We headed up again this past weekend to do a couple major tasks.
1. Build out the closets, with shelving and coverings
2. Move the bed downstairs from the loft
3. Rebuild the bed frame downstairs, without the rails we had previously.
4. Finish cutting the door connecting our two containers.
Upon arrival Friday afternoon, we both heard some sort of alarm….of course that alarm is a low voltage alarm coming from our new power inverter. Turns out the voltage was low on the batteries, once again, and upon further investigation I found there was no input voltage from the panels, so no charging of the batteries. For how long? No idea. I found that the 30A circuit breaker I used on the panel negative input, basically to just join the cables coming the panel and going to the charge controller, is crap and kept tripping.
This thing is junk, and I thought maybe I tripped it on my way out last week, but nope, it kept just tripping for no reason. I ended up joining the cables with a metal plate, and we were charging once again. By the time we left yesterday we were pretty much fully charged, once again. The test is this week. We shall see.
On to the true projects, finally. Friday, we got up there and battled through no refrigeration, thankfully I had a bag of ice not melted from the previous week, so that us through. We moved the mattress down from the loft and set it up so we could sleep downstairs, our first time in quite a while.
Saturday morning we busted a move to working on the closets, getting the plywood backing and siding in place. Sheralee could then continue on to shelving, while I worked on taking our bed platform apart, re-sizing it for what we wanted downstairs, and then rebuild it.
In the right hand picture, you can see we chose to enclose the wood stove in galvanized metal. The look is really cool.
Once this was done, I continued the daily ‘grind’ and Sheralee worked on the shelves. We decided to use 2×12 boards for the shelves which are basically 2ft by 2ft in size. They are thick and sturdy, help by half of a 2×4 on each side.
This week we got some great work in with the table saw, finally! ha. Things are so much easier with that thing. Sheralee is now a master of the table saw, it is great to see.
The shelves really came along nicely! Here is what they looked like before any finish work was done. These are our closets of the future. We are using the bottom level of each closet for wood stove materials, either kindling, wood, or paper products.
I worked on the bed platform, and we were finally able to start piecing it together downstairs.
The platform now has no rails, as they would take up an additional 3″ side to side and not really necessary. I re-used all of the wood from the old platform and it really turned out pretty well…and heavy. doh.
It is still high off the floor, which we love because there is so much storage, or doggy, space underneath. We slept down there on the new bed Saturday night…ahhh so nice. Although we still had the refrigerator right near our heads, so there was that. ha.
Sunday morning, Sheralee continued sanding and varnishing the shelves and I started in on grinding the doorway out of our containers.
The left pictures is when I first finished with the opening and cleanup of the rough edges. On the right is after I sealed in the door way (temporarily) with some 6 mil plastic, ducting tape, and then created a step between the two. We did move the refrigerator over to the new container, as we joked about it is inching closer to it’s final resting place.
After the fridge move and door sealing, Sheralee finished the closet trim and covering. I think they are awesome!! We are both really happy with our future bedroom.
And the finish look!
Of course, no walls yet, but we are getting there. hahahaha
That was it for our major work weekend, we really accomplished a lot and basically kicked A$$! Oh, one other thing…ever hear that saying “you get what you pay for”? Well, we definitely did with our used generator. I was on my third coil starter assembly.
Well, Saturday we went to restart the generator and nada..nothing. Normally the rope or spring goes, but nope not this time. This time it was the plastic interior of the coil assembly that gave way. Blah.
Hard to see in the picture, but the two plastic pieces that catch the crank busted off. So, time to by another one. uuugghhh You get what you pay for.
Ok, that is all from our past weekend. We are headed up Thursday afternoon for a long weekend. Some more major things happening and very excited.