Hardwood is BOSS

In a world of hardwood vs. plywood, hardwood is boss. One already knows this, and wouldn't one love to use hardwood all the time if one could afford it. It's just so beautiful. With some stain? Fugeddabout it.  I think I will make out with hardwood. In a way I kind of did yesterday, walking around Saranac Hollow Woodworking Shop & Adirondack Hardwood, wiping a dab of spit on different cuts to see how they might change color or shine with a coat of stain.

We found out about Hal and the boys over at Adk Hardwood from my folks' builder, Roger, who stopped by for coffee the other day.  Dan and I are choosing to elongate our build project in the name of craftsmanship to assemble custom cutting board counter tops.  Strips of wood glued together in some sort of cute pattern will be installed in the kitchen as the main countertop to sink the sink into and hold the stove; the other countertop will be a pull-out dinette that hides under the bed when you don't need it. The whole thing is genius and of course cute. And we gotta pump out a lot of genius ideas these days to counteract the silly ones we have come up with during this project.

The first thing I did when I walked into the shop was ask them where their scrap pile was. They obliged us with heaps of awesome cuts from their scrap corner--curly maple, poplar, something they referred to as "fake mahogany" I think it was called sapele, oak, and some pine--for under $30 total. The car smelled like your favorite uncle all the way home. 

We also made a short stop to pick up the lastest edition of Fine Woodworking magazine, the "Joinery" edition. Thrilling reads for those who fancy cabinet making, trimming their mustache, wearing sweaters with geometric designs on them, and other avuncular domestic sports. (Actually this publication is fantastic.)
-Delilah

Lighting scheme

Ordered a bunch of lights today. This was after visiting a bunch of lighting showrooms in Albany (besides the box stores). I was surprised we could even visit a showroom these days. Has anyone ever done this, visited a lighting showroom?  They are some of the creepiest buildings you will ever drive up to. The windows are blacked out. Doesn't look like anyone's gonna be alive when you walk in. The showrooms delivered a moderately less creepy actual interior: store clerks who haven't spoken to a real human being in weeks, are startled by visitors, can't find their words, and then when they do they wont let you leave, tell you they had an aunt/uncle/grandchild/friend/mother who also refurbished an RV and drove across country, and did I know you can mount a flat screen TV in there no problem?  I sure do. No matter how dusty and crusty these people and these stores were, though, I had an urge to unite with them. Nothing in them was of any use to me because we need lights that can run off marine or RV-grade 12 volt DC batteries, not normal house AC current.  But, giving in to the jabber jaw of a lonely storeroom salesperson was a type, however minuscule, of emotional investment in the Ma&Pa side of the independent vs. conglomerate sales competition.

We are going with LEDs and I'm glad I got to see some in action.  LED stands for "Light Emitting Diode" and they are a whole different type of light, I tell ya. Hard to gauge with any basic imagination skills just how many and how much of that kind of light you will need. 10 diodes per head with 4 heads?  A reading light with 4 diodes or 16?  Under counter lights? Recessed lights overhead that will be further away and need to be brighter?

Trying to get a bearing on a guestimation method, my folks and I stood on top of stools and pointed flashlights this way and that and sometimes at each other.  That made us howl. It was a sloppy way of figuring it out. We found an LED flashlight rated at "25 lumens" and there weren't any lights I was looking at online rated less than 100 lumens. (Oh, that's the other thing: What is a lumen? How does my human brain use that as a unit of

measurement?) The brainstorming went like: "Ok so if I stand here and shine the light, and you hold that book, now imagine this light 5 times brighter. . .can you read that sentence easily? Now try to imagine a night without the moon, will you need two lights or one to chop a carrot in kitchen?"

Here's what I settled on:
(2) light bars, one 24" for kitchen and and one 12" in the back for ambient
(4) 3.2" 120 Lumen recessed ceiling lights, one over driver's/one over passenger seat and two in the cabin area over the pull-out dining table.  (These were ordered from the self-proclaimed "RV capital of the country": Elkhart, Indiana.)
(2) bendable/flexible snake lights installed on the wall above the bed for reading (rear most light can also be bent towards the back for Gear-age lighting).  Each will have its own switch.  Said and done, only spent $130.  -Delilah

In case you forgot, Shiloh is still cute.

Back to work! (Happy New Years/Bon Anne 2014!)

