bamboo banga

lee, sam and dad laid the flooring the bedroom this past weekend.
the type of flooring is a little weird, you can either glue it or nail it, but we chose to do both to be safe from any shifting or other complications while traveling.
the men-folk said it was pretty easy.

the new bamboo on the plywood sub-floor

sam working hard

lee pre-drilling holes for the nails in the bamboo

sam hammering the bamboo in place

lee adding the glue

the bamboo trim isn't really going to be an option what with all of the curves in the airstream. we'll try and find some sort of an attractive rubber trim as an alternative.
i'll be posting some new pic's tomorrow or the next day.

light at the end of the tunnel

up until the end of the day yesterday, i had totally been ready to throw in the towel and give up on all of this renovation nonsense.
it's true.
this trailer had so much more work to be done than we had initially anticipated & if i had known then what i know now about it, we would probably never have bought it. we would have saved up for longer to buy on in better condition starting out.
i feel a lot better today; my attitude is good.
yesterday, we ripped out the kitchen, poured new counter tops, painted, finished the plumbing. we cleaned and did lots of little detail work that helps with the overall appearance.
it's encouraging.
we also found out that the fridge doesn't work. potentially disastrous. a new gas/electric fridge would have cost us a couple thousand dollars, and we wouldn't be able to afford that.
but my dad's friend has a new ac/dc rv fridge we can buy for only $100.
huge deal!
anyhow, i'll be working and packing up the house today (we move out in 4 days!) while the men-folk start laying the bamboo floors today, in the airstream.
i'll have lots of updated pic's soon.

ta-da!

lee and dad wove the metal reinforcement by hand

counter-productive

this weekend was very productive (no thanks to me).
my dad and lee worked on gutting the bathroom and building in the frame for the new courter and cabinets.
the had hoped to test out all of the pluming, but ran into problems while re-routing some copper piping.
apparently the is an 8 ft. section of pipe that is an odd size. it isn't compatible with any other copper piping anywhere. very weird; so we may have to replace all of the piping if my dad can't figure out an alternative.
aside from this little (huge) glitch, we bought a new faucet for the bathroom and made a decision on the counter tops.
we had decided to replace the old counters with plain formica, to save time and money.
counters for both the kitchen and bath would have cost us roughly $100. not too bad. and i had hoped finding a bright, fun colour would 'counter' the fact that it was cheap formica.
however, when it came time to choose the colour, home depot and lowes only carry ugly faux-granite and white. white would have been okay for the bathroom, but not for the kitchen.
after brainstorming w/ mom and dad, lee and i decided on cement! duh! what had we been thinking!?
we've always liked cement counter tops, but it never occurred to me to put them in the trailer.
it's perfect, though. the project will take a bit more time, but it will cost us next to nothing!
when the project's done, it will look something like this.

also, here's a how-to link on making your own cement counter tops.

so, the airstream ranch, which is about 45 minutes away from me...i love it.
i certainly hope it stays put.

pagoda, where's my javelina?

after months of priming and cleaning, we're fiiiiinally getting to some of the fun stuffs.
this past weekend, we painted the bedroom and hallway 'royal tenenbaums' pink.
we didn't really choose the color on purpose- we found a this gallon of pink paint on the 'ooopp's, wrong color' shelf at home depot for $5. when we saw it, it reminded us of the the movie and we were like, 'yes!'.
that's the story.
oh, and 'satin' finish paint is perfect for the strange interior of an airstream. it makes the space very clean and the slight reflective quality of the paint makes the space feel huge.
the dark pink colour also (surprisingly) further elongates the small space.

siiiink

since we're gutting the bathroom i made a new sink for us!
i was a little worried, but it came out nice & i can't wait to set in the new counter.
it worked out really well that i've got access to all of the materials, because a custom sink would have cost a small fortune.

it was pretty easy, and it only cost us $12, for a bottle of glaze.