Category Archives: Alpine Coach

RV Renovators – Day 24 – Five Colors

While I was watching Steve mask an area he had painted in preparation for the next color, one of the service guys stopped by. He mentioned how labor intensive repainting a coach is. I agreed with him. He told me he often gets requests from customers to do a “spot repair” on peeling clear coat. Then when he explains what’s needed to repair it right, they’re shocked at the cost.

Clear coat on a two-stage paint system contains UV inhibitors to prevent the base (color) coat from deteriorating due to exposure to sun light. Peeling clear coat can be a indication of the base coat deteriorating. You can’t just shoot clear coat over the area and call it good.

As Steve was masking, I realized I was wrong about the number of colors in our paint scheme. Earlier I said it was four colors but it’s actually five colors. I wasn’t counting the base layer that makes the 1/4″ stripe between the other colors. So what I was calling the first color was really the second color.

Second color masked and Steve is spraying the next color

The blue areas you see in the photos are painter’s tape masking the previous coat of paint. We don’t have any blue paint.

After each color, Steve masked the freshly painted area, then sanded the overspray with 800 grit sand paper and Scotch-Brite pads and wiped everything clean with solvent.

Third color on and masked

The fourth color covered large areas and is masked with paper

All five colors revealed

Now the end is in sight. Steve will touch up a few spots, lightly sand the surface and apply clear coat. Once the clear is cured, it will be wet-sanded in stages with with fine grit, then buffed for a final polish.

With the weekend upon us, we’ll have a few more days here at RV Renovators before we’re done.

Donna made it home from her trip to Vieques around 9:30pm Friday night. It was a long day of travel. She had a great time there and she’s feeling refreshed after spending a week in the sun and sand – although she may have caught some kind of cold virus on her flight there. Hours of flying in a crowded airplane can spread a lot of germs. She still has a rough throat, but nothing too debilitating.

We’re expecting the temperature to reach nearly 80 degrees today and tomorrow with a chance of rain moving in Sunday night. I don’t know if rain will affect the final steps of finishing the coach. I hope not.

RV Renovators – Day 23 – Paint

Thursday morning Steve sprayed the first base coat of paint. He started by spraying a fine, misty tack coat. This fine spray isn’t meant to cover the panel, it just puts down a very light coat that sticks and creates a tacky surface for the next pass to adhere to.

Steve spraying over the tack coat

Once he had this first color applied, he carefully inspected the surface. He found two flaws – tiny chips in the gelcoat that I doubt I would have even seen if he hadn’t pointed them out. He filled these spots with polyester resin. Once it set, he sanded the areas smooth and painted them again.

Filling a flaw

First color applied

This first color coat provides a base that seals the entire surface. The thing is, this color is only needed for the 1/4″ stripes that separate the other colors in the final design. Once the design is taped with 1/4″ tape, this coat will be painted over in the other three colors used. When all of the colors are done, the 1/4″ tape will be pulled off, revealing the stripes.

Taping the design on the slide out wall is a long, tedious process. At the factory, they use templates to outline the design and can mask the design quickly. Steve had to re-create the design free-hand. He did this by looking at the original panel that was removed from the wall and matching the existing points where the slide out meets the rest of the body. With the slide pulled in, all of the lines and colors need to match up.

Taping the design

There’s no way I could have done this. It takes patience, attention to detail and downright obsession with perfection. Steve made several attempts with each tape stripe before he was satisfied. He would lay out a line, then see a tiny squiggle or an arc that he didn’t like and he would pull the tape up and start over. Once he had it down to a point where it looked good to me, he would continue to adjust the tape line until he felt it was perfect.

Around 4pm I left. I rode the Spyder to Mike Hall’s place and retrieved some supplies from the trailer. Then I went to Lucky Lou’s where I had a couple of cold ones with Mike and Jodi Hall.

When I returned to RV Renovators, they were done working for the day. Steve had started spraying another color. Once the areas of this color are painted, he’ll mask over the color up to the 1/4″ tape lines. Then he can do the same process with the next color. When the last color is applied and cured, all the masked areas will be uncovered and we’ll see the result.

More color

Then it will only be a matter of applying the clear coat, wet sanding and buffing to the final gloss.

Donna is traveling back home today. Her week in Vieques went all to quickly for her – although I’m looking forward to her return. I’m sure she’ll have lots of stories to tell me. She won’t arrive here until 9pm or later.

