Moving along! Cabinets!

Well, it's been a while! First off, last weekend we went down to Sportsmobile and had the top fixed. I thought it would take a long time, but it only took about 3 hours! They lifted the bad corner and used epoxy to fill in all of the holes from all of the screws that were in there. They resealed the corner, and replaced the wood that had gotten wet from the leak. 

Here's a photo of Adam in the office where we hung out with the dogs at Sportsmobile while they worked on our van:

And here's a picture of the showroom area at Sportsmobile West. We got another tour while we were there and got to see all of the crazy expensive vans people have them create!

After getting back from Sportsmobile, Adam (and I!) spent the rest of the weekend working on the van. He'd already been spending a lot of time covering the newest cabinets with fabric. Check out the new cabinet in place, with fabric covered shelves:

And here is Adam and Spencer sitting on the seat with the new cabinet and the closet installed.

Check out the armrest Adam built next to the seat!

Below, Adam is holding the sink where it will go once we buy the countertop. We will be getting Silt color Corian for the counters and the sink will be undermounted. 

Here's the new fixed corner. Many fewer screws! We hope the new seal holds. The only problem we've had so far is that there is a new noise--a knocking sound--which Sportsmobile said may be the pop top's large garage springs, one of them may not be seated right. They said to try placing a fabric covered wedge under that side spring, to see if that helps. Adam is going to try that. 

Here we are finishing up covering the new cabinet with fabric. 

Below will be right behind the driver's seat, and will hold the atlas. You can also see the new fridge power switch on the back of that little ledge.

Here is a close up picture of the new switch, which will power on/off the fridge.

Adam's switchplates!

The hinges are installed for the stove and fuel storage area, which is directly under the fridge space. 

The fridge space, very well insulated. 

And here is the whole thing in the van, with the fridge! Perfect fit.

Here is an updated picture of the closet area, with fabric covered sliding doors. Nice!

Adam is now working on doing a lot of wiring, including for the fridge, the outside lights, the inside lights, and the solar panel. He's also going to install a drain hose for the fridge. It's going well! Go Adam! Yeah!

Also, Spring is in the air. Check out our blooming Hardenbergeria:

We also have daffodils and hyacinths blooming!

Worldwide audience! Hello world!

So, the other day I learned that I can view our "Stats" (who has viewed our blog, when, and from where). I was amazed that we have a worldwide audience! Check it out: (the #'s are # of page views since we started the blog)

United States 836 Latvia 21 Canada 12 South Korea 8 France 7 Malaysia 6 Australia 3 Norway 3 Germany 2 Denmark 2

Pretty neat! To the person in Latvia, I hope you are building a Sportsmobile or other camper van, and that you are getting some ideas from our blog. Hi!

I don't know anyone in any of the countries other than the US. Hope you all are having a great day! Keep checking back, I'm going to bake something again soon, and there will be more photos of the pets, too, just in case that's why you like our blog. :) (Probably not..)

Problems with Sportsmobile--Quick update

After some conversation, Sportsmobile offered to pay for gas money to drive to their Fresno facility and back, and also to do the fix to the leaky top on a weekend so we don't have to miss work. I can't say we're completely thrilled with the offer (we already had to miss work once to come back for a fix, and missing out on a weekend day sucks!), but we do appreciate that they are having to bring in at least 3 people to work a full day on weekend to fix it, so it certainly must be sort of a big deal to them. We'll be going down there fairly soon, and after we do, I'll post to let you know how the fix went! (With pictures)

Amazing cabinetry!

This post is mostly going to be a bunch of photos of the newest cabinet. Check it out!

The large compartment will hold the fridge, below it the stove and fuel. The smallest on the left side will be small kitchen tools, the middle will be pots/pans/plates/cups, and the lowest is the port-a-potti. Adam cut lots of holes in the supports to reduce weight. It's very airy and open! Adam's hand is on the face of the stash cabinet (see later photos--he cuts out the front) which goes right behind the driver's seat to stash jackets/blankets/small pillows. 

In the van. Fits great!

Some of the holes Adam cut to reduce weight now have hardboard insulation in them (surrounding the fridge). The front of the stash cabinet is cut out. 

