Flooring Debacle

The van still lays in disarray after the trip to Wyoming. The mechanical issues that arose during the trip, along with my redesign of the interior has created a never ending to-do list.

 

In order to tackle the list, today Jackie and I headed to the Home Depot to pick out the vinyl floor that will cover the dirty plywood floor we have been walking on since Wyoming. The van interior will be painted a warm white color with cedar strip trim framing everything up. I took a small chunk of cedar and stained it using Minwax wood finish: Special Walnut 224. I matched the color of the stained wood with our favorite vinyl flooring choice they had, and then proceeded to watch as the employees of the Home Depot wrestled with the online ordering system to complete the order. I would have been a little frustrated but Des and his fellow co-workers were hilarious and in good spirits, so Jackie and I patiently waited for the order to take form. While we waited, I couldn’t help but noticed the onslaught of Christmas music blaring from the speakers hidden somewhere in the giant department store. One of the employees made a comment about the terrible music, and I was transported back to my 7 years of retail working in a grocery store growing up. 40 hours a week from Thanksgiving till Christmas I would hear the same few merry songs on repeat. To this day, I feel nothing but madness anytime I hear a holiday tune. Call me a Scrooge, but I compare it to Chinese water torture. Repeated dullness until you go crazy. Anyways, we bought a 13’ x 5’ roll of the Smokehouse Oak Gunstock vinyl. It should arrive in a couple of weeks.

 

After the Depot visit, I headed out to the van and started working on the kitchenette. The kitchenette will slide in and out from under the bed giving us a solid platform to cook on while simultaneously storing all of our cooking paraphernalia. I built the frame of the actual kitchenette a couple weeks ago, so today I started building the structure that it will slide in and out from. I framed up the side next to the passenger side back window while leaving enough room to still be able to open and close the little side screen windows which will be hidden below the bed. I was hoping to top it off with some thin plywood, but ran out of the necessary materials to do so. Such is life.

 

Once the bed is put into place, Jackie and I will be able to use the van to camp in once again, so this is of the highest priority, followed by the laundry list of other things that still need done. Did I mention that my muffler fell off a few weeks ago? Time to slap a new one on I suppose, lest I lose our hearing on my way to work.

 

That’s all for tonight, until next time!

 

-Dan McCreight

 

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