We’re expecting the temperature today to match yesterday’s high of 84 degrees. The weekend should be a little cooler, but the rain they were predicting has disappeared from the forecast.

RV Renovators – Days 21- 22 – High Expectations

Achieving good results from a paint job requires meticulous preparation. This is especially true when the panel you’re painting is flat and more than a 100 square feet of area. When the finish is applied, the smallest preparation flaws will show.

More sanding with guide coat

After another morning of sanding, I moved the coach after lunch on Tuesday. I drove it to the dump station first – it had been only eight days but I thought I should dump the tanks since I was moving.

I set up the coach next to the paint booth. The painter, Steve had previously worked at a custom car shop. He excels at applying multi-colored paint schemes and is very picky about the surface preparation. He filled the corners of the edge moldings. Then he decided to use polyester resin to fill the entire joints where the edge moldings meets the sidewall. He told me there were small gaps in places and when the finish is applied the small gaps will show. They’re sealed underneath so no moisture would get through, but the paint wouldn’t look smooth over the gaps.

Polyester resin on the corner

Moldings filled with polyester resin and primed

This took more time to sand the resin and create a crisp edge along the moldings.

New site next to the paint booth

I looked at a couple of coaches that Steve recently painted. One, a Sportcoach, had been repaired and painted on the entire rear cap and some of the rear quarter. The areas Steve painted looked better than the factory paint. The areas where the color scheme changed color had slight ridge lines in the factory paint that I could feel with my fingers. The newly painted sections were totally smooth. The other coach was a Winnebago Tour and the factory paint had a slight orange peel look in places. The areas Steve painted were smooth as glass.

I have high expectations for the final finish on our new living room slide skin. Wednesday morning went by with more sanding and surface cleaning. The cleaning and degreasing took a lot of time. In the afternoon Steve started masking but was pulled off the job to handle an emergency repair that took about an hour. When he returned, Armando came with him to help.

They applied masking tape to the backside of the moldings which extended sticky side up about an inch beyond the edge of the molding. Then I pulled the living room slide in. The slide will stay in until the paint work is done. It’s a good thing to have a floor plan that’s usable with the slide in. The masking tape along the edge of the molding gave them a way to mask right up to the edge without overlapping any of the molding.

They used paper over the windows and around the slide. They also put paper on the roof, A/C covers and satellite dome. The front and rear of the coach were covered with plastic sheets.

Masked and ready for paint

The last thing Steve did was checking the color match of the Diamant paint. Meanwhile another worker started stripping the front lower panel. I’m having that refinished while were at it. It had large stone chips that were beginning to peel in areas.

Today we’ll finally start getting painted. The forecast looks good – we should reach 80 degrees today and tomorrow with zero percent chance of rain. Rain is likely to come over the weekend.

RV Renovators – Day 20 – Gelcoat

A big repair job like the one we’re going through on our coach requires patience. The guys performing the work have to patiently work through several steps to get the body work right. The owner of the coach (me) needs to remain patient as the work is done – pushing to rush the job is not a good plan. I want it done right – I can see they are very detailed in what they’re doing and I’m giving them space and time to get it done.

I mentioned before that the body guys – Izzy and his assistant Armando – speak English as a second language. Izzy speaks pretty good English, Armando not so much. Technical terminology gets lost in translation though.

Last week I described the process to ‘glass and prime the seams. Izzy called it primer. When they applied a catalyst over the “primer” I was surprised. I’m not up on the latest techniques, but I never heard of a two-part catalyzed primer before. Yesterday Levi Germaine was checking the work and discussing the next steps with the guys. I asked him a few questions. It turns out the material Izzy was calling primer was actually gelcoat resin. This made sense. They use gelcoat to seal the seams and flatten the surface before the final finish is applied.

Gelcoat provides a high quality , smooth finish. However, it’s harder to sand than a traditional primer coat. Levi told me they only use a primer for small repairs – large fiberglass repairs are always sealed with gelcoat.

Yesterday they finished installing the edge moldings and put the windows back in. I set up the suspended bed for Ozark the cat with suction cups on the large living room window.

Ozark the cat’s window bed

At this point the painter, Steve, is taking over the job. He looked the surface over and said it wasn’t flat and smooth enough. He sprayed it with black guide paint. This morning he’s block sanding the surface by hand.

Windows are in and more sanding to be done

At some point I’ll have to move the coach. Steve doesn’t want to paint it in the paint booth. He would rather paint it outside in natural light to better match the original finish.

