My Time at Grandma's

This is the bus as I parked it at my grandmother's house. I was there for two weeks, visiting with my 86 year old grandmother who is in surprisingly great shape. She is out and about feeding chickens, driving the golf cart to visit nearby relatives, and counseling her grandson on the merits of 'settling down'.



I was not allowed to photograph grandma but she did provide me with a pre-approved photo she had of her and my grand-dad (he passed away 2 years ago). I guess grandma doesn't want her image tarnished with unprofessional pictures of her. Good PR work grandma! As soon as I get to a scanner I will put the picture on here.
I decided to go ahead and jump to where I am currently in bus construction because so much has happened in the past few months that it would take too long to ever catch up. I will sprinkle parts in as I can.

Here is a picture of the bus as it looked when I arrived at grandma's.


As you can see it would be nearly impossible for me to get any work done in such tight confines with all my stuff in the way. So I had to go somewhere where I could unload it while I built bed frame and cabinets.

Here is a picture of my stuff outside the bus. Under a tree, under a tent, under tarps. I was dodging rain every afternoon. It threatened to rain everyday but only rained less than half the time. In any case I was running around at the first sound of thunder pulling tarps over everything and putting electrical tools back on the bus.

I did alot of interior work at night when it was cooler, I did all my cutting in the daytime outside. The first thing I tackled was the bed frame. I took the old flimsy box spring and used the wood from it for cabinets later. I built a sturdy bed frame out of 2x4's. Here is a picture of completed picture.

Working outside at night in the country was an interesting experience. Besides protecting myself from getting malaria from the teradactyl sized mosquitos I had to be careful of the giant spiders that worked overtime to feast on the same mosquitos. And they center their webs right at head level just to freak me out.

Every little branch that brushed my hair at night had me flailing my hands over my head like a Pentacostal on Meth. I wore my headlamp religiously. Speaking of religion, one of my grandmother's conditions was that I not work on the Lord's day, which was scaled back by my second Sunday there to 'don't work where the neighbor's will know' on the Lord's day.

I had my own fan club out in God's country. Seems the closest neighbor's, who lived a couple hundred yards away, had three kids who monitored my daily work. Justin who was 10, stopped by first and said whatcha doin'? Pretty soon, Morgan and Tricia, 5 and 18, respectively, came by for a visit. I enjoyed the company, but grandma felt that 18 year old Tricia might be a little too interested in the going's on at the Bordeaux manor. True, they made a point of constantly riding bikes by and calling out Hey an awful lot. Here is a picture of the three of them.


One rainy evening I caught my beefy cat, Oscar contemplating ending his misery due to the near heat stroke inducing weather by huffing silicone caulk. Fortunately he thought better of it.
After finishing the bed frame, my next project was to build up the kichen area. I was getting tired of fishing in totes for food and then hunt for a pot or pan to cook it.




You may have noticed the flooring. The linoleum is compliments of Uncle Donald and Aunt Debbie. They were awesome and some of the most supportive people of my endeavor. They are themselves Motorhome owners and they gave me all kinds of valuable advice as well some nice treats like carbon monoxide detector (invaluable when you run a combustible engine to get your air conditioning and basic electricity), all essential velcro strips, books and magazines on fulltime RV'ing, ironing board, dry food goods and a tour of a real factory made Motorhome. Unfortunately I don't have photos of them. I was so busy working I didn't take many pics when people were around. Aunt Linda and Uncle Wendle were also very generous. Aunt Linda brought me home cooked chicken pot pie. Uncle Wendle owns a hardware store and gave me carpet remnants and hooked me up with plumbing supplies to build my laptop mount. My laptop is my GPS and Radio when driving.

Laptop mount acts as drink holder when I am not driving.