This is right behind the driver's side seat. It'll have a  shelf in it, and that front sloped part has a lip on the bottom so it holds our atlas (and a little cut out on the front lip so the atlas is easy to grab!). 

This is the small area right below the fridge. The divider holds the fuel in the small area, and the stove to the right of that. 

Fuel!

Fridge area with fuel and stove compartment.

The whole thing. 

I helped sand for a short time tonight, and Adam is doing some more sanding while I do this post. Once that's done we will finish the edges and put it back together to go in the van. Then the fridge can be permanently installed (yay!). I think it looks fantastic, and extremely well planned out to hold everything we want to carry. Go Adam!!

As usual, I've been continuing my Betty Crocker streak...check it out:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies (5 doz):

Oatmeal raisin (4 doz):

Side story:

With a chunk of the money we got for Christmas, we decided to buy a new tent. We plan on using the van a lot to get us to a trailhead on Friday nights, so we can camp 1 night and then do overnight backpacking trips with the dogs on the weekends. We needed a bigger tent--we've been using a two person tent and it's so small the dogs have to sleep in the vestibules! So we went for a Nemo Losi 3p. Aaannndd....it's HUGE! We decided to keep it (after some more research)--it's the best deal for the price and we'll eventually have another person (kiddo!) with us, so might as well buy one tent to keep for the long term. Anyway, here's a picture of the gigantic tent we now own:

Happy New Year.

Another Sportsmobile problem!

I have more updates to do to show the AMAZING cabinet work Adam has been doing. Tonight, I promise.

For now we wanted to share the problem we found this weekend. Where the pop top meets the van top (front passenger side) we pulled back the fabric cover (looking for the culprit of a squeak, thought something might be rubbing up there) and found that they used plywood in the pop top mounting, and water had gotten in and soaked the plywood, rusted and corroded the screws, and began to mold. They also used a TON of screws in that corner compared to the other corners--looks like they knew there was a problem (and "solved" it by making swiss cheese of the van top!).

We have spent SO MUCH time and money on this project, that we are really more than bummed about these developments. Adam already had to go back down to Sportsmobile once, to have them do a "quick fix" on the warped top (which they admitted was a problem since they started having their tops manufactured out of the country!). This cost us time and money. Now, another problem.

Sportsmobile has great ideas, but we have found their execution to be much less than satisfactory.

Here are pictures of the latest problem:

Mold, rust, corrosion, wet wood, tons of screws....

A "good" corner for comparison

Closet installed, downstairs bed finished!

This past week Adam officially installed the closet, and we put the bench seat back in. Then he built rails for the remainder of the bed (that the bench seat folds out into) and cut plywood to hold the remaining cushion. We got the cushion out of the bedroom (where it's been stored...) and put it in the van. It looks great! Check it out:

The bed (with bench seat folded down) and closet.

The bed from the back--plenty of storage space under there!

The passenger side rail holding up the bed cushion.

The driver side rail and access hole to under-closet space. 

The seat in "seat" position with the bed cushion behind it. When the seat folds down into the "bed" mode, the slides forward and down to create the bed flat surface. When it "seat" mode, the back cushion is a great dog place!

Now Adam is out working on the front cabinets that will house the fridge, port-a-potty, and misc storage items (probably some pots and pans for cooking, cleaning supplies).

I've helped Adam a bit moving things in and out and helping bolt things down. I've also been doing some gray/rainy weekend baking. Check it out:

A yeast bread! (My first in a really long time, so an experiment) Cinnamon-oat-raisin bread. Makes great toast. A little dense but I think it's normal to be that way. Has a cinnamon-sugar topping.

Icebox cookie dough--Lemon-Cream cheese cookies. I only baked a few. 

Viennese crescents.

Chocolate "banana" bread--I put the quotes because you can't really taste the banana. It's an interesting recipe as there is no sugar or butter/oil. You make a paste out of cooked prunes which provides sweetness and moisture. Sounds a little strange but tastes really good!

Here's the extent of our holiday decorating! It's the "holiday ficus". It has three ornaments on it, most are on the backside as I didn't want the pets getting into things. We're not big into Christmas (well, I guess excepting the holiday baking....) but I think the ficus with lights is nice! 

My dad stopped by this morning and gave us one of his Christmas ornaments. He's known for making a new, creative one every year. This time around, it's a mini wreath made of wire, acorns and ribbon. Totally awesome, Dad!

