MOTORHOME STUFF - STEAM CLEANING RV CARPET - PAINTING FRONT PORCH

This blog starts out with some motorhome stuff. While we were gone on our vacation, it was our anniversary. We usually decide to buy something that we both want together and that will be our anniversary present to ourselves. We didn't find anything while we were traveling, but we decided that we really could use a new set of pots and pans for the RV. 

We waited until we got home to order them, and we are lucky that we did. They happened to be on sale, and we saved quite a bit.

We had seen another YouTube RVing couple, actually two different couples now, that had these nice pots and pans that had detachable handles. They are just perfect in an RV because they stack together and take up less space. Both of those couples seem to have great reviews about them and have been using them for quite some time. So we thought we would look into it. 

The brand is called "Carote", and they even feature the fact that they are great for RVs because they stack together.

They have different colors in different assortments of different various pans. We looked through all of them to find the set that seemed to fit our needs the best:

We chose this one because we wanted the darker color, and we wanted a variety of fry pan sizes and deeper sauce pans than what we currently have. It also came with a set of knives and some cooking utensils that we really didn't need, but they were nice to get along with the whole deal. 

Here's the link to Amazon for the set that we purchased: 

CAROTE 33pcs Pots and Pans Set Non Stick, Cookware Set, Removable Handle Pots and Pans Nonstick, RV

We had a lot of fun opening them up and checking them all out. We really do a lot of cooking, together, in the RV when we travel. We rarely go to restaurants. So this would really be a wonderful gift for the both of us. 

The detachable handles were pretty cool, and I could see where they would make it really easy to stack things up into a drawer or a cabinet without handles sticking out.

We registered the kettles for the warranty and showed our proof of purchase for one year.

Here they are all stacked up. The brown felted flower-shaped petals are underneath the stack in this photo. Further on in the blog you will see where they go when the kettles are in transit. 

All in all, it's three fry pans, a large 5 qt saute pan/wok and three sauce pans, and a special egg pan.  There are three detachable handles that can fit onto any of the pans when needed. It came with assorted glass lids and some snap on plastic sealing storage lids to store food in the refrigerator. Plus a nice stainless steel steamer basket that can double as a strainer/colander.

I also like that it comes with a four quart saucepan, my last set only had a three quart and two quart. Four is much more usable and things don't boil over as quickly because it's deeper. 

One of the kettles we wanted the most was the four small round egg circles in a pan. We often fry up a single egg for each of us and put it on an English muffin along with a piece of ham or sausage. We make our own Egg McMuffins for a quick breakfast in the morning while we are traveling.

After running them through the dishwasher, we quickly removed our old set from the motorhome. They were in pretty good shape, but they were about 13 or 14 years old. Our youngest daughter needed a set and we passed them on to her. I'm sure she will get a lot more use out of them. They were really pretty coppery color with ceramic lining. We gave her the extra knife set, too.  

Now for the fun stuff--- finding out how they all stack together in our drawer underneath the stove in the motorhome. 

The set comes with these brown felted flower shaped petals that are really protective trivets that go between each pot or pan as they stack up. It prevents scratching from the exterior of one onto the interior of the other. Mostly it's to prevent the rattling noises! And we know in an RV, those can be irritating. I used to pad my old kettles with pieces of shelf liner or my hot pads to muffle the metallic rattling sounds as we drive down the road. 

These are going to work out really well...

Look how they all stack up and nest together into one stack? This is a set of three fry pans, a saute pan, and three saucepans. Seven of them in one stack! (really 8--- I decided to keep my old flat square griddle for pancakes or French toast down below in the bottom of the drawer).

 All three of the detachable handles are down in front in the corner. The lids are laid up on their side on an angle, because the knobs prevent them from stacking flat anyhow.  The egg pan holds them up just enough on an angle that the drawer can easily open and close.

I decided to keep the stainless steel steamer basket up in the cabinet with my stainless steel mixing bowl. I think I will use this more often as a colander or strainer than an actual steamer basket. Multi-use! So I got rid of the dumb plastic one I had in the upper cabinet.

We went camping and we got to use them for the first time. Something I had never really thought about was by having detachable handles, they can be detached and set off to the side for easier arrangement on the stove burners. As most of you RV owners know, the stovetop space is quite limited and the burners are placed closer together than on a traditional household stove. By detaching the handles, I can move the pans into place and then not accidentally knock something by bumping a handle or having a handle get too heated by being next to another pan.  That was an added plus that I really hadn't thought of until I was actually using them. I was very satisfied with the nonstick surface, and the pans seemed to be flat and evenly distributed the heat.

Steve cooked up a big breakfast using three fry pans on the stove at the same time. Once pan for hash browns, one for bacon, and one for eggs. They all fit quite easily on the RV range top. 

I think these pots and pans are going to be a winner!

