A little slice of RV living

 This story is not about this critter, though we saw a few of these during construction. But I wouldn't have taken any pictures of the one that this post is about!

I was forced out of the RV one week by a bigger kind of critter. 

Evidence was first seen on the beds. All the beds. Traps were set and everything cleaned up. 

But then one night the critter was in the bed with me, squeaking. 

Can you blame me for moving out??

The boys set up temporary quarters in the house, putting some of that handy rigid insulation up in a small room to make temporary "walls." Beds were made up on the subfloor (think Heidi and Little House stories) and we camped out until the mouse was caught. We banished thoughts of spiders (or worse) in comparison with rodents crawling over us at night.

Only one mouse was found, but the damage he did RV-wide was enough to give us the impression that a whole gang of mice had taken over the place. We discovered that the mouse was using the gas stove for an entry. We blocked every hole we could find, including the entire stove-top. We emptied the drawers and set traps. All items staying in the RV were put in plastic containers. When I moved back to the RV, I put little box "tunnels" with mousetraps at the head and foot of my bed. But sleep was lost for a while with every little noise...

Glue, Nail, Caulk, Paint, Repeat

 

The clouds seem so close up here! We are around 3,300 feet elevation. 

Some visitors in the "back yard."  

The scaffolding was coming down and so was the work surface, meaning that one side of the house was nearing completion!

Battens were marching across the siding nicely. 

I don't remember what was going on but it looks like a scene in one of those "how many people does it take to..." jokes. 

Details

I know everyone must be tired of seeing this side of the house. It is easy to photograph this side and besides that it is so pretty to look at. But the pretty stuff takes a lot of detail work! 

You can see my son on the right, reaching up to install, paint or caulk some little piece of wood underneath the roof. There were many little things to be installed and obscure places to reach to paint or waterproof. And there were three sides to go after this! My husband says that  housebuilding is just a bunch of little things that you do one by one. 

Along the way there is maintenance too. The porch & side roof was just plywood at this point, and the metal roofing was a long way off. So it had to be painted with a sun-reflecting paint just to make it last a bit longer while work on the rest of the house went on (that's what my husband is doing at left). Keeping one section from falling apart while you do the other is what happens when you take on a DIY project this big! 

The exciting thing happening in this picture is the battens going on the siding. It isn't a true "board and batten" but the effect is great!

At this point I think we were reconciled to the color... really any color you put on will work as long as you have big, beautiful trim and loads of detail. 

 

And if anyone was bored of watching all the little details on the side of the house, they could always go sit and watch the weather theater. 

Temporary Kitchen

Gradually more and more of the kitchen moved from the inadequate RV to the house structure. For one thing the heat was too intense in the RV to cook any meal, and for another the counterspace in the RV was too tiny to prep family meals. Up at the house, we were running crockpots on heavy-duty extension cords and had set up a pantry of sorts. It was nice to work in the coolness of the house, but we still had a lot of leg-work as at this time I was washing ALL the dishes down at the RV. We made quite a parade after dinner, carrying all the pots, pans, bowls, dishes, cups, down the path. 

 Sometimes the meal was carried down to the RV, but sometimes we just ate on the porch, as the work table in the dining room had been moved away for other uses. 

"And why," you may ask, "didn't you just get take-out?" 

I still ask that question of myself... 

Speaking of the porch, I found this photo of how the boys managed to cut and fit the insulation around the porch rafters. It was somewhat like a puzzle but they made up their own system of which piece went where!