12.17.15 Drawers, propane, heater and more!

Sorry for the big hiatus!  We were fast at work over on the tree lot. Mostly selling trees, but a little bit working on the bus in our spare moments as well. 

However, as of last Wednesday, we were officially done with the trees, which meant we were able to continue working on the bus until we left San Antonio on Monday. And now that we're settled into our comfy RV resort on the coast of Texas with plentiful wifi, I can start catching up on posting about the work we've accomplished.

Because we've managed to eek out so many projects during our time in Texas, loading it all into one post not only seemed daunting to me, but Christian made the smart observation that anyone reading it might quickly become overwhelmed as well.

So, I'm going to tackle blogging about one project (or, in this case, small group of projects) at a time until we've completely caught up!

Drawers/Propane/Heater:

One of the big projects we needed to tackle was finding ways to utilize some of the empty space in the kitchen. There were some spots where there used to be drawers, but they didn't come with the set. Christian set about to make some drawers for that under-counter space to hold our dishes, cookware and pantry. Beneath the oven space we created was also a spot screaming its unused potential, so he decided to make a drawer to hold random household objects and cleaning supplies as well as providing a spot to mount our small propane heater.

I wish I'd taken a better photo of these drawers. When I finally take the time to build a dedicated photo page for our conversion, I'll include one for sure. There are two large deep and heavy duty drawers to hold our cooking ware, dishes and pantry items in the far side of the kitchen.

This is the under-oven drawer that will house the heater.

Christian left the propane hookups to me (I'm still not certain why he ever trusted something so dangerous to me). I had to spend half a day driving all the way across San Antonio to a special propane shop to find all the specific connectors we needed to hook up our tank to the oven and heater for dual use.

After running through the order in which I needed to hook everything up no less than three times with the fine gentleman at the propane place. I also made him retell me how to correctly use teflon tape to wrap the connections and then how to test with soapy water for leaks.

The connecting took me a while, because I did find some leaks and had to redo multiple connections or ask Christian to use his brute strength to tighten them a little bit more (tight plus grunt!).

Once we were finally confident that I wasn't about to kill us via propane leaks, we fired up our heater to test it out.

It had gotten particularly cold a few nights in a row (down in the 30s), so we had been driven by the chill to push forward with this project. We were glad we did, as the night we got it all working was a frigid one. It also provided an enormous drying power, which is arguably as nice as the heat.

Loulou was at first skeptical of the odd hissing noises and crackling sounds the heater made as it was warming up, but she quickly realized that it gave off heat and made it her business to stick nearby.

Hooking up the oven was the final leg of the propane project. It meant no more dragging out our single-burner camp stove to heat up food or water. We were excited.

In addition to the hookups, we wanted to make the propane/water storage area more travel friendly. We're fairly certain we will upgrade our water storage at some point (we just took these jerry cans from the Campbulance), but until then, we operate with two 5 gallon cans.

We decided to cut holes in the base of the kitchen to allow the propane and water to nestle into cubbies on the floor and not move while we drive. This meant dragging out the jigsaw and adding a little more sawdust to our already dusty construction-zone of a bus. (I keep telling Christian I want a Dirt Devil for Christmas, but he's not convinced.)

The cubbies work like a charm, giving us the peace of mind that when we drive we won't have a propane tank or water jugs sliding around. (We still haven't decided on a permanent grey water storage system yet…this was also stolen from the Campbulance.)

As always, I've got to include a photo of Loulou enjoying the bus life. Here she is taking advantage of the afternoon sun. (She's well-trained enough that she'll only venture out if we set her stool out for her.)