Another project that needed to get done when we got home from vacation was to clean the carpets and also the vinyl flooring. I had picked up this steamer device to use on both the carpet and snap-on a microfiber cloth and it can be used to steam clean the floor at the same time.

It did a great job on the vinyl flooring and the two little carpeted areas up on front behind each of the cockpit chairs.

(Why on earth Winnebago decided to put carpet in those two little triangle sections is beyond me? We saw somebody else on the Winnebago Group on Facebook try to pull it up and it has holes underneath for some kind of brackets or something, depending on what your floor plan is).

The other part in our motorhome that is carpeted is on this step up area that goes around each side of our queen size bed. It gets rather grubby because it's a light cream color. The steam cleaner and the Resolve carpet shampoo really brightened it up and it looked pretty darn nice after it dried.

So that's it for motorhome stuff, but the last two weeks I had a couple sweet darlings come over here to help me out with something that needed to get done on the house. 

We bought the house in 2019 and back then I had completely primed and painted the entire front porch. We had to replace spindles and repair handrails. 6 years later, things were looking worse for the wear and really needed to have some better quality paint this time around.  The stuff I used last time was straight paint and it was on sale. This time I bought primer and paint mixed together, and I bought enough to do THREE COATS!!! 

But first that meant scratching off and scraping any of the loose chips before I got started. That's where these two sweethearts came in on the job.

Boy oh boy, did they ever work hard! They said it's very satisfying to chip and peel off the old paint. Remember, it's only 6-year-old paint so it's not lead-based so they weren't in any danger. They enjoyed chipping and peeling and scraping and scratching. And even more fun, they thought it was hilarious when I brought out the shop vac. They actually vacuumed up the paint chips out of the grass, the sidewalk and the flower beds. They thought that was totally amazing that they're Crazy Grandma would have them vacuuming the flower beds???

Sadly, I lost my helpers when they had to go back to school. Now it was my turn. I love to paint. I turn on some soft music and I have my mug of coffee. In the morning, as soon as the dew is burned off, I get to it. I do one section each day and work my way around all four sides of the spindles and the top and bottom rails. Each section got three coats of paint.

I could only paint in the mornings, as this porch faces to the west. The afternoon sun made it too hot to work out there. So I did a little bit each day as the weather permitted. 

Steve helped me with the tall man work on the big columns because he can reach up higher. We didn't want to haul out a ladder so he put a telescoping pole on the roller and he was able to reach to the top.

Some of this porch is rather rugged, it's from the late 1800s and some of the wood is worse for the wear.

Steve firmed up some of it with a chemical wood hardener to hopefully get it to last a little bit longer. If we don't keep things original, we would have to go through zoning and get a building permit to replace the railings with different types and heights to meet code. I would rather keep it original for now.

I just love how neat and clean and crisp everything looks when it's done. There is a therapeutic and mesmerizing effect to doing painting. Every stroke of the brush is cleaning it up and making it nice and fresh. It's a type of a job that you get immediate gratification from, it goes from grubby and ugly to beautiful and pristine. Especially when you paint with white.

The railings look so good again. Steve put the flower boxes back along the ledges after I finished up the gray with some porch and floor enamel paint. Just the outside edges of the porch boards where they are exposed to the elements needed a touch up. The rest of the porch is still in pretty good shape.

Then I had to break out the red paint and a little roller and touch up the lattice work underneath. That was very time-consuming...

Someday I might like to change this lattice over into some cut out fret work boards like we had on our house and Chilton. But for now, this looks very "farmhousey"... but it's not original.

We really enjoy having a front porch. This one is quite long with two sections with two different seating areas. We mostly use the part that is to the southern section of the house with the rocking chairs and the porch swing. Very often we have little grandkid butts perched on the porch swing, eating popsicles or sipping on juice boxes.

Whenever we have company, we kind of end up out on the front porch and sit out there to chit chat after dinner. It's kind of like an extra "living space" for us.

The old fashioned beadboard ceiling could probably use another coat of paint sometime soon. Maybe in the spring I will get a long-napped roller and get a good coat of paint up there. For now it is holding it's own. I can only do so much at a time.

The gray porch boards are showing a little wear, but I can roll those maybe in the spring with some more porch and flooring enamel. Right now I am out of that paint, and I think I am done for the season with my painting projects.

We propped the window boxes up out of the way so I could touch up here and there a little bit more. Imagine soft music playing from my little MP3 speakers, and I'm sipping my coffee from my mug with all of the grandchildren pictured on it.  Mornings like this make me smile. I am at peace.

For how much we love traveling and exploring, we also love being back home at our house. It takes some work keeping it up, so we have to fit it in between trips.

