Furniture and Build Ins « littleyellowdoor

These last few weeks have been a bit mad, and progress has taken a back seat for a while to life and visiting family. Still, I have been working on and off on my storage/shelf/closet and am getting closer to having the hitch end interior walls insulated and paneled.

The storage unit will consist of two contained side closets for clothes or the like and open shelves in the middle that are accessible from the kitchen. I originally had 2 x 2 lumber all ready to go with plans for covering the framing in wall paneling, but I couldn’t make my mind believe that it would turn out very well so I did me some shelf research and changed the whole plan.

Instead, I said screw it to the extra weight and got five, 1 x 12 x 8 pine boards because I just love the way it looks. Most of the time I don’t really know what the heck I’m doing, but know what I wanted to achieve and made the closest thing my abilities could muster. It’s a bit wonky, but it’s probably only me that will notice and think I’m pretty much over the ‘perfect’ thing. Just as well I’m planning on putting non breakable things on these shelves though, most of them have slight, nicely alternating asymmetrical tilts… I should get the middles ones better now I’ve gotten the learning curve.

My flooring arrived yesterday! I say arrived, and by that I meant that I somehow fit it all into my car and drove up the hill a bit slower than usual so as not to upset its precarious balance. It is 3/4″ x 5 1/8″ unfinished white pine tongue and groove boards at 6′ lengths from Lumber Liquidators, great stuff from what I can see so far. I ordered it over a month ago but pine flooring is apparently not in very high demand so it had to get milled and shipped from far off wherever. Don’t think they were too jolly about my needing such a small amount either.

I chose pine for several reasons, and it fit my list of flooring criteria brilliantly. Firstly, I didn’t want a shiny, prefinished floor that I’m afraid to walk on. They’re beautiful, but I’m not big on how the inevitable scratches look white and I don’t like the idea of the lacquer stuff they put on there to begin with. Secondly, I wanted something as light as I could possibly get my hands on. A friend lent me a 3′ piece of 1/2″ bamboo flooring that is really lovely, and weighs easily as much as one of the 6′ pine. Thirdly, I really wanted to get something that didn’t cost me my teeth, and at $1.19 a square foot, it beat out anything I’d previously considered.

My parent’s house has a pine floor and I LOVE it. It’s scratched up like nobody’s business and covered in dents and marks after 20 years of footsteps and dropping things, and I just think it’s beautiful. I suppose you could call it ‘rustic’. Installation will be more of a faff because I’ll have to finish it myself, but I believe it will be worth it in the long run.

In any case, I am going to visit friends on a whirlwind trip to the east coast for two weeks tomorrow. It’s not a very smart decision progress wise and it’s certainly not one of the better financial decision I’ve ever made, but I’m young and allowed to do irresponsibly adventurous things, right? I hope you all have a wonderful April Away I go!

This weekend, my neighbor began the task of running pipes through the walls. Though I worked on more wall paneling and wasn’t much at all involved, it’s a very exciting step to Little Yellow’s housedom and is making a good dent in the list of things about this project that scare the pants off me.

I don’t really know the specifics, but the procedure included an RV water entry, a water filter, a 50 ft roll of semi flexible pipe stuff called pex and a bunch of other plumbing related things that I should probably know the names of. And of course there is the most important part which is my shiny new water heater.

It a tankless model (requiring a 12v connection and propane) called an RV500 from Precision Temp. I’m still not sure how it all works but I believe the 12v DC tells the thing to start working and the propane heats the water as it runs through the pipes. It only runs when a hot tap is turned on so it is supposedly very efficient, and is considerably more compact and lighter than having a 10 gallon tank on board. A review that helped my decision can be found here: http://www.rvdoctor.com/2010/03/product-spotlight-precision-temp-rv-500.html

I looked religiously for a less expensive alternative, but most everything else I found was either not intended for moving structures or not intended for indoor use. I also researched a cheaper competitor by Girard, but heard too many negative comments to be convinced. I spoke with the company I got my heater from before buying it, and they said they had stopped carrying the Girard because of numerous complications. So, I coughed up the funds and bought my very own RV500. It looks pretty mental to me, but my neighbour seems to find it straightforward enough so hopefully it’ll get up and running soonish.

Monday brought a confused little snow storm that has been hovering around the last few days, intermittently dumping down bouts of promising flakes between constant sputters of tiny slushy bits. Basically it’s too soggy for spending extended periods of time outside, so my dad and I have been working in the big house by the fire on my window seat bench. It was finicky and used a shit ton of clamps, but it looks half way decent and I’m looking forward to the sitting part.