Yesterday the clouds remained all day – I thought it might even rain at one point. But it stayed dry out and the temperature reached the upper-60s. We should be in the 70s today and will hit 80 degrees by Thursday.

I’m trying to remain patient, but I wonder how much longer I’ll be here at the RV Renovators shop.

RV Renovaters – Days 18-19

No work was performed on the coach over the weekend. I discovered more work was done Friday afternoon than I reported in my last post. One of the basement doors was damaged, presumably by the one of the hoofs of the deer that slammed into the side of the coach.

I didn’t notice it right away as it’s partially hidden with the living room slide deployed, but they fixed the ding and it’s ready for paint.

Ding in basement door fixed

I spent most of Saturday morning reading. At noon I rode the Spyder down to Jason’s Deli on Baseline Road a few miles from here. I had one of my favorite sandwiches for lunch – the muffuletta made with ham, salami, provolone and olive spread.

After lunch I visited Howard Graff at his place. I hung out and fondled his gun collection. We’ll have to hit the gun range one of these days. Other than that, I didn’t do much on Saturday. With Donna away I just hung out with Ozark the cat and read a book.

Sunday morning I rode the Spyder down Main Street to the Quick Trip. Quick Trip is a privately held company with headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They have stores in eleven states which are gas stations with convenience stores. The also prepare food to go on site. I wanted to try their breakfast pizza that our friend Joel Myaer told us about.

The breakfast pizza is a thin pizza crust topped with sausage gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage bits, bacon bits and cheese. It was good but a personal size pizza was enough for two meals. With Donna away I’m not following a very healthy diet.

I planned to go to a Superbowl party at Mike and Kim Childs house. Around noon I thought I should try our satellite and see if it was possible get reception. I hadn’t even tried it because I was sure we would still be blocked by the building next to us and the canopy over our roof. To my amazement, it found the signal and I had reception. I went online and opened a chat with Dish Network support and changed my location from San Diego to Mesa and got local Phoenix broadcasts.

With that done, I tuned in the Superbowl pregame show. I decided to pass on the Superbowl party. I knew I would want to have a few beers during the game and I also tend to get a little animated at times during football games. If I went to the party I would have taken an Uber ride – it’s over 10 miles each way and I wouldn’t want to be on the road on the Spyder after the game. I thought it was best if I just hung out in the coach where I could yell at the TV without making a fool of myself.

The first half looked like an Atlanta blow out. The second half was an epic comeback by New England and the game went to overtime. What an entertaining Superbowl.

The weather was nice all weekend with the temperature reaching the upper-70s. Donna sent me a photo of sunset behind the band at an outdoor bar in Vieques. I think she’s enjoying the warmer weather and better scenery there.

Sunset behind the band

Today we have high, thin clouds and the temperature should reach the 70s again. Izzy and Armando are finishing up the edge trim. They need to seal all of the trim, then block sand a few areas before they put the windows in. I think Steve will start painting tomorrow.

 

RV Renovaters – Day 16 – Smooth

I wrote in yesterday’s post how smooth the fiberglass lay up over the seams was. I also wrote that I thought we’d be ready for primer. I was wrong.

Izzy explained to me that although it felt very smooth when I ran my fingers over the seam, there were still high and low areas. These aren’t detectable by running you fingers over the seam – but you would detect them visually once the finish was applied. There were surely some pinholes as well that would show up when it’s painted.

So, Armando coated the seams with a two-part lightweight filler. He sanded them flat with a long narrow air operated sander. It was about a foot long and a couple of inches wide. Paint and body guys call this tool an air file.

First filler stage

After he sanded the filler he applied a spray paint called Guide Coat. This sprays a very thin coat of black paint over the filler. Then he hit the filler with the air file again. The black spray was removed from the high spots first and remained in the low spots. This way he could decide if he needed another layer of filler or if he could sand the area flat.

Guide Coat

He spent about six hours applying filler and sanding the surface.

A high spot where he sanded through the filler

When he was satisfied with the surface, he applied a glaze coat. This sealed the filler and closed out any pinholes that may still be there. The filler and glaze are two-part products with a catalyst. This allows them to cure and be sandable in about 30 minutes.

Glaze applied

Armando was spreading the glaze coat when Donna and I headed out at 3pm. We rode the Spyder over to the Graff’s house to pick up a package Donna had delivered there. Then we went to Lucky Lou’s to catch up with the usual suspects.

Jodi, Mike Hall, Donna, Ray, Kim, Leendert and Mike Childs

Donna wanted to visit with them before she leaves for her trip to Vieques.

