MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS - *M* is Mural, Mattress, MP3 and my Chair Cushions are Done.

I am going to start off the new year with posting some of our motorhome modifications, a few at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes, we are up to the letter M now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER M

Mural on the back of the motorhome:

I have mentioned it before, but the Safari murals are hand painted and airbrushed on individually each personally by the Dame family out in Oregon.  And each one is different and interesting.   Here is a website with more information: 

  http://www.arcatapet.net/travel/murals.cfm

I am not a tiger fanatic, but it came that way to us, and it's kinda cool. Often they hide a small animal somewhere on the mural, here is out little mouse.  It makes a great conversation starter with folks, and little kids love to try to find ours.  Here, I will help you find it on ours with a big red circle. 

Memory Foam Mattress:
We upgraded our house mattress to a memory foam last year.  We really like sleeping on the gel filled memory foam, and Steve (who always insisted he needed rock hard for a bad back)  sleeps better than ever, and snores less too! 

Last month, we found a good clearance deal on another memory foam mattress the same as our first one, and we splurged on it.   We were able to haul it home on the trailer fully wrapped in the plastic plus a tarp to keep any road slush or snow off it.  Luckily, it was a nice day with dry pavement! 

Steve and I managed to move the old innerspring off the bed in the motorhome, through the doors of the bathroom and out into the living area of the motorhome.  

(this is the innerspring one going out and to our kids' house) 

We managed to get the memory foam one out into the rig....  we stood it on end and slid it back into the bedroom area. A king sized mattress is just about the height of our ceilings inside, so it barely fit under the bathroom pocket doorway ledges along the top of the ceiling. It was very floppy and awkward! 

See Steve back in there pulling it? 

 

We had to be careful along the sharp corner of the bed pedestal box (which contains our diesel engine) and had to bend the mattress around the corner to get it into the room.  Realizing the corner was sharp and could tear the mattress, I put a big plastic bowl on the corner to slide the mattress past it. Just as we were almost past that point, I heard a *CRACK* sound.  hahahha look what happened to our bowl! 

Glad we didn't wreck the mattress----

We got the mattress safely past that point and we flopped it into place!!! 

SUCCESS!!!

WHEW!!!!

MP3 player:

Okay, now the last one is pretty minor... but still I thought it was worth a mention.   A long time ago, I bought this little cord to be able to plug in a portable Walkman CD player to my home stereo to play through it's speakers.  It has a plug for headphone jack on one end and two RCA stereo plugs on the other side.  We have had the cord laying in a drawer now for years....    And I got to thinking.....

In our motorhome, we have a huge stereo home theater system that we never use.  It's hooked up to the TV with the DVD player. There is also the dash stereo with a 10 disc CD player. We never use that either. 

Because we never use that stuff, well, we never use the built in motorhome speakers.  There are FOURTEEN of them, I am not kidding!  They are mounted on the ceiling, in the cabinets, down on the floor in front (sub woofer stuff)  and we have not really ever used them at all.  If we do have the tv on, it plays through it's own speakers, and it's just for news in the background.  Not to listen to some heart-stopping thriller movie with great sound effects!  Not our style.   Too noisy in the campgrounds too. We had contemplated in the past to take the speakers down, but they would leave marks and holes and wires all over the ceilings.  So they just sit there, looking impressive.

But we do like this little tiny MP3 player I have.  It's a mere $20 gadget that plugs right into the USB port on my computer to load it up.  I know it's old school.  Often I plug it into some tiny speakers that are powered right from MP3 player and take it outside to set by my lawnchair.    

Many people use the music on their cell phone, but that wears down your phone battery.  If we are boondocking, we don't want to do that.

If we do use the MP3 player inside, we let it set by the table in the photo below.  I like to set it on "random" and let it play whatever it wants.  It's all good to me. 

Soooo back to that little cord.  If it could be hooked up between that little MP3 player and our speakers, it could use them for music playing through the speakers in the rig!   Sure 'nuff!!!!   Looking up in our front cabinet, on the big Hot Shotz amp unit, there is a pair of left and right RCA jacks!   Hook it up, flick the switch and it works~!

