Motorhome Oil Change, Getting a Silver Lining, Loom Getting a New Home

This blog has three parts:

1. Motorhome Stuff
2. Our Old House Restoration Stuff
3. Weaving Loom Stuff

Oh yes, I am playing catch-up again and here is a whole week in one blog post. I HAVE to get my butt in gear and start posting more often again this winter.  Until we go away on a motorhome trip, it can be kinda boring for my RVing blog readers.  (the fiber and family folks always get good blog fodder)

Steve found a GREAT deal on the diesel oil for a motorhome oil change.  It was on sale at Fleet Farm for $64.99 a FIVE gallon bucket and then a rebate of $35 from Mobil and a 10% rebate from Fleet Farm in the form of a gift card.... plus on top of that if we use our American Express, we get 6% cash back at the end of the month.  It was such a good deal, he bought a second bucket to save for next year. It's sealed up and will stay good. 

Of course with 5 gallon buckets, that isn't enough for our rig, we need 32 quarts for our size oil pan.  Steve adds to the volume with one more gallon of oil (also on sale) and a gallon of Lucas Oil Additive Stabilizer. That is enough to bring it all back up to operating level with some of the old left in the oilpan after draining.

He found that removing the flex-hose adaptor from a funnel, he could screw the flex hose right on the bucket fitting!  It fit perfectly! He could reach the oil fill tube opening in the back of the rig's access door, and pour it all in carefully from the big bucket.

Here are from my notes of our Maintenance Log:

oct 2017 
oil change mobil del vac super 1300 heavy duty 5gal bucket 15w40
$64.99 rebate of $35 for the 5 gal bucket
$10.99 for one more gallon of oil
$29.99 for Lucas oil additive stabilizer

fleet farm 10% off rebate gave us an extra $10.60 back
filter was bought elsewhere wix 51791 $17.99

total cost $78.36 plus tax
2099 engine hours
74330 miles


He also changed the oil and filter in our Onan propane generator:

oct 2017
 onan generator oil change
$14.99 filter mobil m1-209
3.5 quarts of non detergent 30W  $2.44 each quart
480 hours
total cost $24.75 plus tax

All of our drain oil is brought out to a guy who burns it in a drip system to heat his repair shop. Recycling at it's finest!

We are up to snuff now and ready for perhaps a winter jaunt to the south or the desert?

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Can you believe we just hit the five year anniversary of the accepted offer on our Our Old House? It was Nov 3, 2012 when we bought it from the three Baldock sisters after their parents passed away.  We didn't close until the end of December of 2012.  We keep doing little bits here and there to restore the house to original and preserve what we think are the best features of this 104 year old home.  We fondly refer to it as Our Old House.

Around "Our Old House" we decided to work on another project....  Five years ago, we bought this huge beveled mirror to hang in our diningoom. We found it on Craigslist and Steve overestimated the length limit that we could haul in the little Tracker.... this was the ONLY way it would fit for the trip home!

At that point in time, we hadn't bought a chandelier yet, so the heavy gold metallic frame was just ummm *okay*.   In this pic below, we hadn't even put back up the rest of the pieces of the plate rail yet....

I had added family photos all around the room in frames that were gold to match the mirror....  Using the plate rail for setting the photo frames on helps keep them all in order, plus eliminates all those nail holes in the walls!

After that, we added a chandelier that has silver accents for the light holder stems, and some little crystal lamps on the buffet that also have silver accents.

A few times over the last five years, we mentioned that we should paint the mirror frame silverish, as well as the picture frames. Last week we bought a cute little ornate set with a napkin holder and trivet that were silver as well. Sooo I guess it was time to paint that gold mirror!


I bought a can of hammered paint with texture in a pewter grey tone of silver, and a can of bright shiny chrome silver.  Steve set up the sawhorses in the basement for me, as it's cold and damp out in the garage. Steve helped me carry down the mirror and we carefully taped off the beveled edge and then covered the mirrored portion with plastic.

First I painted with the hammered paint to add to the texture and the entire thing looked pewter-ish (autocorrect dictionary says that isn't a word)  then I lightly fanned the silver chrome-ish (also not a word)  over the highlighted sections of the frame.

While that was drying, I went around the whole dining room plate rail and took down all of the photo frames. I carefully numbered each frame on the back side and put all the glass and photos in numerical order on the table.... so I could put them all back together correctly again. I had 18 frames to paint!

I did half of the frames in the hammered pewter-ish paint, and half in the chrome-ish to mix them up.  It was so cool to see each one change from what it was to something new and fresh!

Now these are lined up on more of the sawhorses drying in the basement as well.  It sure was a good thing I garbage-picked these three sets of old sawhorses last spring on bulky item pickup trash day.  I used them for painting all those hundreds of spindles for our fence this past spring. Now they are doing another duty in the basement (Steve didn't want them in the first place, and after the fence was done, he wanted to knock the sawhorses apart and burn them) ....

After lunch, everything was dry, so we carried the mirror back up and hung it on the wall. It is pretty hefty and very awkward. It has very heavy duty brackets that are hung onto heavy screws into studs on the wall. (see? the plate rail is complete in this pic on each side of the mirror)

Ahhhh that looks SO much better! 

I put all of the picture frames together again and each one is back in their spots. I need two new prints of Claire and Whitney, the two youngest grandgirls, who are growing like weeds.   I will print those up this afternoon and replace the baby shots in those frames.

 That is the end of another project around Our Old House.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Carol Ann Kapheim and her husband Thom. They have an art gallery in Waukegon, Illinois.  https://www.kapheimstudio.com/  Carol is also the editor of the Weavers Friend 2 Newsletter

Carol had purchased my old sturdy Union Custom loom from me a few weeks ago.  They made arrangements this week to come up and take it to it's new home.  She was completely delighted when she saw it in it's glory. I had debated between stripping off the fading historically correct blue paint.. or even painting it all solid blue again.  But either choice would have ruined it's original condition.  She wanted it just the way it was!   (so glad I didn't paint it)

They tore it all apart and loaded it up in their SUV to head on down to it's new place of glory in their studio. From there we enjoyed a nice lunch at Hilde's Deli and Bakery in Chilton before they hit the road back to Illinois.

Later her husband Thom posted these pics from their studio:

After a few swear words, they were able to get it all reassembled.  I am SO glad it is going to have a new loving life in a new home. I just didn't have room for it at my house. It needed a new job to do, and someone to love it--- scars and scrapes and all the dings to it's surface over the years.

I think it looks pretty happy, don't you?