It was another nice day weather wise with the temperature in the mid-70s. But, once the sun sets it cools off quickly. We decided to get take-out from the Thai Kitchen next door to Lucky Lou’s rather than dine-in and have a cold ride home after dinner.

When we got home I saw that the glaze had been sanded smooth. Now we’re ready for primer – I’ll see how that goes today. The final finish paint will take four or five days. There are four colors to apply plus clear coat and complex masking to recreate the original paint scheme.

This morning Donna woke me up at dark-thirty – it was 4am. I walked her out to the gate and unlocked it so she could meet her Uber driver. Her flight was scheduled at 6am and the Uber driver picked her up at about 4:30am. She should be in Vieques around 4pm local time. I locked the gate and went back to bed!

 

RV Renovaters – Day 15 – Lost Folder

You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? As the seams on our fiberglass composite walls were completed yesterday, I took a series of 10 pictures to document the process. I put the photos into a folder on my smartphone, then accidentally deleted the folder! That’s right, ten thousand words worth of photos gone.

I looked at recovery apps last night, but in the end, I just had accept the fact that they’re gone. So, I’ll try to describe the process as best as I can. This was probably the most interesting part of the job. I had some misconceptions early on in the process of repairing the slide wall regarding how they were planning to do the work. I put this down to me talking to too many people here – many of whom only really knew a small part of the process. Also, communication was difficult with some workers as English is not their native language and technical descriptions can be lost in translation.

All of the screws and aluminum angle holding the panels tight as the adhesive dried were removed. After that, Armando used a pneumatic sanding disc along the length of all of the seams. He sanded through the fiberglass down to the plywood backing about a half an inch on either side of the seam.

After cleaning the seams again, he used a thick slurry made of milled (chopped) fiberglass and resin to fill the gaps in the seams. Then he cut strips of fiberglass mat – this is different than cloth. It wasn’t woven like cloth, the mat has the individual fibers in a random orientation. The strips were about an inch wide.

He saturated the strips with resin and then placed them over the seams. He used three plies of the fiberglass mat. Then the final layer was applied. This was individual strands of fiberglass – it was like the mat but shredded and loose. He saturated handfuls of fiberglass with resin then pressed it over the strips of mat. He used a special steel roller about a half inch in diameter to flatten the fiberglass/resin and ensure that no air bubbles were present.

This sealed the seams and made the sheets of fiberglass composite into one continuous piece. No filler or bondo was used – it’s all fiberglass. After the resin cured, he used a DA sander to smooth the seams. They’re so flat and smooth, I can’t feel the seam when I run my fingers over it.

Seams filled and ‘glassed

Finished seam smooth as glass

This is excellent workmanship and I’m very happy with the results so far.

Next they’ll have to install and seal the edge moldings and then we should be ready for primer and the paint shop.

We couldn’t ask for better weather here in Mesa, Arizona. Yesterday we had clear skies and the thermometer hit the mid-70s. It looks like we’ll continue to be in the 70s with a few clouds in the coming week, then it’ll warm up!

Donna will finish packing for her trip today and we’ll go out for dinner this evening. Tomorrow morning she has a 6am flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico then a commuter flight to Vieques. She’s leaving her laptop behind so she won’t be tempted to work while she recharges on the beach.

That means I won’t have my in-house proofreader and editor to review my posts for the next week. Or my personal chef. Yes, I’m going to miss my wife.

RV Renovators – Day 15

The work started slowly on Tuesday morning. I think they wanted full sun on the living room slide-out wall before they removed the clamps and added the last two panels.

One of the guys routered out the window openings for the living room window and the front half of the galley window. While they were working on this, another worker named Steve knocked on the door. Steve is the painter who will put the finish on the wall.

He found paint codes for the colors but didn’t have any information on the actual paint system used. He asked me if I knew what it was – he was looking for a brand name like Sikkens or Dupont.

I knew the original supplier was Industrial Finishes in Eugene, Oregon but I didn’t know for sure what they used. They were the supplier for Western RV and Monaco and maybe others as well. I called Industrial Finishes and they were very helpful. They told me the paint was custom-blended two-stage base coat/clear coat called Diamant from BASF. They also told me the old paint codes are useless – they’re obsolete and don’t reference to a formula. He said the painter should call them and they would provide the formulas needed. I relayed this information to Steve.

