Not enough gas!

If we were playing one of those "spot the difference" games, most would notice the bed is made.

It has to be unmade one more time once the bolts arrive for the hinges, but when Paul arrived with his trusty bottles of nitrogen, to our surprise he added more gas to our strut and it started behaving as it was supposed to.  He of course was mortified, certain that we need a second strut, but the bin below the bed is only for occasional use and it's just fine for our needs.

You might also notice that things are looking close to complete, although the drawer-sized gaps are a bit of a give-away that this daily journal is also getting fairly close to drawing to some sort of conclusion for the time being.

It seems as though it's been a very long four weeks I must say, with very few breaks, and  I'm loathe to make any predictions but if we weren't going to waste all of Sunday in the company of good friends, I'd almost say we could be loading the food on Tuesday ready for an early departure. but things won't work like that and there'll be a day or two thereafter spent scratching around remembering odd jobs, (like the insulation in the cab which even now we are tempted to put off until a later time).

The trick now, is going to be in not giving up until those little things are done.

Too much gas.

 

I've had a gas strut sitting on my workbench for eighteen months, waiting for the time I guess, when I've figured out how to mount it without tearing great holes in the lightweight sheeting.

Well I've done that, made the mounts and installed the strut and of course the inevitable occurred.  What do you call a gas strut that doesn't move?   A pipe, I suppose.

Paul the gas strut bloke did warn me he'd probably made it a bit stiff, but he is coming tomorrow and he'll sort it, which will leave almost no work to as far as the "envelope" goes.   "Almost" because the vent grilles that go each side of the after most cupboards are printing as we type, and the sewing department is going along so swimmingly I suspect there'll be a few lengths of tube to cut and a few bits of assembly to go and that will be that apart from the usual last minute paint touch ups.

Every little electrical thing is routed and connected now, the fire extinguisher is mounted, the drawer slides are in and tweaked. even my hearing aid charger is mounted securely.

Which brings me to the drawers, all five of them.  

I keep putting them off until tomorrow. 

The son of the son of a blacksmith.

 

My Dad was the son of a blacksmith.  

His dad was not a very big man, but he could hit things really, really hard with a hammer.   

Perhaps it was learning by observation, but there weren't too many things my Father couldn't fix with the use of a cold chisel and a decent whack, and to be fair quite a few of his repairs looked as though that methodology had been employed.

While I may have inherited a number of talents from them both, I tend to have a healthy aversion to whacking things really hard, particularly if one of my body parts has to hold the object being whacked.  I have been called "Lightning" in times gone by, by those observing my skill with a hammer, not because I'm so fast, but because I rarely strike twice in the same place.

It was therefore understandable that that methodology was not at the topmost of my mind when somewhere in the fourth hour of gently teasing out the broken bolt in the turning nutsert with a lack of enthusiasm that betrayed my frustration, that my forebears spoke rather loudly in unison.   "It's time!"

Thirty seconds was all it took with a tiny cold chisel and a big hammer, and the problem was solved and I was off looking for something else to whack with a bit of gusto.

The rest of the day may have been a little more productive in the sense of getting a bit done, but nothing came close in the satisfaction stakes to the way I felts as that nut fell neatly into two pieces.

A deadline looms.

 

It took a few hours last time.

Today every task left half-done then, took a few hours to put right, and I'm glad I didn't start the drawers until we can measure them in place one last time.   They "may" be ok. Logic says they will be as the runners haven't been removed, but I've spent quite a bit of time making shims that previously were unnecessary due to the miracle of the over-tightened screw and a bit of flex in the cabinet so who knows where the new alignment will be.

That might have been good of course - a bit of stress in the skin might make for very stiff structure, but I suspect not.  Mostly it's just inadequate construction.

Usually after a day like today one would feel quite dissatisfied with the lack of progress, but I think having the carcasses in place is a step in the right direction, even if it's going to take all tomorrow to finish that job!

This has gone on so long we now have a deadline - it's a few weeks off yet, so the panic is unlikely to set it, but it's reassuring to note we will be finished.  This may not be a never ending story after all.

Illusion or Delusion?

One of my boat building mantras goes something like: " Joiners work to the nearest fraction of a millimetre, carpenters work to the nearest centimetre, boat builders work to the nearest boat".

I know that it's folly to try to get parallel objects to appear that way when all of the surrounding surfaces are curved, yet there I was, hunched over like an apprentice bell ringer, with measuring tape, shims, thread tap, nutserts, and assortment of drill bits and a very big hammer in case any of it needed a nudge, fiddling for what seemed like more than the few hours it actually was.

It's a question of getting everything "close enough" then walking away and not looking back, and certainly not taking a picture.   

This wasn't necessary the first time round, it was late, we were desperate, and I drove a couple of screws into a block of pvc stuck to the wall.   It's been like that ever since, having survived some very very long patches of very very rough roads, and one of us has been happy enough.   

Why did I think it should be "done properly"?

The rear most carcasses are in now too - so tomorrow we'll repeat today, but a metre and a half to the left I suspect.

A splash of not colour.

If someone said "we are going to Birdsville tomorrow do you want to come", we are at the point where realistically we could throw it all back together and go.

If they said that of course we'd think of the temperatures in the forties there at the moment and politely reply: "sorry the van's not finished" and fiddle on with it for another week or so, and "fiddle" it is.   

There are lots of little detailed jobs happening that are too minuscule to describe - the making of some sleeves to prevent the hold-down latches from rattling among them, but we did get some colour (if grey is a colour - it does look a bit brown-ish in some lights) on the cupboard faces and we are now at the point where we have probably put off gluing in the carpet for as long as we can.

We have a dilemma though.  All the measurements to tweak the drawer fitting were taken of necessity before we dismantled everything.   Will things settle into a different place when we reassemble?

Should we do that, refit each drawer and measure from it's final resting place.   My head says yes, but my heart says "really?"

Will good triumph over evil?

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode. 

The never ending story meets Neighbours

Life gets in the way of progress just occasionally and it did today in the most delightful of ways.

Not much more than a decade ago (refer the Archives of this blog 2010)  we lived at the end of a short cul de sac, where we enjoyed an extraordinary sense of community with each of the others sharing that tiny street. In some ways it like living a kind of utopian dream of the sort that movies are made about.   The theme song from "Neighbours" rang disgustingly sweetly in our lives.

Just when life could get no better the plot thickened, an evil government decided that a transport corridor would look great running through our bedrooms, and we all found ourselves dispossessed.    Ironically, on the day our sales contracts went unconditional, the project was cancelled or at least postponed for an indeterminate period on the grounds of "damage it would do to the community".

With the damage done, we scattered to the four winds, each of us maintaining contact with many of the others over the years until a week or so again when someone got the bright idea that we should all get together.  And that was today, eight households delightfully reunited for lunch, babbling excitedly away till almost bedtime, just like Fridays used to be, except that it was Saturday.   

We're going to do that again of course.  Someone is already organising a time next year.

Meanwhile back in the garage, the amount of work expands to consume the available time.   That's why when there's a deadline it all seems to work so well so a day lost means a day less work to do.

This photograph was supposed to make a triumphant announcement to the effect that I'd packed away all the woodworking tools, that barring a zillion coats of varnish the wood work was finished, and then I realised there are two parts missing from the picture.   Until we have a deadline, there's always tomorrow.