Baby it's cold outside....

It may be December outside, but it's warm and cozy inside Fillmore. I crank up the furnace for a little while and then just have a space heater keep it up for the rest of the day while I putter away at "the lounge dinette"

It's time to put the foot rests in place. Which is a little trickier than it sounds. Mainly due to the curved wall, the wheel well and the chair which was purposely mounted at an agle to maximize lounge room for each traveler.

So I resort to my fall back method of  cardboard templates.

Followed by a test fit on scrap wood.

The actual facing is to be made from two 1/4" birch plywood laminated together

Once the pieces were cut out, a healthy layer of good ol carpenters glue...

And then clamp the heck out of it. From wall to isle it has a bit of a curve. Once the piece is set I can remove it and clean up all the edges.

While the rear facing seat dries, it was time to work on the forward facing seat. Part of this cabinetry was already roughed out last year, now I just needed to create a cabinet for around the supplemental coolant heater. First order of business is to mount the unit on rubber mounts to decrease vibration and noise.

At first blush things look good, but if you take a close look you can see that the new panel doesn't sit flush with the adjacent cabinet. This is due to the mounting brackets for the seat itself. So I will have to create a rebate to allow for the brackets.

Using my hand help laminate trimmer with a square cut bit allowed me to trim away what was in my way!

A little boxing out of the space to the heater core, and we're done!
Except for sanding, painting etc etc

Minutia and not so minutia

 Sometimes a job takes a while because you need just the right little detail. Which will likely go entirely unnoticed by the majority but I will know, and being that I am my own worst critic.....I must try to please the critic. My desire is that I want to add a little of family into the bus. What I mean by that is I have purposely included a few details along the way to give a nod to family members that have contributed to not only Fillmore but to us as well. One of which is the wood counter top and trim on the cabinets in the back of the bus... in the master bedroom if you will. The cabinet tops are made from Fir flooring that was stored in a shed on the Keeler family homestead, the trim on the drawers is made from Mvuli, wood from Africa that Michelle's mom and Dad brought back when they were there back in the 60's. My issue is that they are different colours of wood, and , I would like to make them match or get close if possible. Being that I have dropped a couple of cup holders in them I have used the 'pucks' as test pieces.
 I thought I had a winner, but when I stain the entire counter top it looked like a tribute to the purple rain album of the  artist formerly known as 'Prince' 

 So after spending a lot of Sunday morning sanding all the stain off....thank god I love listening to CBC radio and zone out to classical music, I tried different combinations. And I'm not happy with any of them....yet.

 So it was time to regroup and move onto another project on the list. The bathroom door. More of a challenge than what it seems. Due to the nature of the bus...where things aren't exactly square, plumb or true, the door is a little rhomboidal.

 So the sides aren't parallel....which I can deal with.....really....honestly...I can do this....
Oh and the edges are angled, but outside of that this is easy peasy.....

In the end. the first draft looks promising. I now just have to laminate a second layer, reinforce with birch trim, make a header.....and then install the hardware. I'm pretty much done......ha!

Plan ahead

It's finally time to once again, put things back together. After removing all the cabinet fronts for painting in my makeshift spray booth, it's finally time to assemble all the pieces. In my minds eye I have an idea of what things will look like, and I must admit for better or worse what I am getting is what I planned.

Over the toilet storage area for towels,toilet paper,etc is coming together. It has to house the duct for the bathroom heat and the faux junction box and black pipe hiding the electrical for the TV outlet.

While I was there I really wanted to incorporate a piece of the original. In the drivers area I replaced all the instrumentation, opting to go with a newer dual gauge air pressure readout. The original was still in working order, so I kept it, in hopes I could use it somehow, somewhere. Being that the design 'motif' is subway industrial for the bathroom.....I thought 'perfect!' and incorporated the working gauge into the area.

Now some of my planning lacks some of the finer details. in the last post you saw the kitchen vertical plug. Well the plan is working well. I had the space, I had run the electrical wire, I had the hardware, but I neglected to install a junction box for the outlet tower to plug into. Installing one wasn't impossible, but it sure would have been easier BEFORE I installed the kitchen cabinets!