Took a bit of a ski break to catch up on our powder skills, but now we're back!  Here's what went down in 30 seconds or less:

1. Skied for 7 straight days and now we have thunder thighs.  Off-piste is boss!
2. Hung out and ate cheese with Daniel's family all over Europe, including challenging his father to a "Daileiboo " (pronounced die-lee-BOO) match (think: volley ball on a make-shift tennis court played by juggling and passing a soccer ball).

3. Successfully resisted the waffle craze in Belgium but wished we hadn't.
4. Ate a lot of Nutella.
5. Tried to buy a pair of Europants but couldn't find any.
6. Watched the Hobbit 2 in 3-D.
7. Got Nutella taken away from us at the security checkpoint at the airport.

It's been a few weeks away from the project, and it's a whole new year.  As we drove the 2 1/2 hours from Albany to the Northcountry last night and rambled right into our usual Sprinter brainstorming, we weren't able to throw out exact measurements of proposed fixtures just from memory like we were used to.  '18 inches on the pull-out table. . . and the inside depth of the coat cabinet is 14 inches, so that means. . .oh well if two storage totes stacked on top is max 4 feet, then you have 2 inches left for the slide mechanism. . .'  etc, etc, etc.  Instead we were pulling blanks.  That made brainstorming difficult, but in the back of my mind I thought it is probably healthy to have let some of those robot minutia slip away.

Today begins Phase II of the Sprinter build.  (We brought Phase I to a close by completing the insulation of the ceiling, walls, and floor.)  We will be installing the bed platform, side panels, and storage compartments.  I will also be completing the back log of entries from before the ski spree.  Cheers, and welcome to 2014!  -Delilah

Sparkle Pony has Black Death - Time to see Dr. A

Hundreds of years ago a devastating illness swept across Europe, taking out large swaths of the population, and turning everything black.  It did this by loosening the fuel injector hold down bolt and allowing exhaust gases to escape from the cylinder. The gases spray across the top of the cylinder head and, over time, accumulate into a crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffle that envelopes all the fuel injectors.  Unbeknownst to most people, the Black Death is still alive and viciously attacks engines of Dodge Sprinters.

And it was unbeknownst to us too until we removed the cylinder head cover, peered inside with our curious little noses, and saw the devastation.  Our fuel injectors were under a thick coating of crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffles.  Dan suggested we simply eat the chicken-waffles, which is his solution for most things, but Delilah threw that idea straight out of his noggen with a firm bonk.

The black chicken-waffles encrusted all over the fuel injectors

Dan is not pleased with his sooty thumb

 It was time to call Dr. A.

For those of you that have not heard about Dr. A let me inform you.  Dr. A is a mechanic of German descent who was born into the world with a wrench in one hand and a mop of fantastic hair in the other - which he promptly wrenched onto his head and still sports to this day.  At age 3, his parents returned home to see their Volkswagen in pieces in the yard and Dr. A with a grease smudged nose, sipping a glass of chocolate milk atop the engine block. At age 5, he fixed a flat tire just by looking at it.  And at age 12, he was contracted by Q himself to build an invisible, indestructible, flying car for the British.

So it was quite clear that this was the man we had to see.  Luckily, Dr. A resides in Pittsburgh, a short 3 hour drive from Baltimore, and so one sunny Saturday we scooted on up to see him.  As we pulled up, he ambled over to us with his fantastic blond mop of surfer hair, cut-off sweatpants, and the premier mechanic footwear sought after around the globe - Crocs.  We popped the hood, he grabbed the wrench that was welded to his hand at birth, and went to work.  2 of our injectors were leaking we had spent around a baker's dozen hours carefully excavating the injectors with screwdrivers, toothbrushes, toothpicks, and other dental hygiene instruments before we left. They were now far from clean and shiny, but at least not caked with chicken-waffles.  With one fell swoop (what is a fell swoop?) Dr. A simultaneously removed the old injectors and installed the new ones.  After a celebratory pizza party of the world's best Feta-Spinach-Onion pizza (possibly the only thing in this post that is not exaggerated) we shook hands with the world's most renowned Sprinter mechanic and his family and headed back to Baltimore with an engine that did not sputter like an old boat and did not smell like a flatulent skunk. It was a happy day for us all.

For the factoids among us:    Black Death is really a term used by Sprinter enthusiasts to describe fuel injector leakage.   Dr. A  is a real man, named Andy Bittenbinder, that knows more about Sprinters than likely anyone else alive.

In other news...we did this today!

Modular storage systems

Dan doing his hoodoo-voodoo in
modular storage land.