In the afternoon, they put the two rear panels in place. This was a repeat of the work performed the day before, but it went a little quicker because the panels were smaller and easier to handle.

Rear panels in place

Last night, I heard something crashing down to the ground. I took a flashlight and went out to investigate. The smaller upper board applying pressure against the panel had fallen down. I used a ladder and put it back in place. Sometime in the night it fell off again, but I think the adhesive was set up well enough by then.

They draped a padded blanket over the living room window to give us a little insulation overnight – there’s plastic sheeting on the inside. The outside temperature was 39 degrees when we got up this morning and it was 59 in the coach.

I fired up an electric heater in the living room and the heat pump in the bedroom. My front heat pump won’t run – I think I need to install a hard start capacitor, but I won’t get to that until we leave RV Renovators. I can’t work on my coach while we’re here due to their insurance regulations.

Oscillating electric heater

The temperature reached 75 degrees yesterday with calm winds. We expect more of the same today. Donna went down to the FedEx office to work at one of their work stations and escape the noise of the shop. She’s had 8 articles due over the past two weeks and finally got caught up on her work.

Living at the workshop hasn’t been the ideal set-up – but we’re adaptable. At least we have nice weather instead the cold, windy, rainy conditions we had the first week here. I mentioned in a previous post that Donna is ready to get away from it all and take a break from work.

She’s leaving for what she’s calling a personal health and wellness retreat early Friday morning and flying to a Puerto Rican island called Vieques (map). She traveled there about 20 years ago and wants to re-visit the quiet beaches. She’ll be gone for a week recharging her batteries.

Meanwhile, I’ll hang out here to ensure the work gets completed without any hitches. I’ve heard many a horror story of work coming to a standstill when the coach is left unoccupied. I can understand how it happens – I managed a car dealership service department many years ago. There’s always some kind of fire drill and workers can get pulled off a job if there’s something seemingly more urgent that needs to be done – I don’t want that to happen.

Today they’ll grind the seams and fill them, then lay up fiberglass over the seams. After this sets up, the next step will be to sand the seams flat. At that point, the wall will be one continuous fiberglass composite sheet and we’ll be ready for paint. The paint job will take a week – there are four colors involved and a lot of complex masking to get the pattern right.

If all goes as planned, we’ll be out of here at the end of next week when Donna returns from Vieques.

 

RV Renovators – Day 14 – Coming Together

When the owner and president of Germaine’s RV Sales and RV Renovators, Monte Germaine, came to our coach on Monday morning, he explained why he changed the repair plan. He told me the original thought of installing wood studs was made by the crew before they understood the construction of our Alpine Coach. They were thinking of some entry level trailers and coaches that come from the factory with wood construction. He knew an Alpine and other coaches that have all metal framing should be repaired with metal, not wood.

The guys spent Monday morning cleaning up remnants of plywood and grinding the surface of the aluminum structure. They inlaid more rectangular aluminum tubing to support the seams of the new exterior skin.

All cleaned up

Additional tubing in place

At noon another worker named James came over to TIG weld the new sections of tubing. He first disconnected the power supply and batteries to avoid damage to electrical components from the arc welder.

New tubing welded

Izzy then ground the welds flat.

Welds ground flat

The heat from the welder melted some of the foam insulation blocks, creating voids. Izzy filled these voids with urethane.

Voids filled

Clean and ready for the next step

After some more cleaning of the aluminum and the channels in the trim, it was time to add adhesive. They used black urethane adhesive made by Dow called Betaseal U-418HV. This urethane is commonly used to bond windshields on automobiles. It creates a high-strength waterproof bond that remains flexible.

Urethane adhesive for the first panel

Getting the first panel in place was problematic. They got it inside the lower trim without too much trouble, but had issues trying to seat it under the front edge trim. They decided to remove the front edge trim so they could ensure the panel was properly aligned.

Once they had the panel placed properly, they installed temporary screws and added aluminum angle channels in places to apply pressure against the underlying framework. These temporary screws and lengths of channel were mostly placed in areas where the fiberglass skin will either be cut out – such as the window openings – or ground along seams before the seams are filled.

Inside the living room they placed a 3/4″ x 1-1/4″ hardwood beam across the window opening and used long screws to pull the fiberglass against the window opening. They added aluminum angle across the bottom of the window opening to hold it tight against the lower opening.

Pulling the skin tight against the living room window opening

They added a second section of fiberglass composite skin above the window opening. At the end of the day, the front half of the slide-out had fiberglass skin. They used a forklift against a 4″ x 4″ beam and a section of plywood to apply additional pressure against the skin overnight.

