Indoor Plumbing

 All these pipes by the first floor ceiling are feeding upstairs sinks, tubs and toilet water lines. Later on these would be insulated by cozy fluff-foam and hidden from sight with some interior framing. 

Living in an RV through the winter freezing taught us that we wanted our pipes indoors in conditioned spaces as much as possible. The main water line comes up through the ground into a conditioned crawl-space, and none of our plumbing is housed in the exterior walls (even though the pipes we bought are supposed to be somewhat freeze-tolerant). I suppose it wouldn't of mattered, because later on I'll be posting about our super-insulated exterior walls!

 

 Call us easily traumatized, but we were taking no chances of freezing pipes.

Exploring Oregon...

 ...and no, we didn't take the new RV to do it. Most of the time we were escaping the heat of the RV during a heat wave, looking for a cooler climate!

Mt. Hood, looking like a painting. 

A family reunion at the Gorge was a nice diversion. 

 

I would never have guessed that "fish hatchery" would be on the list of my favorite places to go, but I have been to a couple that are very beautiful and fun to explore. This one was at Bonneville Dam.

 

 

Falls at Newberry Crater area (twenty degrees cooler in the mountains that day!)

 

 

I couldn't help but gather a few ideas for the house too.... how about landscape steps made out of obsidian?

Hello RV

 

We were able to rent another RV, another Montana 5th wheel. It was not as long as the other but newer than the last one. It had been sitting a while, under a shelter, but had picked up a packrat in the storage bay which we had to evict. Fun times.

(I will always say "packrat" but technically it's a wood rat, I think.)

I cannot find a picture of the kitchen, which was quite a stylish one with a black countertop, although less roomy than the other Montana. The new RV made us feel like we had moved into a fancy hotel suite.

 This one had more furniture, which meant some shorter people could sleep up off the floor on a chair or two. We still had to have sleeping bags on the floor for the others. I felt bad that one of the boys opted to sleep on the kitchen floor to have more room! You always feel like the grandchildren will hear stories someday such as "When I was a kid, I slept on the kitchen floor..." and judge you.

Goodbye RV

 

Sorry for the delay, we had a hugely busy week last week! I hope I can get back to regular blogging soon!

 

In order to be able to live over here and build a house, we rented an RV and the owners generously allowed us to park it on-site. They hinted that we could buy it, but we didn't think we would need an RV for long, we were always sure that the house would be ready in a few short months. 

(Ha. We should have bought it.)

There came a day, a couple years later, when the owners needed it back, so we had to find another one to rent. 

In the middle of house-building, we had to move out of the RV. Totes of clothing and dishes went up to the house to mix with construction stuff. We cleaned and cleaned and replaced parts and did everything we could to fix up the ol' Montana fifth wheel to go back to its owners. And I cried a lot.

 

It really was "home sweet home" to us.

The owners called it the "taj majal" of RV's and I think they were right. It was very roomy. It even had an office!

And a "fireplace." 

 
It had a leather couch in the slide-out, but the other seating was removed which was perfect for our purposes.

 

 All the kids camped out in the roomy living room.

In subsequent RV's (yes, there were more than one) we had not had such a perfect kitchen as this one.

We will never ever forget the loan of this RV. Thank you thank you G&N!