing the cord. Lacking electrical tape, I used duct tape but that'll work. A few moments later, the deed was done. The saw once more worked.

Having cut my beam ready to bolt to the table as the new leg, I took a break and fitted a lock to a cupboard door. The lock turned out not to be that great. If I bang the door, it pops open. Very unsatisfactory so I'll be looking for better locks. To add insult to injury the power ran out on the cordless drill!

Having pretty much come to an end for construction, I looked around and my dissatisfaction with the window tint I'd applied resurfaced. I peeled the film off one of the two windows with poorly applied film, cleaned the glass and put a new film on. That having gone well, I repeated the process with the other window. I'm sure you'll agree it looks better!

Looking down the bus from the bedroom, its shaping up nicely.

It'll probably take me a couple of days to paint the support post and table but when I've erected it, that represents the end of major internal construction. After that I have handles and latches to install in the kitchen, quite a bit of painting and cleaning. By Friday next week, I assume that I'll have finished. I must admit that though there's external work, its nice to have got this far single handedly.

Advances all around

The first thing I did was to try to replace the film on the back window. Clearly I didn't take enough care because the film suddenly started folkding in on itself and sticking to itself. After trying vainly to untangle it in a very hot bus while it became ever more stuck and entangled, I gave in to the inevitable and threw that piece away. The next piece went on brilliantly. I suspect the problem was that rather than preparing it next to the window, I'd prepared it further away and the motion of moving it halfway down the bus had set it swinging into catastrophe. It was amplified by the fact that piece was rather large and hence more prone to problems. My fault and not the fault of the film nor the supplier.

The end result looks excellent as I'm sure you'll agree. I have a feeling though that the water could do with a little more soap. I'll have to attend to that when I do my next windows. The first set of side windows have bubbles. I'm not really sure whether it's worth doing but out of duty, I might. I like to keep my best foot forward.

After the window and a break, I took the cupboard door I made and trimmed off the excess hardboard then sanded the edges. I did think about hinges but today's task was drawers.

The new 16 inch drawer runner was installed fairly quickly then the base of the drawer. I did have an idea of retarding one of the drawers because it protrudes too far but I never got to that.

The two bottom drawers sides and backs were large and could not be built using 1x4 which was rather a good thing seeing as how my remaining piece of 2x4 is about 8 inches long! Thus they had to be cut from plywood. I'm slowly working my way through my plywood supply. The question now is whether I use the large piece of plywood as a bedroom table and use scraps for the drawer fronts or build drawer fronts and find something else for the bedroom table.

Building the drawer backs and sides was not easy as I don't have a jig. My solution was to pre cut all the pieces then to pre drill some holes then glue everything and while the tackiness of the glue held everything together, completed drilling the holes, inserting screws as I went. It all seemed to work quite well.

I'll be the first to say I'm not a carpenter and that my carpentry displays this but even the most cynical skeptic has to admit that I've taken on a massive project and that I'm achieving my goals.

Tomorrow will be all about mounting cabinet doors, making drawer fronts and attaching them. Indeed, this might evev take a few days!