A couple years ago, granddaughter Chelsea help me make this rain chain. It's little metal buckets from the party supply section at Walmart. Then it's a hunk of plastic landscape chain from the hardware store. Steve helped us drill big holes in the bottoms of the buckets and we used little S-hooks on the handles to attach them to the chain. We squeezed them tight with a pliers. Then Steve mounted it to the end of the rain gutter. It is quite fascinating to watch the water come pouring down through it.  See the chain of little red buckets?

Here is a very short video segment on YouTube of how it works, with granddaughters Whitney and Claire playing with it after a downpour had just passed through: 

In this photo below, I have the rest of the gray boards painted along the edges. As soon as they are dry, Steve will hoist down the window boxes to set back on the ledges again. I don't like them up high on the railing, because then we can't see out of the windows. Plus I have the ferns hanging down from above and they just block out too much daylight if I have everything filled up with plants...

This is a beautiful family heirloom. It is the sign that hung on Steve's parents' various homes throughout the years. They are both gone now to Heaven. We happened to be the lucky ones who got the sign when we were clearing out Steve's dad's last home. They were married in 1951.

It hangs proudly on our front porch between the windows on the left side. 

I think it is very pretty, and I'm glad that nobody else in the family wanted it. I had always admired it, and we were lucky to get it.

Now that the painting is done, the plants are put back where they belong, and we can relax a little bit. 

The weather is still nice here in Wisconsin, even though we've had some cool evenings. It's perfect to grab my spinning wheel and come and sit out on the front porch in our rocking chairs...  Steve sipping some limeade or maybe a beer, while I have my soft wool sliding through my fingers as I create beautiful yarn.

It's especially nice to look around and say that we've taken care of "our home".

Some of today's blog is also in this YouTube link below: 

Right now Steve is helping the kids with some work on remodeling their bathroom, but after that we are getting ready to go camping again. 

Maybe next week! 

Stay tuned....

CAMPING AT PENINSULA STATE PARK IN DOOR COUNTY, WI & MY BROKEN BIKE!

 Lucky us!!! 

We were on the waiting list for Peninsula State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. It's very difficult to get in there. People sit on their reservation list a year in advance, to the day that they want to get a site. They hit the website at midnight to get in their reservation choices...

We went on a waiting list for cancellations, and managed to snag a week!!! 

This is a huge park with five campgrounds within it's boundaries. There are around 600 campsites in total. We mostly wanted it for the beautiful bike trails as well as the peaceful scenic surroundings.

It is located on the little finger that sticks out of Wisconsin just north of Green Bay. 

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/peninsula

It's an area known for its rugged beauty of cedar trees and rustic rocky shorelines. But it's also a high tourist area with a lot of resorts, art galleries, tourist traps and clogged up roads with weekend visitors. We try to only go during the week if we head up into that area.

It's not quite fall color time yet in Wisconsin. Some of the sumacs and low shrubbery bushes are starting to turn. But it will not be the bright autumn colors yet for another few weeks. As it is, everything is beautiful right now with glints of red shining through the woods.

The sites here are spaced far apart with a lot of shrubbery and trees in between. That's what we like about the Wisconsin State Parks. They don't scrimp on space or try to cram you in too tight together.

We have a beautiful large site with plenty of room to park our cargo trailer to one side. The site does have electric, otherwise we would be using the solar panel on the roof of the cargo trailer to charge things up for us. We have a 320 watt solar panel up there, as well as two extra flexible 100 watt panels we can set up if we need them.

But for this week, we will camp with luxury with unlimited electricity. That means we don't have to watch which lights are left on or how long we leave the Starlink on using up power. We can actually run the refrigerator and the water heater on electric. This saves on our propane use. 

We even went so far as to splurge and put up our little party lights. They are LED, and don't use a lot of power. But it's fun to put them up and illuminate our patio area in the evenings.

It sure is nice to have our cargo trailer along. We missed it during our entire trip to Alaska. Not only does a carry our e-bikes, but it also carries all of our extra gear to make the load lighter in the motorhome.  Our motorhome has a limited CCC- Cargo Carrying Capacity.

We carry extra jugs of water, bundles of firewood, a bucket of pellets for our wood pellet firepit, and a lot of Steve's tools. We take along a battery operated chainsaw, leaf blower, and 2 drills. He even has a battery operated work light.

I get a shelf for putting things like an electric pressure cooker with air fryer attachment, and we also bring along the Blackstone griddle and our Coleman propane grill/stove. 

Then there are extra lawn chairs, a folding table, a ladder, and a nice variety of electric cords and ropes and assorted items we might need while camping.

This really is like a "garage" for us when we go camping. It's nice to have the equipment available if we need it. We may not use every item each time, but we may need it or want to use it at various campsites. Makes camping much more comfortable. 

Speaking of campsites, we have a lot of room on this one. There is grass around the edges for Nick to sniff at, but the rest of the site is level and hard packed gravel. No mud. We have a picnic table and a fire ring and plenty of room to spread out our patio rug.