...And while I was typing that our garage door broke!....Makes it a little more difficult to work on the van......

This post is only about the dogs! Next post only about the van....

So, we had quite a week with the dogs. A little background-- (and if you don't care about our dogs, or don't like to hear about barf, skip this post! It's a little wordy....)

About a week ago, I came home to find that the dogs had gotten into one of the kitchen cupboards, and pulled out some brown sugar, jello mix, coconut, and marshmallows. They ate some brown sugar and all of the marshmallows and otherwise made a mess. I honestly wasn't positive I had left the cupboard open or closed, so I just cleaned up the mess and from then on checked to be sure the cupboards were all closed in the kitchen before I left (we keep the bedroom and bathroom doors all closed always so that's not a worry).

Well, when I got home from work on Wednesday, I walked into a GIGANTIC MESS. I instantly saw that the same cupboard was open again (this time I knew it was closed when I left in the morning!) and they had gotten into the same baking supplies, including the brown sugar again and had pulled out a bunch of containers (all unopened). The biggest issue was they had found the baking chocolate--there was 6 ounces of 100% cacao chocolate in that cupboard, and one or both dogs had found it and eaten every last bit! There was chocolate thrown up all over the house---a huge pile on the carpet and in the kitchen, plus about 5 small piles on the carpet and on the couch.

Being the neat freak I am, my first reaction (unfortunately) was to get extremely mad at the dogs--I called Adam on the phone to vent and started cursing the dogs and the mess! He caught word that they had eaten the chocolate and immediately asked me about the dogs--were they ok after eating the chocolate?? (Chocolate, especially the baking kind, is toxic to dogs.) Of course, I was just mad, and actually for the first time looked at the pups. Carex looked normal (and normal for her is weird) but Dude (Spencer) was obviously funky once I actually looked at him. He was lying on the floor at this point, swaying weirdly back and forth, and his eyes were really red. He let out a strange quiet bark and stared off into the distance. By this time I realized something was really wrong (at least with Dude) so I hung up with Adam and called our vet. She said that if there was already barf around the house, that it would be best to take them both to UC Davis emergency vet. I changed out of my biking shorts (no need to wear spandex more than required...) and called the dogs to the car. Spencer came out of his trance and trotted to the car like normal and Carex followed like normal. In the car Spence just laid down, which is a little weird.

We arrived at the vet and on the way in, Spencer was coughing up mucus but Carex was normal. They immediately took Spencer (his heart rate was more than double of normal) and induced vomiting--he vomited up ~5 ounces of chocolate! Carex's heart rate was elevated as well, so as a precaution they induced vomiting for her as well, but she didn't barf any chocolate. It was determined that just giving her some activated charcoal and sending her home under watchful care would be fine. Spencer, on the other hand, needed to stay and have lots of fluids and have his heart rate checked hourly. Chocolate is toxic to dogs, and also has caffeine to elevate their heart rate. It can also cause irregular heart beats, so Spencer needed to be watched.

Once we got at home, I was of course totally worried about Carex. Adam was great and kept an eye on her, checking her heart rate while he worked in the garage. Once she was inside, I checked it and worried that it seemed irregular, but after checking it for longer decided that I was just not feeling in the right place. She cuddled with me in bed, then slept in her bed right next to me so I could check on her in the night (sounds like my kid, I know, but I'm a total softy and really attached to her....). We got some sleep, and I took her to work with me the next day--she was fine. No chocolate eaten.

After work I picked up Spencer, who was now nearly 100% recovered, but also stir-crazy from being kept in a cage at the vet for almost 24 hours! Once we got home, I was confronted with the insane chocolate-barf-covered house...but some careful carpet and upholstery cleaning has solved those problems (if anything I now have clean spots in an otherwise evenly dirty carpet). UC Davis was great in their care of our dogs, but they are really expensive (as to be expected for a 24 hour emergency vet teaching hospital)---we are out almost $1000 for this experience! Adam has already installed some child cabinet locks in the kitchen and until we finish that job, chairs are blocking the remainder of the food-containing cabinets, just in case. And the baking chocolate is all gone, so that's not a risk anymore! Sheesh. What a week!