I know it will use some battery power to run, but we checked it out on the Trimetric gauge and it is very little.  The MP3 unit runs off one AAA battery, so no recharging is needed for that to run.   NOW WE WILL USE OUR BUILT IN MOTORHOME SPEAKERS! 

~~~~~~

This morning I cut into my prewashed fabric for the front porch chairs.  I was so happy to find this material, and it's just what I had in my mind's eye when I decided to cover the cushions. 

I sewed the cushion covers this morning, and by noon I had all four done for the chairs! I didn't do the ottoman cushion yet, I am waiting to make sure I have enough fabric for redoing the couch cushions as well. 

The people we bought the chairs from said they got them from some friends.  It was a couple who came from Taiwan, and the expensive bamboo chairs were brought over with they moved to the USA.  When I was done with the "makeover" I sent her pics and thanked her again.  She was happy to hear they would remain in our retirement home, probably for the rest of our lives. She was going to share that with the people whom they bought the chairs from in the first place. 

Steve got home from his trasnport,

in time to have some lunch out on the front porch! 

Our temps were in the 40's and 

the sun shining in warmed up the space. 

So here is the south end of our front porch, all spiffied up with the new chairs and I hung my summer quilted wall hanging on the wall by the door.  The chairs fit in well, and the front door still clears the edge of the chair to get in and out.  It seems to be a really relaxing spot, and we are looking forward to sipping coffee together there in the morning.

I can't wait until summer!  In the summer months, my clematis vines grow up all over those three windows and create a shade of green thick shady leaves..... and spray a bouquet of velvety purple flowers all across the windows!

 This is what the windows behind the chairs will look like about mid-summer! 

Next, I will be working on the cushions for the couch. I laid some of the fabric across, just to test it out.  YESSSSSS  I think it will look nice.  I want to wait till the other 2 yards gets here that is being shipped from the other fabric store.  Then I will start in on the couch.

 The weekend is here, and it's going to be warm and sunny.  We did get a little snow yesterday, but it's mostly melted again.  This has been the strangest winter!   Tonight it's down to 30, but we have a fire going in the fireplace, and I don't think the furnace has kicked in even once all day or night.

Motorhome shocks, backup camera, and fridge prop

Well... update (kinda sorta) on the motorhome shocks.   If you read my other post from Sunday:

Crazy Customer Service when trying to order motorhome parts

you will see that we have been trying to spend some money and get some shocks since May 5.  Today is the 18th.   The not-so-helpful sales guy at the other end of the phone finally promised that his supplier would have the shocks to him by Mon or Tues and then he would ship them on to us toot sweet.  

Welllllll  I wanna go camping this weekend!  

It's already Tuesday, so I figured a call to double check might help.   After being on hold while the same sales guy (by the name of Dan)  he had to call his supplier to double check my order again, he finally came back to me and *said* that the shocks were shipped from his supplier yesterday and would be there at his place today.  And then he in turn would ship them to me overnight to my house and they should arrive by tomorrow.  

WE WILL SEE.  

(and now, watch, I am tempting the Monkey Motorhome Gods by saying they won't be the right ones?!?) 

These Bilstein shocks run in the $120-140 range a piece, and this place has them on a special for $75.75 each with free shipping.   The other guys on the Safari list said it was a good place to buy from.  hmmmmmm?

Now, being the *Cover My Bases* kinda gal, I decided to call a few truck supply places in Green Bay to see what they can do for us, in the event that the shocks do arrive tomorrow and are wrong.    Batting ZERO.... one place suggested their books show a cross reference to a Monroe gas-filled shock for $38 each.  I don't think that is a match??  They said we could bring in our shock and physically match it up, so I think we will send Steveio to work tomorrow with a shock in the car trunk, and he can run over on his lunch hour if need be.

I guess we will see what shows up tomorrow with UPS?  Otherwise I might make Steveio put the old ones back on just so we can go camping.  LOL  One is ok, the other isn't holding firm even after taking it off and adjusting it.   The rig rides fine, we just hear a loose rattly sound when going over some bumps.

If the shocks come, and fit and are good, then I will praise the company and we will order some rear shocks too.  The rears could probably use replacement too, as one seems to have some oil seepage.  Steve is going to have to torch them off because even with 2 weeks of daily squirts of anti-rust spray on them, nothing is budging on the nuts.   The front ones came off easy, so that was half the battle right there.


On to the next thing... our backup camera.    It is housed in a little extruded bump on the rear top cap, with a scratchy plexiglass cover over the opening.  It had yellowed over the years, and really needed to be changed.  Steveio put in a nice piece of strong safety glass, and sealed it in from the inside (accessible from a cabinet in the bedroom)   He used some leftover black butyl tape from when we replaced our window last summer.

 It was a quick repair, but made a big difference on the view~! 

I like using the backup camera when I am doing the driving, especially to keep track of what vehicles are around me.  It's always some stupid little car that is tailgating me and who will inadvertently whip around my right side as I am trying to make a wide turn!  They never seem to see my turn signals either.  At least then then I can prevent damaging my side of my rig because they are impatient or too dumb to know that motorhomes need a wider turn and don't *bend* in the middle.   It happens so often that we learn to drive very defensively and keep track of all motorists around us, even in the rear.



Speaking of the back of the motorhome,  did you see our white tigers? They are right below the camera on the back of the rig.   Jameson was over and doing a little nature walk with his Granfaddah Pfun last weekend.

I have mentioned it before, but the Safari murals are hand painted and airbrushed on individually each personally by the Dame family out in Oregon.  And each one is different and interesting.   Here is a website with more information:   http://www.arcatapet.net/travel/murals.cfm

I am not a tiger fanatic, but it came that way to us, and it's kinda cool.   Often they hide a small animal somewhere on the mural, here is out little mouse.  Makes a great conversation starter in a campground! 

So after Jameson checked out our tigers, he finished his little walk around our yard....  the grape vines are just starting to bud out with tiny leaves, and the lilacs behind are all in full bloom.

The other day on the RVnet forum,   www.rvnet.com , someone was asking about ordering a fancy replacement lever device for keeping their RV fridge door propped open when not in use.   I mentioned we used folded up dishtowels.  I happened to snap a pic this morning when I was in the motorhome taking the photos of the television, so here is a handy RV Hint for the Day:  

  

Well, the sun is shining here, and the sweet baby Chelsea is here for the afternoon.  Might take her out on a nature walk around the yard too.  Never too young to start them enjoying the woods????

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