And finally, my biggest pride and disappointment. The finish on these drawer fronts is excellent, the allotted hardware purchase ages ago was right were I stored it and was a breeze to install. The momentary mind fart allowing me to be sloppy looks out of place. you be the judge.
I can't live with that, I'll have to redo that drawer.....eventually....grrrrrrr!

The time has come

 For quite a while I have been finishing components of the cabinetry in the bus. AS I did I would prime them and then put the first few coats of paint on with a foam roller. The finish was good....but not great. Despite the claims of the guys (sorry Mr. Trudeau ) persons at the paint store, I could never get a super smooth finish with a foam roller. So the time has come to create another spray booth.

I sort of forgot how many big drop clothes I really have, I was able to mask off the entire work space, and therefor protecting all the power tools from over spray. The ventilation works well and the heater in the room kept us a nice working temp.

The set up took about a half hour, the spraying took less than 5 min and the clean up probably closer to an hour of time! But well worth the results...

 Another "I'll do it later" projects is due for attention, and that is power in the kitchen. Trying to minimize placing an electrical plug through the bathroom wall, I opted for a little more unconventional approach. This long narrow box sits behind the kitchen counter on the drivers side. It acts as a storage area and conveniently is just the right size for , oh I don't now, a bottle of fermented grape juice?

And now for something completely different...

Think, New York Subway old school industrial.....that's a thing isn't it?
Custom building is a world of compromises, form vs function. When building a wall in a house, you from the wall, then sheath it. Therefor you have a hollow core wall that you can mount(and hide) electrical boxes and wiring. But a hollow core door eats up a lot of real estate. A typical wall would be 4.5-5" thick. For the bathroom in Fillmore that's 10" which is a lot! So I elected to go with a solid wall of 5/8" plywood. I saved a lot of floor space but lost my ability to conventionally hide the outlets for the bathroom lights and fan, the TV, the wiring for the AC system, and the water pump and tank sensors and controls.So I had to get creative with manufacturing faux electrical junction boxes. This will hide some stuff, and some others instead of hiding, I dress it up and display it (light switch and wires) A bit bulky...yes....solve my problem?....yes!

Where's Waldo?

Don't get me started, Oct 2 brought winter in full force, somewhere in there is a 2013 Volkswagen Jetta TDI....for real....

Nothing to fear but fear itself.

 Let me start by saying I love my Webasto Dual Top. It is a Diesel fired furnace and hot water tank. The concept is great, a combo unit that provides heat and water and runs off of the same fuel source as the bus. Making fuelling up the unit, a one stop shopping deal.
That being said, I have been fraught with challenges as of late, which all came from a water leak. Now I could blame the design engineers for putting the water inlet directly above some of the system electronics, so that a leak would fry a mother board, then some of the delicate 20 gauge wires leading to the water overheat sensor can easily become damaged when you take apart the furnace yourself because you can't find a webasto service centre willing to work on this model of furnace. I could say all that but I wont, that would be childish and petty.

Instead I will expound on how I thoroughly enjoy online shopping and shipping. Although I cannot find any help in Calgary with this unit. I am able to find parts and advice internationally! And they ship to my door. So after replacing the furnace blower (water damage) and the hot water sensor (technician error) I was ready to reinstall  the furnace. But....(queue the sombre foreshadowing music)
before I did, I decided it was time to right a previous wrong. This past spring I installed the Webasto X100 cooktop. Unfortunatley I had a few issues with the install process, first the electrical then the fuel line. As according to instruction, I spliced into the return fuel line from the engine and ran a fuel line to the cooker. My issue was that the fuel line I used was a 3/32 I.D. Which was difficult to find off the shelf. The line that I found was a soft sided line (blue line attached to the side wall in the photo) that I wasn't convinced was going to cut the mustard. But we tried....and it failed. So Again, I had a Webasto fuel line kit sent to me, and it sat in wait in my shop waiting for the right moment to strike. And this was the moment.

So while I was under there I ran the right fuel line, using the correct filter, and fished it up to the cooker to be connected at a later date when I have time to putter and drink coffee.(insert dramatic suspenseful musical crescendo) -camera pan across and zoom in on the text "to be connected at a later date"

After recruiting Anna to help me lift and hold the furnace into place, the electrical hook ups were completed , fuel line attached and .........Notta....No Go....epic fail....
The furnace would start up, the exhaust would get warm indicating the start of combustion and then....shut down and error code. The error code indicated there was a no fire/fuel problem. with each possible avenue for error things checked out. I then got it down to the fuel pump. I wanted to test and make sure the fuel lines were drawing the appropriate amount of fuel and that the pump was working properly. I disconnected the fuel line in between the  pump and the fuel filter. and I found good news and bad. The bad new was, I couldn't get a good bleed on the fuel line. Every time I put the inline pump on the line it would suck up a whack of air.