There aren't many more things that make me want to throw up on myself, and Danimal want to prance around joyously like a baby lamb, than trying to figure out the modular storage system. Now that I have just said this, I guess I've got a long way to come because living out of a Sprinter is pretty much all about the storage system.  I have pared down everything I own to prepare to fit into a limited number of space-efficient and user-friendly boxes, drawers, and bins.  The process has taken months (mostly because I wanted to sell or repurpose most of my things rather than just huck 'em), but I suspect downsizing will have been one of the most important things I ever did for myself and everyone else.  I want it to stick.  Which means in the short term this storage system has got to rock my face off.

Our observations:

1.  We love the Rubbermaid™ "Action Packer" totes. They are sturdy, super light weight, have a well-built lid that you can sit on, and are voluminous enough to fit two peoples' river gear, or one person's entire winter clothing/gear get-up from ski boots to cold weather layers.  They are large, but not too large, and very strong.  Downside: they are pricey (cheapest we've found were $25/ea), and their tapered construction is not the most space-efficient design.

2.  Clear, see-through totes are ideal.  Another reason to steer from the black and grey Action Packer is that we are going to want a window into the soul of the storage bins.  

3.  Uniform totes that stack win the battle vs. that piecemeal tote collection you've been dragging around since college. There is a finite amount of space.  You need to make the most of it, and you want your stored bins to stack nicely so things aren't jangling around every which way.  For those dirtbags who are unemployed (like me), or are cheapskates, or consumer-conscious. . .or all three, I can understand why you wouldn't want to go out and buy a whole new world of ridiculous matching plastic bins like you were some consumer-ignorant suburban zombie Mom, I do. The raw deal of it, though, is that uniformity in your storage system is smart. It just is.

I'll have to get back to you on the status of my dream modular storage system because I couldn't look at/think/talk about/visualize stuff-stuffing-into-bins any longer.  I'm sure storage dreams are had by the robots living in Japan all the time.  I will have to tap into my inner robothead.  

In the meantime, tomorrow we take a break from the garage to hike/skate/freeze our carrot noses off on Pitchoff Mountain. Three inches of snow have fallen tonight and climbing.  
-Delilah  

Preparing the insulation

Today we split up and pruned down 17 pieces of hard foam insulation.  It was one of my least favorite days so far.  The foam board is hard to work with and the outside temperatures reached an all time low for us of 17F making the garage almost insufferable to be in for many hours at a time.   I could ward off the bone chilling temperatures, but not the stupid insulation dust.  When I hacked into it with a butter knife, as Daniel has suggested, insulation just squeaks loudly most of the time, and otherwise disintegrates into airborne particles that float intentionally towards your eyes and try to get in your mouth.

We had a sweet rhythm going, though.  Using a table saw, we cut the long foam pieces 7.5" lengthwise, and then halved piece's thickness in order to give us 1/2"-3/4"-thick pieces to adhere straight onto the walls of the van (layers of spray foam and Reflectix comes later).  After a bit we were forced to open the garage door because of the air quality.  I felt sad about releasing such gonkus into the mountain air, but we chose self-preservation over being ecofriendly.  Lesson learned: insulation is nasty stuff but will be our best friend down the road.  

The most significant thing we realized today is that we don't need to follow a linear sequence of building-then-installing.  We can pre-fab everything: the bed frame, the compartments, the bench seat, the kitchen pop-up counters, etc., etc., and then install it altogether in one go. There wont be any caulking or gluing any time soon because those things require it to be warmer to dry, so we will go ahead with building out the frame and countertops.  -Delilah

  

Hangin' with Shiloh dog in the downtime.

View of Sentinel range from our spot.

Cutting for windows

We started the holes with an angle grinder,
then used a jigsaw for the rest of the cut.

"Ahhh...look at the sun poking its afro-topped head above the Rockies."

That's what we wanted to be able to say from our Sprinter Cave Bedroom and so we put in windows.

Steps for installing windows:
1.  Go to Crazy Ray's junkyard, pull out desired windows (make sure car does not fall on you when removing window), pay the hungover/drunk cashier at the window booth
2.  Make window template & draw window outline on van.
3.  Scream and shout and let it all out. (You are now ready to move on to the next step.)
4.  Cut 3 big holes in the side of your van.
5.  Bop those windows in there!  -Dan

Foam cut out.

Tracing the window template onto the back wall.

She didn't cut her leg or face off, good job.

Seeing if the windows fit.

Tape around the outside of the outline before
cutting to avoid scratching the vehicle wall
with the jigsaw foot.