While we get set up outside, a little guy has to wait inside and patiently watch us through the door. He wants to get out and sniff!

Nick got really excited when he saw us open up the back door of the cargo trailer and start taking out the bikes. He love love loves his little trailer cart.  We took off the green nylon sections of the original In-Step2 child's trailer, and instead strapped his dog crate right to the frame. He gets to see a lot more and it's safer for him. He has actually bitten into the nylon and plastic of the original cart. So we want him to be secure and safe to go for his rides. 

He loves it so much, if the door is open and we are walking past, he jumps right in! Time to go...

We really like the E-bikes. They are Lectric XP3.0 step through. They can fold up in the middle if they need to be stored in the back of an SUV or a large compartment on a bigger motorhome. The handlebars also can flip down out of the way, and the seat can be lowered down during transport. It's just a few click clicks after unloading, and they are ready to go.

The trails in this park are beautiful to ride the bikes on. They are either paved sections of road with bike lanes clearly marked, or they are packed smooth gravel paths that meander through the woods.  There are also some more rigorous mountain bike trails in various sections of the park. We didn't go on those.

We took three different rides around the park, exploring a different way each time. All together I think we put on about 15 miles in the first day.

It felt good to get back to the motorhome and relax. Now that our recliner chairs work properly (see my previous blog) kick back with a movie for the evening. Nicholas nestles in between us, and all is peaceful and relaxing.

The campground is very quiet at night. It is patrolled by rangers and we also noticed the presence of the local police officer. That keeps down the wild ruckus partying, and makes it a pleasant experience for everyone else. 

We slept so good on our new mattress, check back a couple blog posts about that. We put in a new 10-in memory foam mattress from Wilderness RV mattress company. It sure is comfortable. 

It didn't get too cold overnight, but we did wake up to a few more colorful leaves. Some things are changing here and there. Soon the woods will be ablaze with the colors of fall.

I am writing this now on our fourth day in the park. We have just been relaxing and taking things easy. We've been cooking some nice meals and not doing much of anything. Steve decided last night to make us some "dessert"...

He is our most meticulous marshmallow roaster... Perfectly golden brown. Never burnt..

Have you ever done this for s'mores? Instead of graham crackers and chocolate bars, just get fudge striped cookies. It already has the chocolate evenly spread and the cookie portion is as close to graham cracker as you can get. Very easy to put them together, and leftover cookies can be eaten after you get home.

Just a simple slide off his roaster stick and both of the ooey gooey marshmallows get trapped in between the cookie layers.

Yummmmmmm!

Lucky little Nick met a new friend. Here's his girly female friend named Maggie. She is 11 years old and not up to any sassiness from a young buck like Nick. She put him in his place and said he can sniff but she is not about to go run around and be crazy like him. He tried to entice her to play, and she said "no thank you". 

But each time he sees her walk by our campsite, he has to try to invite her to romp with him...

Now, here's the sad part of our day:

MY BIKE BROKE! 

The thing I am pointing to is the electronic display. It's also controlled by the on and off switch on the left. We had stopped at a beautiful little picnic area to take some photos. I went back to turn on my bike, and the display was dead. It would not light up. 

How frustrating! 

We were about 2 miles from our campsite. 

The bike weighs about 65 lb.  I peddled it for a while without any type of electric assist. But it was really, really hard. Once we reached an area where the road sloped up, I could not take it anymore. I got off and pushed it by hand.

After a while, Steve took pity on me. He let me ride his bike and pull Nick in the little cart. He rode my bike the rest of the way, with the heavy pedaling. What a hero! 

We got back to the campsite, huffing and puffing. How very sad that my bike would not fire up. So we unhooked Steve's display controller from his bike and plugged it on to mine. Yay! It does work. So we know that is the only problem. It's not anything else. 

But with only one working display controller between us, there's no way we can go riding together. Bummer.

This also happened to Steve's bike last year, so we figured it was kind of going to happen to mine. The company is aware that the original display controllers don't last, and they send out new ones, free of charge. I called them, and with a wait on hold of about 20 minutes, they soon took care of me with absolutely no argument.  We are out of warranty by almost a second year.  They are going to send it fast, and it will be at our house tomorrow. But that doesn't help me today...  I am sad. No more bike rides.

If we tried to order an aftermarket one, this is what it would cost: 

We are kicked back in our lawn chairs, and relaxing in our campsite right now. Nick is very happy to be curled up on my lap. But what he really wants to know is: "WHEN ARE WE GOING FOR ANOTHER BIKE RIDE?" 

Soon, little boy, soon. 

(I DON'T HAVE THE VIDEO DONE YET FOR TODAY'S BLOG... I WILL ADD IT LATER)