First half of the new skin in place

The fiberglass has a thin plastic protective sheet over the outer surface. The black smears and hand prints will disappear once this sheet is peeled off and paint prep begins.

I had a visitor in the morning, Jim Haxby. He’s a fellow Alpine Coach owner and saw my posts about the work being performed. He lives here in Mesa and came by to see how the work is progressing. We talked for a while as I observed the work.

Later, Donna and I rode the Spyder over to Mike Hall’s place and I got her bicycle out of our trailer. She went for a ride while I went to Lucky Lou’s for a cold one with the guys. It was a beautiful day for a ride – the temperature was in the upper 70s and there wasn’t any wind to speak of. Today we expect another cloudless, sunny day with the temperature reaching the mid-70s. Perfect for bonding the new skin on the coach.

 

 

RV Renovators – Days 11-12-13 – Changes

On Friday, they accomplished pretty much what I expected at RV Renovators – then they did something I didn’t expect. After a meeting with Izzy, Levi and the owner and president of RV Renovators and Germaine RV sales, Monty Germaine, Monty revised the plan for the new siding.

Monty didn’t want them to use wood studs in the reconstruction, he wanted rectangular aluminum tubing instead. He also came up with a new layout for the panels. Instead of orienting them vertically and cutting the excess height, he wants to lay them horizontally. This will result in fewer seams and a much more efficient use of panels.

They finished cleaning up the framing and removing all traces of plywood – except for one square in the upper right corner of the slide out which is necessary as it backs the microwave/convection oven. Then they made a trench in the foam block insulation and put 2-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ rectangular aluminum tubing studs place.

Aluminum stud in place

This took all day to accomplish, then they knocked off for the weekend.

Saturday I had to send a FedEx letter. Donna and I walked to the FedEx store about one mile west of here on Main Street. On the way there, we saw a temporary race track for electric-powered radio-controlled (RC) cars in the lot of a business. On the way back, we stopped there to watch.

They were practicing for the afternoon’s races. It was chilly out – in the mid-60s but windy. We hung out for about 15 minutes and watched the quick RC cars lapping the track. We could clearly see some of the cars had better set-ups than others. Some of them cornered like they were on rails while others over-steered with the rear end sliding out through the turns. Obviously the skill of the driver comes into play as well.

RC cars on the track

Guys working on their set-up in the pits

We wanted to stop at a fish and chips place for lunch on our way back. When we crossed main street at the restaurant, we found it was out of business! We back-tracked to a Vietnamese Pho place and found it was closed as well. I guess times have been tough for small restaurants in this area. We ended up having lunch at home – I cooked some ramen noodle with leftover chicken.

Our friends Howard and Sara Graff picked us up Saturday evening. They live a few miles away off Gilbert Road. We had dinner reservations at Baja Joe’s. I had made the reservation for four not knowing their 14 year-old daughter Jenna was coming along. The restaurant accommodated us by giving Jenna a table next to the four-top they had held for us.

We enjoyed our meals and sipped large, excellent margaritas with it. Afterwards we stopped at their house and continued to visit until about 9pm when they dropped us back at RV Renovators.

Sunday was a nice, sunny day. The temperature reached the 70s in the afternoon and I had the coach door open. It was still breezy, but comfortable. Sara and Donna went shopping at the Tempe Marketplace. I hung out and read a book.

When she returned, Donna made guacamole with pomegranate seeds and later cooked a new dish – One Pot Shrimp with Herby White Beans and Tomatoes. She served it with slices of baguette to dip in the sauce and it was excellent – definitely a keeper though Donna will add garlic to the recipe next time.

One pot shrimp

Our stay here at RV Renovators is giving us good practice at ultra water conservation – Donna made our dinner using far fewer cooking utensils than usual.

A pan, colander, bowl and utensils is all it took to make a delicious dinner

On Saturday I hooked up our fresh water hose and filters and filled our fresh water tank. It took about 40 gallons to fill – it’s been 14 days since I last filled it. We’re averaging less than four gallons per day, plus a few gallons of fresh water from jugs we used for coffee.

This morning we woke to sounds of workers back at the shop and music on the radio outside. Monte came by and examined the work performed so far. He told me he expects them to have the aluminum studs welded in place by noon and they’ll start installing the new fiberglass this afternoon.

We expect clear sunny skies all week with daily highs in the mid-70s. The rough southwest winter may be over!