The pace is picking up here at RV Renovators. On Monday, I received a phone call from James, the adjuster from Nationwide insurance. He said he reviewed the supplemental claim and went over it with Jim at RV Renovators. It was approved with one minor change.

I returned the rental car to Enterprise in the afternoon. They gave me a ride to Red, White and Brew where I nursed a couple of cold ones. I tried to get an Uber ride home, but I had trouble scheduling a ride with the app on my phone. I switched to Lyft and found a ride quickly. When I tracked the driver, he was going the wrong way and ended up on the 202 westbound and would have to make a loop to come back to my location.

Lyft sent me a text saying they reassigned the ride to another driver. A few minutes later, I saw a Lyft car pull in. I got in and we headed out. But something was wrong. He didn’t have my destination showing on his app. I told him where I wanted to go. Then my phone rang – it was another Lyft driver saying she was there to pick me up.

I had gotten in with the first driver – he wasn’t notified to cancel and now the second driver was there to pick me up. Then I got a another message telling me I would be charged a five dollar cancellation fee for the second driver. I was going to call their service center on Tuesday and protest the fee, but I see they only charged the cancellation – I wasn’t charged for the ride home. I’ll keep an eye on my credit card account – if no other charges come through, five dollars is a cheap ride home.

On Monday, the window awning, slide topper and a few other accoutrements were removed from the living room slide. On Tuesday, they started on the edge moldings. I thought these moldings were mostly decorative – they hide the seam when the slide is pulled in. The moldings are about an inch and a half wide.

There are two guys performing the work. The lead guy is Izzy and he has an assistant. Izzy directs the assistant who is working full-time on our coach. Izzy bounces between a couple of projects and is at our coach maybe 50% of the time. He showed me how the molding is actually an extrusion that wraps around the edge of the fiberglass and extends behind the wall of the slide. The molding is more than two and a half inches deep and it’s a complex shape.

They’re concerned about breaking a molding as they’re unsure if a replacement is even available. Many of the screws on the edge of the molding snapped when they tried to remove them. This complicates the removal of the fiberglass skin. The outer fiberglass shell is actually a composite made up of a fiberglass surface which is about 1/8″ thick and it’s bonded to a plywood backing that’s another 1/8″ thick.

Behind the composite skin, there’s a moisture barrier, then a two and a half inch thick foam insulation block and finally the interior wall. Through a combination of cutting away sections of the skin and pulling the skin from underneath the molding, they got the rear edge molding off.

Rear edge molding removed

This is a very slow process, but progress is being made. We think they will be ready to pull the windows out tomorrow and then the entire fiberglass composite skin will come off.

Meanwhile it’s been cold here. The highs only reached 60 on Monday and 57 on Tuesday. Last night the thermometer dipped to 36 degrees outside and it was 54 degrees in the coach when I woke up. The forecast says it will remain cold until the weekend. By next week, we should have temperatures reaching the low to mid 70s. When they take out the windows and cover the openings with plastic sheet, I expect it to get chilly in here.

With the rain last week and cold temperatures this week, we’ve been cooped up in the coach. This is beginning to wear on Donna and she’s making plans to head out to a warm, sunny beach. I’ll stay here until the job is done. We’ve heard too many stories of work grinding to halt when the owner isn’t on site. I don’t want any more delays.

I’ve been killing time reading books and playing a little guitar. Since we’ve been here, I’ve been playing my acoustic guitar which I hadn’t touched in a while. It’s a 2001 Gibson L-130 and I’m really enjoying it.

Gibson L-130

It has a mahogany neck with rosewood fretboard and abalone rosettes. The top is spruce and the sides and back are bubinga. It’s a lovely instrument and sounds great – my playing needs improvement – I’m talking about the tone of the guitar.

I’ll tell you more about Donna’s trip plans in a future post.