The good news was when I placed a direct fuel line into a separate fuel source, the furnace fired right up(after two attempts). I had to take a break to cook dinner, which gave me time figure out how this could be a problem now where it never has been before? The $64,000 question was..."what has changed?"

 (flash back to installing the new X100 fuel line, and the sentence " to be connected at a later date")
I essentially created my own problem. The open fuel line to the cook top was allowing the fuel pump for the furnace (which is attached to the same fuel tank pick up as the return line from the engine) to suck up air. Thus no fuel error code. A simple crimp of the open line, bleed the line to the furnace and we have heat!

Electrifying

Last weekend was the inaugural Fillmore Dinner Cruise. For a long time we have been talking about having a parents bus party. But unlike the 18 year olds we needed a more civilised function. So we used the ruse that we were going out for a nice dinner, and why not carpool? We had a fantastic dinner in Canmore at Blake . As much as I would love to take credit for the name and the scrumptious food that was served, my only personal connection to the place is that one of the owners Norm helped build our house 17 years ago!

The rest of the weekend I was able to dabble in some creative finishing ideas for Fillmore. The bathroom theme is New York subway, with some industrial exposed pipe that will run a dual purpose. First to act a a chase to run electrical wires used to control the water pump and tank monitors. Second will be to provide a clever towel rack and toilet paper dispenser!

Running the wire through the pipe wasn't too hard, but I still needed to do it twice before I got all the pieces where they needed to be. Now comes the hard part. I want the wires to be housed in an electrical junction box or control panel. After a tedious online search that turn up a lot of stuff that was close and a plethora of stuff that was totally off base, I decided I needed to make what I see in my mind.

Nothing a little coffee,MDF and permission to make sh#t up as I go along could not handle





















I have a favourite little place, called Vintage Wire and Supply that sells quirky and different "stuff" that you can use for something like this! The rough layout looks good, but the junction box is too....well....boxy. I need to soften it up and make it look a little more experienced !

We'll start with a new  edge profile...

And then see where that takes us....

Fun and Frolic!

 Wow, where did the summer go? For that matter where did the last 17 years go? This past weekend we just dropped off my daughter at University. She is not far away and we will be able to see each other lots, but I will miss seeing her infectious smile each and everyday.

The summer flew by with the family following Jeff out to Beach nationals where they tied for made it as far as the quarter finals. Followed by a little Fillmore Camping in Jasper!

Work continues on the interior, at a slow pace perhaps but progress none the less. This weekend I was working on installing some blind panels. The first one was in the bedroom/bench area where I have a retractable duct for the furnace heat that attaches to a blanket. The second is in the bathroom. A blind space where the plumbing runs.

The hardware I found for attaching is simple in design. Place part one of the retainers on the stable component (the framework). Then attach the red marking plates. Press the panel in place and score the panel.

Then on the backside of the panel, countersink part two of the retainer clip, and...

 Pop, pop, pop, things click into place!

Don't get crossed, keep your cool.

 So exciting! The new fan arrived, right on time! I love it when a plan comes together. I unpacked the hardware and was thrilled to see that everything was exactly as it should be. Everything fit as it should and things should be a simple plug and play....

 But as we all know that doen't always happen...

while trying in the bushing I hand tightened the retention bolts, and marred the threads on one of the holes. I didn't realize what I had done until I put a ratchet on it to tighten the fan into place. Two of the three bolts moved like silk on silk, the third bound down almost instantly. I knew it was cross threaded. I backed the bolt out and tried to re-angle the bolt, but the damage was done. Thankfully a repass with a tap cleaned everything up without to much drama.

The new fan blade was finally mounted in position!!

A little site test to make sure things are lined up properly...

And then install the final fan guard, so this totally preventable mishap does NOT happen again!

All the while work continues (all be it slowly) on the bathroom. Getting the drawer fronts mounted where they need to be. Now we are ready for another camping trip....